This is a lovely transparent blue glass coin weight from the Bactrian Empire featuring the image of a helmeted soldier.
Coin weights were used to weigh precious-metal coins in order to assure they were not underweight (It is easy to shave a bit of metal off the edge of a silver or gold coin). Glass was a preferable medium for these weights, since they could be made relatively easily and any chips or alterations were immediately visible to the naked eye. The usage of coin weights, especially glass ones, goes back to Ptolemaic and Byzantine times, and continued into Islamic times and even into the Carolingian Empire.
Bactria is the name of an ancient country lying between the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya river. Bactria was especially important from about 600 BC to about 600 AD, serving for much of that time as a meeting place not only for overland trade between East and West, but also for the intermingling of religious and artistic ideas from neighboring cultures.
The setting is modern Continuum sterling silver developed by Stuller. Continuum has a much higher as-cast hardness and a much tighter grain size which allow a better finish that will last longer. It provides superior oxidizing and tarnish resistance compared to other high tech sterling silver alloys.
The chain is a 925 sterling silver wheat chain. Length 19"