500 Tenge Why the swallow has a tail with horns

Part of Kazakhstan's ongoing folklore series, this coin commemorates one of the most widely told origin stories in Kazakh oral tradition — a tale explaining the forked tail of the barn swallow through a narrative involving a snake's stolen fire and divine retribution. The National Bank has issued dozens of such pieces drawing from the zhyrau tradition, the epic oral poetry passed down through steppe culture for centuries before any written codification existed.