Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions

4. Whose Pachyderm, Whole or Halved?

f o u r Whose Pachyderm, Whole or Halved? 68 1. D. E. Stauffer, “Die Londoner Dekadrachme von 324 und die Indeenpolitik Alexanders,” Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 2 (1950–51): 132. 2. Ibid.: “Sie ist die erste ‘historische’ Münze der Antike” (p. 132), referring to the battle scene on the obverse. The mystery of the elephant medallions consumed the energies of more and more investigations during the tumultuous twentieth century. At mid-century, the matter was addressed at an international numismatic congress held in Munich. D. E. Stauffer expressed the opinion that the medallions had been minted at Babylon in 324 b.c.e. and probably bore the designs of Alexander’s master gem-engraver, Pyrgoteles.1 Stauffer pressed further, identifying an expansive range of topics for which he considered the medallions a significant primary source; these included Alexander’s political ideology, mythology, apotheosis, policy of fusion, military organization, war aims, portraiture, religion, and so on. This was, he said, the extraordinary legacy of the world’s first “historical coin.”2 Stauffer expanded the inquiry into as many areas as he could imagine, but others remained stuck on certain trains of thought. For example, Dr. J. N. Banerji of Calcutta University tried again in 1950 to match the battle scene to a specific passage in ancient literature. Unlike Head, he Whose Pachyderm? / 69 3. J. N. Banerji, “The Obverse Device of Some Decadrachms with Alexandrian Association,” Journal of the Numismatic Society of India 12 (1950): 118–20. adopted Curtius’s description of Porus’s surrender, because it mentions that Alexander had in some fashion pursued the enemy rajah. That brief “historical” moment, before the collapse of Alexander’s horse, Banerji thought, must be the view shown on the medallion. He presumed, without any real justification, that the die cutter must have followed one of the written versions, and Banerji selected Curtius as the most likely.3 But the choice insisted upon by Banerji was a false one and only served to hamper the case. He had not provided against the possibility that the medallion might stand on its own merits as an independent source. The design may unavoidably resemble some general features of the recorded battle (by picturing elephants and cavalry) but do so symbolically, or with emphasis upon something not commensurate with its treatment in the texts. In the early days of Schliemann’s work at Troy and Mycenae, it had been the fashion of archaeologists to subordinate every monument and artifact to privileged texts, whether Homeric, biblical, or classical. Schliemann set out to find objects that might illustrate events, such as the Trojan War, in the historical reality of which he already firmly believed. Nothing he excavated was therefore treated as independent evidence; it all derived its identity and value from the poetry of Homer and the plays of Greek dramatists: Schliemann found Priam’s treasure, the tomb of Clytemnestra, the mask of Agamemnon, and so on. But modern archaeologists know that it is a mistake to think of artifacts merely as convenient illustrations of texts, and numismatists should be similarly concerned about limiting their inquiries in an antiquarian fashion. Those who would place a picture of the medallion’s obverse next to a quotation from Curtius (or Arrian) as a corroborative, factual depiction would not dream of using the medallion’s reverse for this same purpose. Few would accept the “historical moment” shown there, with Alexander clutching an actual bolt of lightning while a winged goddess hovers above his head. In 1959, a third medallion finally came into public view (see plate 4). 70 / Whose Pachyderm? 4. Berry recounted his collecting career in a privately published book, A Numismatic Biography (Lucerne: C. J. Bucher, 1971), which curiously makes no mention of the elephant decadrachm. The coin is inventoried at the American Numismatic Society as 1959–254–86. Berry dispersed the remainder of his collection as gifts to Indiana University, the Art Institute of Chicago, and various individuals. Of uncertain provenience, it entered the collection of the American Numismatic Society in New York as a gift from the noted collector Burton Y. Berry (Appendix A, E/A 3). Berry had lived for many years in the Middle East, where he caught the collecting bug in 1935.4 His first numismatic purchase, a tetradrachm of Alexander the Great, was followed by hundreds of other valuable coins found in shops across Greece...