Hemidrachm - Ardashir I symbol

Ardashir I founded the Sasanian dynasty by defeating and killing the last Arsacid king Artabanus IV at the Battle of Hormozdgan in 224 AD, ending nearly five centuries of Parthian rule. These hemidrachms belong to his consolidating phase, struck while Ardashir was still organizing a mint infrastructure inherited from — and deliberately breaking from — Parthian models. The symbol variants catalogued by Göbl reflect administrative or regional distinctions that remain incompletely understood, making die attribution genuinely useful for provenance research.