excavated at Pasargadae Silver
Kept in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA
Source: [1]
سکه کشف شده در ایران - دوران سلوکوس یکم امپراطور سلوکی
The Seleucid Empire was a Greek-Macedonian state that was created out of the eastern conquests of Alexander the Great. At the height of its power, it included central Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today's Turkmenistan, Pamir and parts of Pakistan. The Seleucid Empire was a major center of Hellenistic culture which maintained the preeminence of Greek customs and where a Greek-Macedonian political elite dominated, mostly in the urban areas.Money was in use in the ancient Near East long before the invention of coinage in Lydia during the seventh century B.C. According to the museum's website, "early Mesopotamian texts record payments of silver weighed in shekels (about 8.3 grams), minas (about 500 grams), or donkey-loads (about 30 kilograms), but the value of objects was also converted into equal-value weights of grain, copper, and tin." Apparently,The connection between money and weight continued in coins; a drachm, for example, weighed about 4.3 grams, a tetradrachm (4 drachms) about 17 grams. The obverse of this tetradrachm displays a portrait of Seleucus I (r. 312–280 B.C.) wearing a helmet covered with a leopard skin and adorned with a bull's ear and horns. Around Seleucus' throat is another leopard skin, knotted in front by means of the beast's forepaws. The features of Seleucus resemble those on coins showing Alexander the Great and with whom the new Macedonian rulers wished to be compared. It seems, this coin was minted at Persepolis, the administrative center in Persia, where it was excavated by the British Institute of Persian Studies! - Museum
