Over the last forty years, several very important acquisitions of this kind have been made.
The earliest type of coin issued in Central Asia, represented in the collection, is the pseudo-Athenian type hemidrachm, the minting location of which is yet to be determined. This coin was produced in the Amudarya valley towards the end of the 4th century BCE. Coins imitating those of the Seleucids, Bactrians, Kushans, Sasanians, or Kushano-Sasanians, coins of the Kidarites and Alchon Huns serve as examples of the numerous political transformations that occurred in Central Asia prior to the Muslim conquests.
From the end of antiquity to the early medieval period, Sogdian merchants conducted intense trade over vast distances from their cities of Samarkand and Bukhara. However, even after the advent of Islam, the mints in these ancient centers continued to operate almost continuously up to modern times, as evidenced by the coins themselves and their circulation in the region and beyond.
You can learn more about the topic in the book-album "Central Asian Heritage in the Collections of Cambridge University" (Volume XXVIII) in the series "Сultural legacy of Uzbekistan in the world collections".
The main sponsor of the project is the oilfield services company Eriell-Group.
