50 000 Dram Tigran the Great

Issued to mark the 2050th anniversary of Tigran II's ascession, this was part of Armenia's first substantive gold commemorative program following independence — the Central Bank had only been established in 1993, and hard-currency commemoratives of this kind were as much about signaling institutional credibility internationally as anything else. Tigran II ruled the Armenian Empire at its greatest territorial extent, briefly controlling a stretch from the Caspian to the Mediterranean in the first century BC before Pompey dismantled it.