20 Dollars - Elizabeth II Bactrian Cybele Disk

The Bactrian Cybele disk coin belongs to a Cook Islands series drawing on ancient syncretic religious iconography from the region stretching between modern Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, where Hellenistic, Persian, and Indian traditions merged following Alexander's eastern campaigns. Cybele — the Phrygian mother goddess absorbed into both Greek and Roman state religion — appears in Bactrian material culture in hybrid forms not found further west, a product of the cultural collision that defined the region's Hellenistic successor kingdoms.

Cook Islands has served as the issuing authority for numerous numismatic programs it has no geographic or historical connection to, a legal arrangement with European minting houses that has been standard practice since the 1970s.