Asiatic Coins

ASIATIC COINS Achaemenids.—The ancient kingdoms of the nearer East, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Hittite, had no coined money, nor had the earlier Achaemenids of Persia. Not till after Cyrus conquered Lydia in 546 B.c. did the Persians learn the art of coinage. It is not certain which Achaemenid ruler first struck coins but it was likely Darius Hystaspes (521-486) as Herodotus suggests. The coins of the dynasty were the daric (Pl. 1.-4) (i.e., the coin of Darius) of gold of very pure quality and the siglos in silver. Thus early we have the relationship of sovereign and shilling anticipated, for 20 sigloi (shekels) made a daric which weighed a little more than an English sovereign. The types of both coins were the same : obverse the Persian king in a kneeling position holding a bow in his left hand and a spear in his right ; the reverse bears no type but only a rough irregular incuse caused in the striking. In shape they are roughly oval being struck from round or rather egg shaped globules of metal. These pieces were uninscribed and remained in issue unaltered in type till the fall of the empire. The issue of gold was the royal prerogative, but the conquered Greek and other cities and states were allowed to issue silver and copper while a number of Persian satraps struck silver in their own names; to this latter class we owe a number of the earliest and finest portraits on coins. On the fall of the empire, various satraps, like Mazaeus who ruled Babylon for his new master Alexander the Great, struck silver coins of their own.

Parthians.

In the middle of the 3rd century the Parthians rebelled and cast off the Greek (Seleucid) yoke and soon became a great power in Persia. They had an extensive but monotonous coinage in silver (tetradrachms and drachms) and copper. The tetrodrachms and drachms bear the bust of the king and Arsakes, the founder of the dynasty, seated holding the Parthian bow on the reverse of the drachms. The usual reverse on the tetradrachms is the king seated receiving a wreath from a Victory or a city god dess. The coins do not bear the name of the issuer but that of Arsakes, the founder of the dynasty, and the inscriptions range in length from the simple (coin of) "king Arsakes" to legends like (coin of) "the great king of kings, Arsakes, the just, the illus trious, the divine, the friend of the Greeks." After Phraates IV.

the coins are dated in the Seleucid era; on the later coins the Greek becomes corrupt and broken and is joined by an inscription in Pehlevi, a language now more intelligible to those who used the coins.

The kings of Persis, who became independent about the same time as Parthia, began their series with very fine portrait tetra drachms but the coins rapidly degenerated ; their reverse type a fire-altar with or without attendant priests was revived by the Sas sanians so that it had a life of nearly a thousand years; numerous debased silver, almost copper, tetradrachms of the rulers of Characene and of the Omani on the lower Tigris down to the sea still exist to record the names of forgotten rulers.

Sassanians.

In the beginning of the 3rd century A.D. Ardashir, a native Persian prince, overthrew the last remnants of Parthian power and founded the great Sassanian empire which ruled all western Asia. The Sassanian coinage was very extensive in silver and the early emperors regularly coined gold although the latter was rare. The copper coinage also seems to have been small. The coin-types throughout the dynasty are the same for all metals; on the obverse is a bust of the king with a long legend of the form (Ardashir, etc.) "worshipper of Ahura Mazda, divine king of kings of Iran," and on the reverse a fire-altar usually with two attendant priests and the legend "the fire of (Ardashir or other emperor)", from the time of Kobad the reverse legend gives the mint and the regnal year of issue. The standard of the gold coins is derived from that of the Roman solidi ; the silver coins are drachms following the Parthian standard and are remarkable for their broad thin fabric which was copied by the Arabs from their silver coins (Pl. V.-1 1). The execution of the portraits especially in the 3rd and 4th centuries is remarkably fine.