Head of a Parthian Ruler

Mithridates I is a celebrated Philhellene known from his coins. This head from a small statue, a bust, or even the top of a scepter-staff, seems to have been carved at Babylonia where the pertinent coins, as well as those issued under Mithridates II about 122-121 B.C., were struck. The stone was used in these regions in neo-Sumerian times, c. 2100 B.C., for heads and statues of rulers and officials in the time of Judea and others (Terrace, 1962, no. 9). D. M. Robinson suggested that the eyes were made of ivory, with asphalt lining, as in the case of other statuettes from this part of the world in Parthian times.

While the details of hair, face, and beard identify this head as that of a famous, early Parthian king, and while the material is peculiar to lower Mesopotamia or Iran, coins show us that Mithridates I and others issued silver tetradrachms and drachms that placed them firmly in the traditions of Alexander the Great and their Seleucid predecessors and contemporaries. A series of tetradrachm struck at Seleucia on the Tigris River combines the king's diademed, draped bust in profile to the right on the obverse with a typical standing Hellenistic Herakles holding cup (skyphos) and club on the reverse (The Garrett Collection, Part II, Bank Leu AG, Zurich, October 16-18, 1984, p. 68, no. 313, pl. 20; Wroth, 1903, pp. 12-15, pl. iii; Sellwood, 1971, pp. 25, 38, etc.; Richter, 1984, p. 247).

Mithridates II of Parthia struck tetradrachms, with a portrait very much like this small head in profile to the left on the obverse, also at Seleucia on the Tigris from 123 to 91 BC. Here Herakles on the reverse has been replaced by what had been introduced earlier and would become the standard type for the series, a Parthian archer seated (on an omphalos?, later a throne) testing his bow (Jenkins, 1972, pp. 272, 274, 276, fig. 667; Garrett Collection, loc. cit. no. 314; Wroth, 1903, p. 24, pl. vi. Mithridates II also puts on an elaborated, high "helmet").

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer