Introduction
Roman copper coins from Kerala was on display with a dealer in Bangalore. This remainded me of reading about trade relationships between ancient Rome and India, and in particular the Malabar coast which is now Kerala and also about the recent Muziris excavation project in search of the Muziris city which may have dissappeared during 13th century great floods of Periyar. I managed to buy a few for research purpose. Please read and leave your comments.
My story
Note: Some information in this post is as per what I got from the coin dealer which may not be accurate.
During the end of March 2016, I visited a coin dealer in Bangalore. It was a casual visit to check if I could find anything interesting. I am interested in ancient Indian coins and medieval South Indian coins. The dealer only had some coins of Mysore which was hardly of any interest to me. However, while going through the album, I noticed few Roman coins. Seeing I was a little interested in the coin, the dealer showed me an album full of Roman coins.
There were at-least 500 coins in the album and almost all of them were of very bad condition. Most of the coins were of medium size 15-20mm. Then there was small coins which were around 10-15mm and there were few large and heavy coins around 25mm or more in size. I could not find any large coins with any useful information.
As I asked more about the coins, they told me that it was brought to them by a dealer from Kerala and the exact location is not known to them. They told the dealers are probably from Thrissur and no more information, which was somewhat disappointing. Though I had not been collecting Roman coins till then, I decided to buy some coins for study.
Almost all coins were heavily corroded and no details were visible. After spending a lot of time, I selected some coins on which some details are seen. Out of which one was good enough with all details. After reaching home, I applied micro-crystalline wax to the coin in-order to prevent more corrosion which also helped in revealing more details on coin.
Please find some images of the coins I have collected, in case anyone need it for research. As I get time, I will keep on adding more images of coins which I have picked.
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