Obverse: Bust of the Emperor Facing
Right,
Surrounded by Titles
Reverse: Two Priests Attending to a
Flaming Altar
in Between Them
In 244 A.D., Ardeshir I founded the
Sassanid
Dynasty, the last native Persian Kingdom
to rule
Ancient Iran before the Islamic
conquest. The
Sassanid era was a golden age of Persian
culture
that witnessed the revival of
Zoroastrianism, an
ancient mystical religion native to
these lands,
and a literary Renaissance spurred by
the
translation of many Old Persian epics
recorded in
cuneiform into the Middle Persian
language of
Pahlavi written in an alphabet derived
from
Aramaic. By introducing heightened
international
trade and commerce they created a legacy
of
political and economic diplomacy. They
sponsored trade with the Romans (later
on the
Byzantines), their archenemy, to the
west and the
Chinese to the east. Excavations in
China have
unearthed gold and silver Sassanid coins
covering a span of many centuries until
the
demise of the Empire during the reign of
Khosrow II. However, the fall of the
Empire had
already started with a series of wars
waged
under the rule of Khosrow I, the father
of
Khosrow II. Challenged by the
intensification of
the same international commerce that had
bore
such wealth, struggles for national
power and
international prestige had escalated to
an
ungovernable degree. In the face of
threats to
his royal house, Khosrow II embarked
upon
military campaigns that would prove
unsuccessful. By the close of his
reign, the once
mighty Sassanid Empire came to an end,
paving
the way for the rise of Islam in the
Middle East.
How many hands have touched a coin in
your
pocket or your purse? What eras and
lands have
the coin traversed on its journey into
our
possession? As we reach into our pockets
to pull
out some change, we rarely hesitate to
think of
who touched the coin before us, or where
the
coin will venture to after us. More than
money,
coins are a symbol of the state that
struck them,
of a specific time and place, whether
contemporary currencies or artifacts of
a long
forgotten empire. This stunning hand-
struck
coin reveals an expertise of
craftsmanship and
intricate sculptural details that are
often lacking
in contemporary machine-made currencies.
More than just a memorial commemorating
a
ruler, this coin is a gorgeous artifact,
passed
down from the hands of civilization to
civilization, from generation to
generation,
revealing the glorious triumph of a lost
civilization.
- (C.6981)
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