Æ21 - Gordian III ΜΗΤΡ ΚΟΛ ΚΑΡΡΗΝωΝ

Carrhae's coinage under Gordian III belongs to the final years of the city's civic mint, which effectively ceased operation following the Sassanid campaigns that reshaped Roman control over Mesopotamia in the mid-third century. The city itself was notorious in the Roman imagination long before Gordian — it was the site of Crassus's catastrophic defeat against the Parthians in 53 BC, a wound Roman commanders spent generations trying to avenge. By 243–244, Gordian was campaigning precisely in this region against Shapur I, and would be dead within months, killed near Misiche in early 244.