2,000-Year-Old Coin Stash Discovered at Ancient Buddhist Shrine in Pakistan

The Buddhist Channel, 3 December 2023

Sindh, Pakistan -- Archaeologists in Pakistan recently uncovered a rare hoard of copper coins, estimated to be over 2,000 years old, at the ruins of a Buddhist shrine located within the ancient site of Mohenjo-Daro.

Believed to be relics from the time of the Kushan Empire, a predominantly Buddhist polity that governed the region from the second century B.C. until the third century A.D., the coins were found fused together due to centuries of corrosion. The shrine, known as a stupa, stands among the extensive ruins of Mohenjo-Daro, a site dating back to around 2600 B.C., representing the ancient Indus Valley or Harappan civilization.

Constructed on the remnants of Mohenjo-Daro, which had been abandoned approximately 1,600 years earlier, the stupa has become the focal point of archaeological interest. The salvage excavation, led by Syed Shakir Shah, director of archaeology at the Mohenjo-Daro site, revealed the coin hoard earlier this month after a wall collapse prompted the team's intervention.

The coins, exhibiting a green patina resulting from copper corrosion, have coalesced into a mass weighing approximately 12 pounds. Although most coins are fused, preliminary examinations suggest that the hoard may have comprised between 1,000 and 1,500 individual coins. Some outer coins feature a standing figure believed to represent a Kushan king.

This discovery marks the first artifacts excavated from the stupa since 1931 when British archaeologist Ernest MacKay unearthed over 1,000 copper coins at the site. Earlier findings in the 1920s also included coins with similar depictions of a standing figure on one side and representations of the Hindu god Shiva on the other, reflecting the origins of Buddhism in Hindu beliefs.

The Buddhist stupa at Mohenjo-Daro is thought to have been constructed around A.D. 150 by the kings of the Kushan Empire. Abandoned by A.D. 500, potentially due to earthquake damage or a decline in Buddhism's influence, the stupa's construction coincided with the underlying ruins of the ancient city, which were nearly 2,000 years old at the time.

The Kushan Empire, by then fragmented into independent kingdoms, faced subsequent conquests by the Sasanian Persians and invaders associated with the Huns.