In a span of just over 1,600 years of ancient history hundreds of civilizations struck coins. Many of them did so in their own name and some in the name of a “greater” power such as the Roman’s.
The Parthian Empire occupied part of present day Iran and Turkmenistan. Ruling from 247 B.C. to A.D. 228 in the Parthians defeated the successors of Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, conquered most of the Middle East and southwest Asia and controlled the “Silk Road” (Per Wikipedia, the Silk Road was are an extensive interconnected network of trade routes across the Asian continent connecting East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean world, including North Africa and Europe.)
Of all of the civilizations that struck coins, the Parthian’s are among the most interesting and mysterious. Quite a bit of what is known of Parthian history has been learned from the coins struck by the “Parthian Empire”. There are also coins which were struck by the Romans to commemorate victories over the Parthian (in some cases such declarations of victory were premature and in others they were paid for!)
An EXCELLENT resource that discusses Parthian history in great detail and does a very thorough job of cataloging Parthian coins is http://parthia.com. This is one of the BEST numismatic sites you will find and is incredible in the amount of information it contains on all things Parthian.
Some examples of Parthian coins:
A Parthian Silver Drachm or Artabanos III. A.D. 10-38A Parthian Billon Tetradrachm of Vologases IV struck 171-172 AD
Tags: Ancient Coins, coin collecting, collecting themes, parthia.com, parthian coins