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Chalkon - Hormizd I
| Issuer | Indo-Sasanian Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Year | 256-264 |
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| Currency | Drachm (230 AD-360 AD) |
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| Obverse description | Right-facing royal bust of Hormizd I depicted in a distinctive forward-curving helmet terminating in a lion's head finial, with the crest fashioned from the lion's mane and surmounted by a flower-like globe; a second globe appears at the lower edge of the helmet. The king's hair is rendered in tight curls, the pointed beard drawn through a ring, and the effigy is adorned with an earring and necklace. The bust terminates in four curved projections at the base. A Parsik (Middle Persian) legend commences at the left shoulder of the effigy. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The deity Shiva is depicted standing erect before his sacred bull Nandi, both figures set upon a ground line. Shiva is shown in Sasanian garments and wears a Sasanian diadem, with top-hair standing upright and his head rendered in frontal view. He holds a trident in his left hand and a noose in his right. A Kushan-script legend occupies the field. |
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| Additional information |
Hormizd I ruled the Kushano-Sasanian kingdom for under a decade before his death, a transitional figure whose coinage reflects the awkward administrative merger of Sasanian imperial ambition with entrenched Kushan monetary traditions. The billon fabric of this issue — debased silver typical of the eastern Sasanian frontier — distinguishes it sharply from the purer silver drachms being struck simultaneously in the imperial heartland at Ctesiphon.
Göbl's Kushan reference places this type squarely within the Kushano-Sasanian sequence rather than the main Sasanian series, a classification that remains contested in specialist literature.