First ancient coin purchase in a while, but it was a great deal at 20 bucks. A soter megas coin, soter megas roughly translates as: king huge.
This is the website I bought it from: http://www.ancientcoinstore.com/ It is run by a retired art prof, who draws and cleans ancient coins. He is well known on all the yahoo groups for being a big advocate for electrolysis cleaning of ancient coins.
The top pic is the king brandishing a weapon, and the bottom is the king on horseback. It is an Indo-Greek coin, which means that it is from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region and was from a kingdom heavily influenced by the Greeks (Macedonians really) that came in the wake of Alexander the Great travelling through those lands.
I have a pretty substantial collection of Indo-Greek, Indo-Kushan, and Sassanian coins. Their initial locations span from Pakistan through Afghanistan and into modern Iran. I like seeing how ancient cultures used symbols to present themselves to the population. Coins are an interesting object from ancient time, because they did not have any mass communication like tv or radio, or even printing, so coins were used as propaganda and as tools for the state to project an image of power, hence a name like King Huge.
I knew a guy in Afghanistan whose name was Bacha Khan, which means King King, he was a pretty funny guy, and if you gave him a couple extra bucks he would buy neat souvenirs in the local markets for us to send home. I sent my dad two rhinestone hats that Bacha Khan got for me from the bazaar.
