File:Afghanistan, Bactria, Bactrian period (3rd-2nd century BC), Demetrios I - Coin of Demetrios, I - 1999.318.a - Cleveland Museum of Art.tif

After Alexander of Macedon succeeded in conquering Egypt and Persia in 331 BC, his ambition to rule the known world led him further east across Bactria in Afghanistan, through the Hindu Kush mountain pass, and into India. There he succeeded in defeating all the local kings of the region until his men, on the brink of mutiny, insisted that they return to Greece. Alexander left governors in charge of his territories, and after his death in 323 BC, his governors became independent kings, establishing Hellenistic cities and a Greek cultural base in the region, which lasted for almost 200 years.

The inscription on the reverse identifies this coin as an issue of King Demetrios (about 205-170 BC), who ruled the Bactria region in present-day Afghanistan. To commemorate his military victories that expanded his territories to the Kabul Valley and into present-day Pakistan, he depicted himself crowned with the scalp of an elephant, the symbol for India. This motif, along with the image of Hercules on the reverse, visually link him to Alexander of Macedon (356-323 BC), who identified himself with Hercules and depicted himself with the lion scalp after his conquest of the Indus River region in Pakistan in 326 BC.

The quality of portraiture on the coins of the Hellenistic kings of Bactria is as naturalistic and refined as the coinage from any part of the Greek world. They followed the same weight standard as the Athenian Greeks, based on the drachma being 4.2 grams of silver. This coin is a tetradrachm, which is four times the weight of a drachma.