| Kabul hoard | |
| Native Name: | Chaman Hazouri hoard |
| Map Type: | Afghanistan |
| Relief: | no |
| Coordinates: | 34.5148°N 69.195°W |
| Type: | Coin hoard |
The Kabul hoard, also called the Chaman Hazouri, Chaman Hazouri or Tchamani-i Hazouri hoard, is a coin hoard discovered in the vicinity of Kabul, Afghanistan in 1933. The collection contained numerous Achaemenid coins as well as many Greek coins from the 5th and 4th centuries BCE.[1] Approximately one thousand coins were counted in the hoard.[2] The deposit of the hoard is dated to approximately 380 BCE, as this is the probable date of the least ancient datable coin found in the hoard (the imitation of the Athenian owl tetradrachm).
This numismatic discovery has been important in studying and dating the history of the coinage of India, since it is one of the very rare instances when punch-marked coins can actually be dated, due to their association with known and dated Greek and Achaemenid coins in the hoard. The hoard proves that punch-marked coins existed in 360 BCE, as also suggested by literary evidence. According to numismatist Joe Cribb, it suggests that the idea of coinage and the use of punch-marked techniques was introduced to India from the Achaemenid Empire during the 4th century BCE. However, numerous Indian scholars see the development of coinage in the Gangetic plains as an indigenous development.
See also: Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley. The Kabul valley and the region of Gandhara to the west of Indus came under the Achaemenid rule during the reign of Cyrus the Great (600–530 BCE). Jointly, the region was known by its Iranian name Paruparaesanna as well as the Indian name Gandara. It was administered at first from Bactria, but organised into a separate satrapy in BCE with a headquarters possibly at Pushkalavati (near present-day Charsadda in Pakistan).[3] It was a tribute-paying region until the time of Artaxerxes (424 BCE), but it remained part of the royal conception of the empire until Alexander's conquest (BCE). At Alexander's time, the region was said to be governed by hyparchs (rulers in their own right, but professing subjection to the emperor). The nature of the local administration under the Achaemenid empire is uncertain. Magee et al. note that neither the Achaemenid nor classical sources mention the presence of any satraps in Gandara. However, there were official personages encountered by Alexander's companions.
Coinage was developed by the Greeks of the Asia Minor, influenced by the Lydian coinage in the 7th century BCE. Over the next two centuries, the use of coins spread throughout the Mediterranean area.[4] The Achaemenid conquest of Asia minor in 540 BCE made no immediate difference to the situation: the Greek coinage continued under the Achaemenid rule and the Iranian heartland itself had little use for money.[5] Daris I introduced new Achaemenid coins, gold darics and silver sigloi, primarily as replacements for the Lydian coins in the Asia minor. While the darics proved to be popular, the sigloi did not catch on. The Greek cities continued to mint their own silver coins. A mix of these Greek silver coins and the Achaemenid sigloi thus began to circulate throughout the Achaemenid empire, the Greek coins generally being in a majority.[6]
The hoard was discovered by a construction team in 1933 when digging for foundations for a house near the Chaman-i Hazouri park in central Kabul. According to the then director of Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan (DAFA), the hoard contained about 1,000 silver coins and some jewellery. 127 coins and pieces of jewellery were taken to the Kabul Museum and others made their way to various museums in British India and elsewhere. Some two decades later, Daniel Schlumberger of DAFA published photographs and details of the finds stored in the Kabul Museum in a book titled Trésors Monétaires d'Afghanistan.[7]
The Chaman-i-Hazouri coins remained at the Kabul Museum until 1992–1993, at which time the Afghan mujahideen plundered the museum. All the coins were lost (along with various other artifacts). Some two years later, 14 coins from the collection surfaced in a private collection in Pakistan. Osmund Bopearachchi and Aman ur Rahman published their details in the book Pre-Kushana Coins in Pakistan (1995).[7]
See also: Achaemenid coinage. The hoard suggests, together with other coin finds in the areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan that Greek coins had found their way to India, at least as far as the Indus, well before the conquests of Alexander the Great.[1] This happened under the rule of the Achaemenids. The Achaemenid sigloi themselves were a small minority, just as in the hoards from other parts of the empire.
Daniel Schlumberger published descriptions of 115 coins from those in the Kabul Museum. They included 30 coins from various Greek cities, about 33 Athenian coins and an Iranian imitation of an Athenian coin, 9 royal Achaemenid silver coins (siglos), 29 locally minted coins of said to be of a "new kind" and 14 punch-marked coins in the shape of bent bars. It seems that the Classical Greek and Achaemenid coins were imported from the west.
Several Achaemenid siglos coins were found in the hoards of Kabul (deposit dated circa 350 BCE)[8] and Bhir Mound hoard of Taxila (deposit dated circa 300 BCE), which were evidently transmitted from the western part of the Achaemenid Empire.[1] They typically show a crowned Achaemenid king running to right, holding bow and spear (Archer king type), with a rectangular punch-mark on the reverse.[1] The several coin hoards discovered in the East of the Achaemenid Empire generally have very few sigloi, suggesting that the circulation of sigloi was actually quite small compared to the circulation of Greek coinage (both Archaic and early Classical) in those part of the Empire.
Coins of this type were also found in the Bhir Mound hoard of Taxila.[9]
See also: Ancient Greek coinage. The Greek coins recorded in the hoard were 30 coins from various Greek cities and about 34 from Athens with one Iranian imitation. Generally, Greek coins (both Archaic and early Classical) are comparatively very numerous in the Achaemenid coin hoards discovered in the East of the Achaemenid Empire, much more numerous than sigloi, suggesting that the circulation of Greek coinage was central in the monetary system of those part of the Empire.
Bopearachchi and Cribb state that these coins "demonstrate in a tangible way the depth of Greek penetration in the century before Alexander the Great's conquest of the Achaemenid satrapies." According to Joe Cribb, these early Greek coins were at the origin of Indian punch-marked coins, the earliest coins developed in India, which used minting technology derived from Greek coinage.[1] [12]
Schlumberger labelled 29 round punch-marked coins found in the hoard as being "of a new kind", not found elsewhere. They are round or elliptic/ cup-shaped coins of the Achaemenid weight standard, struck with one, two or several punches.They usually display a sort of arrow symbol on the obverse, and circular geometric symbols on the reverse.[1] Similar coins have also been found in the Shaikhan Dehri hoard in Pushkalavati in the center of the Gandhara area, but not in Taxila.
Their dispersal in Kabul and Pushakalavati led Bopearachchi to postulate that they were manufactured locally, while the region was under Achaemenid protection, during the 5th century BCE. Some scholars also believe them to have been a "product of the local Achaemenid administration".[13] However, others state that the local administration was largely autonomous and followed an independent monetary policy.[14] [15] According to Joe Cribb, these coins were locally made imitations of Greek coins, with some pictorial, but mostly non-pictorial designs, using weight standards derived from Greek and Persian coinage.
According Bopearachchi, these coins illustrate the transition from regular round coinage to Indian punch-marked coins. First, these coins have been shown to be the chronological predecessors of and bent and punch-marked coins. Second, they were minted according to the Achaemenid weight standard of 1 siglos (5.5 grams), or 2 siglos (11 grams).
In later coins, the obverse design is progressively abandoned, and the reverse becomes a punch mark which progressively evolves to more symbolic motifs (such as the cup-like coins with lines around a central circle), before reaching a stage were the round coins are struck with multiple punches.[17]
In summary, these coins were "the precursors of the bent and punch-marked coins", and "the use of independent punches is at the origin of the striking of Indian "coins with multiple punch-marks". Mauryan kings later issued descendants of these very coins in the territories south of the Hindu Kush for local circulation.[18]
The round punch-marked coins have been shown to precede chronologically the "bent bars", also minted under Achaemenid rule from Bactria to the Punjab.[13] [14] [15] The practice of using unmarked silver bars for currency is known from the Iranian plateau and seems to have been current in Central Asia under the Achaemenid Empire. The bent bars are believed to have been derived from that practice, representing "a marriage between Greek coinage and Iranian bar currency".
The short "bars with punch-marks" (28x15mm) discovered in Chaman Hazouri are attributed to the Paropamisadae by Bopearachchi. Their design uses two circular symbols punched at each end of one face of the bar. These bent bars are clearly reminiscent of later punch-marked Indian types, which use several of the designs of these coins "of a new kind". The "long bars" with punch marks (42x10mm), of which none were found in the Kabul hoard, are attributed to the area of Gandhara, as well as in the Bhir Mound hoard in Taxila.
Daniel Schlumberger too considers probable that punch-marked bars, similar to the many punch-marked bars found in northwestern India, initially originated in the Achaemenid Empire, rather than in the Indian heartland:
See main article: Punch-marked coins and Coinage of India. There is uncertainty regarding the actual time punch-marked coinage started in India, with proposals ranging from 1000 BCE to 500 BCE. However, the study of the relative chronology of these coins has successfully established that the first punch-marked coins initially only had one or two punches, with the number of punches increasing over time.
According to Joe Cribb, the study of the Chaman Hazouri hoard suggests that Indian punch-marked coins may only go back to the mid-4th century BCE or slightly earlier, and actually started with the punch-marked coinage of the Achaemenids in the Kabul/Gandhara area. This date remains consistent with various literary works mentioning the usage of coinage in India. This early design was then adopted in the Gangetic plains to evolve towards multi-punch-marked coins.
Another find that can be dated was made in Kausambi, where silver-plated forgeries imitating the early types of punch-marked coins and bars from Chaman Hazouri were found in the Mauryan Empire levels associated with the Pillar of Ashoka that can be found there. This is another indication that the earliest punch-marked coins only date from around the mid-4th century BCE, and that they were still the standard coinage of reference at the time of the early Mauryan Empire (mid-3rd century CE).
However, historian Romila Thapar has stated that the punch-marked coins were in circulation before the Mauryan rule and the general opinion adheres to the 6th century BCE as the date of their introduction.
In 2007 a small coin hoard was discovered at the site of ancient Pushkalavati (Shaikhan Dehri hoard) in Pakistan. The hoard contained a tetradrachm minted in Athens circa 500/490-485 BCE, together with a number of local types as well as silver cast ingots. The Athens coin is the earliest known example of its type to be found so far to the east.[19]
Photographic inventory of the Kabul hoard in the Kabul Museum (now disappeared after looting in 1992-1994), by Daniel Schlumberger in Trésors Monétaires d'Afghanistan (1953):
"The most important and informative of these hoards is the Chaman Hazouri hoard from Kabul discovered in 1933, which contained royal Achaemenid sigloi from the western part of the Achaemenid Empire, together with a large number of Greek coins dating from the fifth and early fourth century BC, including a local imitation of an Athenian tetradrachm, all apparently taken from circulation in the region."
"One should...be careful to distinguish the limited geographical unit of Gandhāra from the political one bearing the same name."
"Ancient Greek coinage developed in Asia Minor, probably influenced by the circulation of Lydian coinage in the 7th century BC. The production of Greek coinage grew as the polis flourished and spread throughout the Mediterranean during the height of the colonization phase between c.700 and c.500 BC. As a result, coinage in antiquity was an essentially Greek phenomenon and became a medium of exchange, the legacy of which remains with us today."
"Neither the Egyptian nor the Mesopotamian civilizations had needed coinage as a form of money; further, the Achaemenids in the Iranian heartland remained attached to a barter and exchange economy throughout their reign, using commodities like corn, meat, and wine, as well as silver bullion."
"the tetradrachms of Athens, above all, had developed in the course of the fifth century to a kind of world trade currency" and "the Achaemenids had introduced their own distinctive currency in Asia Minor, which, however, formed only a small part of the monetary supply and circulated side by side with local and imported Greek coins."
"Coins of this type found in Chaman Hazouri (deposited c.350 BC) and Bhir Mound hoards (deposited c.300 BC)."
"In the same hoard there were also discovered two series of local silver coins which appear to be the product of the local Achaemenid administration. One series (no.8) was made in the same way as the Greek coins in the hoard, but with novel designs of local origin, and the other (no.9) had similar local design but made in a new way, which relates it to the silver punch-marked coins of India. It appears that it was these local coins, using technology adapted from Greek coins, which provided the prototypes for punch-marked coins, the earliest coins made in India." NB: Series No. 8 refers to the cup-shaped coins, series no.9 refers to the bent-bar punch-marked coins presented in this article.
"There has been some debate about the nature of Achaemenid administration over the eastern provinces, using Achaemenid and classical sources. What is clear is that both are harmonious in referring to the existence of satraps in Bactria and Arachosia (Harauvatish), whereas at no point does either refer to satraps in Gandara, Thatagus, or Hindush."
"The 'autonomy' revealed by urban settlements in the Persian satrapies situated south of the Hindu Kush mountains can also be seen in their monetary policy. While the whole empire accepted the Achaemenid darics and sigloi as the legal tender, Indian satraps issued their own coinage consisting of curved and punch-marked bars, which the English have agreed to call 'bent bars'."
"In the territories to the south of the Hindu Kush the punch-marked coins, descendants of the local coins of the Achaemenid administration in the same area, were issued by the Mauryan kings of India for local circulation."
