ANTIALKIDAS 145BC Baktrian Indo- Greek Ancient Coin of India Zeus Gemini i46912

Item:
i46912

  

Authentic Ancient

Coin of:

Antialkidas – King, circa 145-135 B.C.
Square Bronze 16mm (7.99 grams) Struck circa 145-135 B.C.
Uncertain mint in the Paropamisadai or Gandhara

Reference: HGC 12, 263; Sear 7633; Bopearachchi Serie 17
Bust of Zeus right, thunderbolt over left shoulder;

ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ
behind,
NIKHΦΟΡΟΥ above,
ANTIAΛKIΔOY before.
Two palm-branches between caps of the Dioscuri; Karosthi legend
(Maharajasa jayadharasa Amtialkidasa [of Great King Antialkidas the Victory
Bearer]) around; monogram
beneath.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured,

Authenticity.

In the
ancient Greek

religion, Zeus was the
“Father of Gods and men” (πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν
τε)
who ruled the Olympians of
Mount Olympus

as a father ruled the family. He was the
god of sky

and
thunder

in
Greek mythology
.
His
Roman

counterpart is
Jupiter

and
Etruscan

counterpart is Tinia
.

Zeus was the child of
Cronus

and
Rhea
,
and the youngest of his siblings. In most traditions he was married to

Hera, although, at the
oracle of Dodona
,
his consort was
Dione
:
according to the Iliad
,
he is the father of
Aphrodite

by Dione. He is known for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and
heroic offspring, including
Athena
,
Apollo

and Artemis
,
Hermes
,
Persephone

(by Demeter
),
Dionysus
,
Perseus
,
Heracles
,
Helen of Troy
,
Minos
,
and the Muses

(by Mnemosyne
);
by Hera, he is usually said to have fathered

Ares,
Hebe

and Hephaestus
.

As
Walter Burkert

points out in his book, Greek Religion, “Even the gods who are not his
natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence.”
For the Greeks, he was the
King of the Gods
,
who oversaw the universe. As
Pausanias

observed, “That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men”. In
Hesiod’s Theogony

Zeus assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is
referred to as the chieftain of the gods.

His symbols are the
thunderbolt
,
eagle
,
bull
,
and oak
.
In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical “cloud-gatherer”
also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the
Ancient Near East
,
such as the
scepter
.
Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses: standing,
striding forward, with a thunderbolt leveled in his raised right hand, or seated
in majesty.

Gemini
is one of the
constellations
of the
zodiac
. It was one of the 48 constellations
described by the 2nd century AD astronomer
Ptolemy
and it remains one of the 88 modern
constellations today. Its name is
Latin
for “twins,”
and it is associated with the twins
Castor and Pollux
in
Greek mythology
. Its symbol is
Unicode ♊.

In
Greek
and
Roman mythology
,

Pollux and Castor or Polydeuces were twin brothers, together known as the
Dioskouri. Their mother was
Leda
, but Castor was the mortal son of
Tyndareus
, the king of Sparta, and Pollux the
divine son of Zeus
, who seduced Leda in the guise of a swan.
Though accounts of their birth are varied, they are sometimes said to have been
born from an egg, along with their twin sisters
Helen of Troy
and
Clytemnestra
.

In Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini or Castores.
When Castor was killed, Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality
with his twin to keep them together, and they were transformed into the
constellation
Gemini
. The pair were regarded as the patrons
of sailors, to whom they appeared as
St. Elmo’s fire
, and were also associated with
horsemanship.

They are sometimes called the Tyndaridae or Tyndarids, later
seen as a reference to their father and stepfather
Tyndareus
.

Antialcidas Nikephoros (Greek:
Ἀντιαλκίδας ὁ Νικηφόρος;
epithet
means
“the Victorious”) was a Greek King of the Indo-Greek Kingdom, king of the
Eucratid Dynasty
, who reigned from his capital at
Taxila
.
Bopearachchi
has suggested that he ruled from ca. 115 to 95 BCE in the
western parts of the Indo-Greek realms, whereas R. C. Senior places him around
130 to 120 BCE and also in eastern
Punjab
(which seems better supported by coin findings). Senior does however
believe that he ruled in tandem with
King Lysias
.

Genealogy

Antialcidas may have been a relative of the Bactrian king
Heliocles
I
, but ruled after the fall of the Bactrian kingdom. Several later kings may
have been related to Antialcidas:
Heliokles II
,
Amyntas
,
Diomedes
and
Hermaeus

all struck coins with similar features.

The Heliodorus
inscription

 

 

Though there are few sources for the late Indo-Greek history, Antialcidas is
known from an inscription left on a pillar (the
Heliodorus pillar
), which was erected by his ambassador Heliodorus at the
court of the
Sunga
king
Bhagabhadra
at
Vidisha
, near
Sanchi
. It
states that he was a devotee of Krishna, the Hindu god.

A part of the inscriptions says:

“This Garuda-standard was made by order of the Bhagavata … Heliodoros,
the son of Dion, a man of Taxila, a Greek ambassador from King Antialkidas,
to King Bhagabhadra, the son of the Princess from Benares, the saviour,
while prospering in the fourteenth year of his reign.”

Coins

Otherwise, Antialcidas is also known through his plentiful coins. He issued a
number of bilingual Indian silver types: diademed, wearing a helmet with bull’s
horns or a flat kausia. He also appears throwing a spear. According to some
interpretations (Grousset), the baby elephant may symbolize the Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama
, who took the shape of a small elephant to enter the womb
of his mother
Queen Maya
, a scene often depicted in
Greco-Buddhist art
. In that case the coin scene would represent a victory of
Buddhism. According to other interpretations the elephant was the symbol of the
city of Taxila
.

“Mule
coins” (overstrikes)

There is a bronze which features the obverse of
Lysias
and the reverse of Antialcidas. This was interpreted by Tarn and
other earlier scholars as though the two kings might have forged some kind of
alliance, but later, a bronze with the opposite arrangement was found.

Modern scholarship has however largely accepted that what was originally
supposed to be a “joint issue” was in fact a mule; in other words, a mistake
occurred in the process of overstriking the original coin, and it was
accidentally issued with both king’s standards.