Kushan Empire - Ancient Coins and History
The Kushan Empire provides an interesting insight into greek influenced ancient coins.
For those unfamiliar with this empire, the Kushan Empire was centered in the region, now Afgahnistan and Pakistan, not exactly within reach of Europe...
Ancient Coins from this empire have exotic, yet very rudimentary designs, some with prominent Greek Inscriptions, others with illegible foreign, native inscriptions.
Not much is known about this period in history, this is apparent if you try searching terms like "ancient coins kushan", "ancient history kushan", "kushan empire" in Google.
Almost ironically, the coins are available in oversupply to interested collectors. Perhaps partly due to a lack of demand for this era of coinage. Ancient Coins from the Kushan Empire do not feature prominently in the catalogues of Ancient Coin dealers, whose catalogues mostly depend on clients with interests in Ancient Greek and Roman coins, but occasionally Ancient Kushan gold coins do make their way into ancient coin auctions. They are cheaply priced when compared to ancient gold roman coins, and especially ancient gold greek coins, whose prices tend to be in the thousands of dollars. In price, they are more comparable to the cheaper end of gold byzantine coins.
I recently took advantage of an opportunity to acquire a fine ancient sword specimen from the Kusham Empire. Totally intact, I posted a picture of it on a prominent Swords Forum to find out more information about it (at this point I was not aware it was Kushan). Not surprisingly, the experts on the forum recognised the sword as being partly greek in design, partly eastern in design, explaining the Kushan heritage almost perfectally.
The sword was expensive however, as most ancient weapons tend to be. I have not yet decided whether I intend to keep on to it or to sell it to an ancient coins dealer, but I will be happy to speak to anyone who wants to make an offer on this piece.
If you are interested in Kushan Coinage, beware the fact that little reference exists in the way of books. I would recommend this website which lists the Kushan rulers with examples of their coinage: http://www.grifterrec.com/coins/kushan/kushan.html. You might also find the following website helpful.
In addition, I can provide contact information to interested readers for dealers of Ancient Kushan coinage who operate out of Pakistan.