For some background reading, I recommend "Great Cities of the Ancient World" by L. Sprague de Camp. The author was a very knowledgeable amateur historian and wrote many
other books, both fiction and non-. This book is dated 1972, but seems to be readily and cheaply available from Amazon.
The book is very readable. It covers the
history of Thebes, Jerusalem, Nineveh, Tyre, Babylon, Memphis,
Athens,
Syracuse,
Carthage,
Alexandria, Anurâdhapura,
Rome, Pâtaliputra, and
Constantinople. Not in huge detail, obviously, given the size of the subject! There are many photographs, most taken by the author on
his travels, and he gives first-hand information to counterpoint the historical accounts. The more you read, the more you see how the histories of the cities and the civilisations they supported are intertwined. Many of these cities produced interesting coinage, and though the coins themselves are not covered here, their existence is, because of the impact of the development of
money on the fates of cities such as Tyre.
If you are already a historian, you will find this too shallow. If not, you should enjoy it and get a better feel for the societies that produced all those coins.
(I would also recommend "The Ancient Engineers" by the same author, come to think of it.)
Bill