Hi there, you're listening to the Hellenistic Age podcast.

Episode 74, Greco-Bactria, land of a thousand cities.

On the outskirts of Bukhara in modern Uzbekistan, seven locals toiled under the blistering heat in the summer of 1867. Digging amidst the desert-like landscape, one Uzbek saw a metal protrusion

emerging from its dusty enclosure. As he began to scrape away the detritus, the man realized that

what he was uncovering was not merely a scrap of bronze or iron, but gold. It was a golden

coin, measuring just over two inches in diameter, and weighing

nearly six ounces. Twice the size of an American quarter dollar and a two euro coin,

the gold value alone of this specimen would command a price of $10,000 today. For a poor

and often hungry laborer, the 19th century equivalent

of the coin's worth would have been a princely sum indeed. A fight immediately broke

out amongst the men. Of the seven that walked out to the fields that day, only two

remained standing. With blood-soaked daggers in one hand and the coin in the other, the pair made a pact to travel to Europe to sell their hard-won prize.

In Paris, the Uzbek held a meeting with a prominent French numismatist, Gaston L. Fjourdesne, who purchased the specimen for 1,000 pounds, approximately 115,000 pounds today. Gaston, in turn, sold it to the

royal collection of Napoleon III, the predecessor of the National Library of France, for an incredible

6,000 pounds, nearly 700,000 today. This is the story that we are told, at least by Gaston

himself.

Variations of this tale circulated throughout the 1860s and 1870s, but the sequence

of events remains reasonably consistent, and the coin is housed in the Cabiné du Medallier

to this very day.

But why all the fuss and intrigues surrounding this piece of gold?

On the front of the coin is a profile of a Hellenistic king,

wearing a beocean-style cavalry helmet adorned with a bull's ears and horns to signify divinity, and with a diadem upon his brow.

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