Drachm - Ardashir V

Ardashir V ruled Persis as the last of its indigenous kings before his own cousin — or possibly brother — Ardashir I of the Arsacid-replacing Sasanian dynasty conquered the region and ended roughly five centuries of semi-autonomous Perside rule. The precise relationship between the two men remains disputed, which matters here: this coin was struck in the final years before the Sasanian conquest, somewhere between 211 and 224 AD, making it effectively a terminal issue for the kingdom.

The Sunrise 692 reference places this among the earliest and most precisely catalogued of Perside types. Göbl's Sasanian corpus includes it partly because the iconographic and monetary conventions of Persis fed directly into early Sasanian coinage design.