I have shown this Parthian drachm of Mithradates II only tonight noticed the finial on the neck of the portrait. I assume this is a torc or similar neck band terminating in a gryphon. Do you see it or am I imagining? Looking at acsearch, I found several others with similar designs. When the jewelers among us tire of creating ear rings, feel free to duplicate this in gold. It shouldn't take over a pound or so.
Nice => that's a super cool neck-tie addition ... that's a very cool coin (I love it when they hide a gryphon in the design) => hey, try to find "Waldo" on these two examples:
The Mithradates dynasty ruled Pontos. When you use the term "Parthian", weren't these Greeks living further east, say Iran/Afghanistan region?
There were many different Mithradates including several from Pontus and different men with the same names in Parthia. The coin here is Mithradates II of Parthia. The list linked below may be of interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates Mithradates VI of Pontus and Mithradates II of Parthia ruled at about the same time but were different men in different places. The Parthians were not Greeks but used Greek letters on many of their coins. After the time of Alexander the Great, the Greek language was used in many places in the East rather like many places in today's world use English as a second language.
That is a good question. It strikes me that there are several dies that have very similar portraits but that could just mean that all were copies of a bust they had at the mint.
Are you saying Mithradates II didn't tour all of the mints to sit for several hours as they carved an imprint of what he looked like? That's absurd.
That is an interesting observation and the detail had completely escaped me. Out of curiosity I looked at a bunch of his coins on acsearch, CNG, and parthia.com and sure enough, some of them have a 'sea-horse' torc terminus. Pretty cool. Although I think yours looks more like a certain WW1 Flying Ace Very nice coin!
Yes, many Mithradates from many different areas, all unrelated. Mithradates from Pontus and Persia bacame famous, but there were others. Always remember this name come from a religion, so like Muhammed is common in certain areas of the world today, Mithradates was popular back then.
I am devastated to find that Charles Shultz was copying Mithradates' jeweler. I always thought he was an original talent. It is standard for rulers to have busts used for copying by die cutters. What we don't know is how accurate the busts were. I have always been impressed by the variations found in some ruler's portraits. Septimius Severus has several different 'looks' in 193 just from Rome and several more from the branch mints. These became more standardized as time passed and when he actually moved into Rome after the civil wars of 193-196. Variations from mint to mint might be attributed to there being a different portrait bust at each but it is harder to explain some differences we see when the die cutters must have been working together in the same building. There are no records, diaries or better evidence of the day to day operations of the mints. The old saying goes: "I would like to have been a fly on the wall so I could see what was going on." These days we have security cameras and 'tapes' of every phase of life. A thousand years from now, there might be too much data on our civilization from too many flies.
