Dekadrachm / 5 Shekels - Alexander III Babylon

These massive silver pieces were struck at Babylon almost certainly to pay Alexander's troops following the Indian campaigns — the denomination itself was calculated to match five Phoenician shekels, making disbursement across the multilingual, multi-ethnic army logistically straightforward. The weight standard draws on the Babylonian rather than Attic tradition, a deliberate accommodation to eastern monetary practice that Alexander adopted as he pushed deeper into Persia and beyond.

Relatively few obverse and reverse die combinations are known, suggesting a concentrated burst of production rather than sustained mint activity. The series terminates abruptly at Alexander's death in 323 BC.