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Crazy-Old Like Sumerian Or Akkadian Coin Was My Guess --What's Your Guess?

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strange's Avatar
United States
32 Posts
 Posted 02/15/2021  02:07 am Show Profile   Bookmark this topic Add strange to your friends list Get a Link to this Message Number of Subscribers
Hi wise ones--
I've handled many ancient coins, but this thick bronze oddity is like nothing I've ever seen. It came with a pile of Judean coins, so it could have been found there --or somewhere in the Middle East. It is so thick and abstract: just those lines on one side, pellets and a --um-- line (?) on the other. The lines seem too plain to be Arabic-style script, so I'm guessing not Islamic origin. It's graceful in a blocky sort of way. It seems to be very old. The internets have given no clues. It's a riddle to me. Anyone know what this oddity is?


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oriole's Avatar
Canada
5016 Posts
 Posted 02/15/2021  08:49 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add oriole to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
As far as we know, Akkadians or Sumerians pre-dated the first coins.

How do you know that it is a coin, not a weight or seal or something like this?
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echizento's Avatar
United States
23731 Posts
 Posted 02/15/2021  09:59 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add echizento to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
No such this as Sumerian or Akkadians coin, they empires were gone long before coinage was invented.

What you have is an Islamic coin. Kushanshah is our resident expert and will be able to say what it is.
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jbuck's Avatar
United States
157714 Posts
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Finn235's Avatar
United States
6130 Posts
 Posted 02/15/2021  1:36 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Finn235 to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
It's a copper paisa or fulus, probably India, 16th-18th century. Mughal or one of the smaller sultanates or princely states.

As others have stated, coinage was invented millennia after the Sumerians or Akkadians had vanished. The early civilizations of the bronze and early Iron ages had an economy based on barter or later on ingots of gold, silver, and electrum of varying weights and fineness.
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strange's Avatar
United States
32 Posts
 Posted 02/15/2021  10:05 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add strange to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
Thanks, all. I'll concur: not Sumerian or Akkadian since that's too early. I've now been able to find online some results with similar thickness --the paisa or fulus type and something called a dam. The remaining mystery about this one is the lack of readable script: so simple, just lines and dots. Even checking those new results, nothing comes up that looks like this one. Any informed guesses on the markings?
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United States
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 Posted 02/15/2021  10:32 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Kushanshah to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
I suspect the dies were considerably larger than the flan.
Edited by Kushanshah
02/15/2021 10:34 pm
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Russian Federation
4935 Posts
 Posted 02/16/2021  1:41 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add january1may to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
There are, as mentioned above, no actual Sumerian or Akkadian coins; there are in fact not even any Assyrian or Babylonian coins (as far as I'm aware), even though those empires actually lasted a few decades into the existence of coinage.
(In particular, to the best of my knowledge, there are no ancient coins with cuneiform legends - even though cuneiform was still in moderate use until the 1st century AD.)

In this case early modern India (or, less likely, Iran or Afghanistan), probably struck with a die much larger than the flan.
I'm not sufficiently familiar with those series to have a better guess, but I suspect it might be an imitative issue of some variety.
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