394 Notice of some counterfeit Bactrian coins. QNo. 100. 



Mons. Raoul-Rochette says, "what renders me also a little 

 " suspicious regarding the silver coin of Amyntas is, that I ob- 

 " serve there, with the exact repetition of the copper coin pub- 

 " lished by Mr. Prinsep, the sloping cut in the lower part of 

 " the coin — which, whether an accident attributable to its make 

 " or to its antiquity, does not appear to me to be reproduced 

 " on any other coin of different metal, though of the same 

 "mint." 



From this description I feel convinced that this silver coin 

 of Amyntas, which is of square form, and similar in all respects 

 to that published by Mr. Prinsep, is a forgery, cast in a mould 

 formed from the identical copper coin published by Mr. Prinsep, 

 which belonged to Colonel Stacy. This coin, which was stolen 

 from the Colonel in 1837, must have been carried back to the 

 Punjab, from whence it originally came, where a forged silver 

 coin was made from it, and sold to General Allard ; who in 

 1838 forwarded a sketch of it to France, which arrived in time 

 for publication in the Journal des Savants for February 1839. 

 Such is the history of this remarkable forgery of a rare coin, 

 which we may still hope to recover from the Punjab, along 

 with the rest of Colonel Stacy's valuable collection. The lovers 

 of numismatic science will be pleased to learn that a genuine 

 copper coin of Amyntas, of square form, and similar in all res- 

 pects to that which belonged to Colonel Stacy, but in less good 

 preservation, exists in France in the collection of General Court, 

 of which a description may be found in the Journal des Savants 

 for February 1839. 



Accompanying the sketch of the silver piece of Amyntas 

 were sketches of two other silver coins of square form, both 

 of Menander, and both acquired in the Punjab by General 

 Allard. The reverse of these new coins were an owl, and the 

 Macedonian buckler with Medusa* s head — two types that were 

 already known in copper j which circumstance has led M. Raoul- 

 Rochette to suspect them to be "the work of some forgers." 

 The fact of these two suspicious silver pieces of Menander hav- 

 ing been acquired in the same year with the forgery of that of 

 Amyntas, and by the same person, in the same country, united 

 to their perfect identity in all their elements with copper coins 



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