Tetradrachm - Kujula Kadphises

Kujula Kadphises founded the Kushan Empire by unifying the five Yuezhi tribes of Bactria, a consolidation that had been underway since roughly the mid-1st century BCE. His coinage is notably imitative — early issues copied Indo-Greek and later Hermaeus types so closely that attribution remained contested among scholars for decades. This piece belongs to his mature independent issues, where the weight standard begins drifting away from its Hellenistic origins toward the heavier norms that would define later Kushan monetary practice.