and a carpet worth ten minas. The preciousness of the gifts and the pouring of libations at the feast meant that this ceremony was also a ritual of deifying either the king himself or the institution of royalty, and Thucydides was likely referring to this custom when he wrote that noting could be accomplished among the Odrysians without gift-giving. Gift-giving was an important social ritual in ancient Thrace, and among the Odrysians, vessels bearing the king's name in the genitive case, the name of the king's court artist in the nominative case, and the name of the settlement from where it originated were offered to the king at the city gates as a mythical investiture rite. Later, during a feast at the royal residence, the king would offer some of these phialae and rhytons to his important guests, which included local rulers from the Triballi, Getae, and Moesi tribes, as pledges of friendship, but also as an act of investiture whereby the Odrysians king would stand as a substitute for the Hero by putting his name on the royal insignia and then presenting them to the Triballi and Getae rulers. Achaemenid Persian kings also sent precious vessels as signs of special favour to their satraps and commanders, and the Odrysians custom might have been borrowed from the Persians, as attested by the fact that the Persians had themselves also offered to a local Thracian cheftain an amphora-rhyton and a silver jug, which were discovered in the Koukova Mogila near Douvanli. Coinage Under the reign of Cotys I, Odrysian coins started being stamped with the image of a galloping horseman; although this image had already been known to the Thracians from earlier times, Cotys adopted the practice of depicting it on coins from the Achaemenid Empire - that Cotys had sought inspiration from Achaemenid practices is visible in how his coins were also stamped with the likeness of the Persian satrap Tissaphernes. Other coins of Cotys were stamped with a boar's head, copied from earlier Lydian coins. The images of the horseman and the boar's head on the coin represented the royal test of valour and the protection of life. The Odrysian kings Amadocus II and Teres I stamped the image of the "Dionysian" on their coins due to the god's role as a deity of kingship. The soul Thracian religion conceptualised the soul as being immortal, and held it as