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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Parthicus, post: 2567570, member: 81887&quot;]I agree that the OP coin is Sellwood 63.6, from the Parthian king who reigned c. 10- 38 AD.&nbsp; But is it Artabanos II or III?&nbsp; Depends.&nbsp; Sellwood and Shore both attributed Type 63 to Artabanos II.&nbsp; However, Assar&#039;s work (still not available in book form, as far as I know) identifies a previously unknown, short-lived early king named Artabanos, resulting in a renumbering of the Artabani and making the &quot;Artabanos III&quot; who issued Type 74 (c. 80-90 AD)actually Art.IV, and the final Parthian king is thus Artabanos V.&nbsp; Personally, I prefer to concentrate on getting the Sellwood numbering correct, then assign a name based on Shore.&nbsp; Really, in Parthian coins it&#039;s usually pointless to worry too much about the actual name of the king who issued the coin, since that &quot;fact&quot; is probably going to change anyway.&nbsp; I just did a quick search and didn&#039;t find a full listing of Assar&#039;s attributions, I think I have a hard copy somewhere around here and can post it, if people are interested.&nbsp; (Note: I am NOT talking about posting Dr. Assar&#039;s actual articles, which are his copyrighted materials; I am only considering posting a list of what Sellwood number attributions he has proposed changing.)</p><p><br /></p><p>It is actually not terribly difficult to attribute coins to either 63.6 (old Art. II) or 74.6 (old Art.III).&nbsp; The key difference is in the reverse legend- not what it says, for by this time it is badly degraded, and doesn&#039;t change for different rulers anyway- but in the details of the letterforms. Look at the top two lines of the legend, above the archer.&nbsp; Originally they said &quot;Basilews basilewn&quot; *(King of kings) in perfectly good Greek.&nbsp; On 63.6 this is still somewhat readable, with the first sigma looking like C and the E being a squished but readable E.&nbsp; On&nbsp; 74.6, the sigma is reduced to a single line l and the E is a vertical line with a single short horizontal line sticking out the middle.&nbsp; Keeping those facts in mind, I would say that both of Doug Smith&#039;s coins are 63.6.</p><p><br /></p><p>Oh, just for the record:&nbsp; The seven-line reverse legend in full, starting at the top and proceeding in from the outer edge, then clockwise, etc.: &quot;Basilews basilewn/ Arsakou/ Euergetou dikaiou/ epiphanous philellenos&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>*I&#039;m using &quot;w&quot; to represent omega, because otherwise &quot;o&quot; could imply either omega or omicron.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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