Obol

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Numismatists – the scholars who study coins – refer to the ‘front’ side of the coin, which usually features the head of a person or god, as the ‘obverse,’ and the ‘back’ side as the ‘reverse.’ On the obverse of this small silver coin, a bust of the king faces to the left. He has a long beard, long hair, and a large nose, and wears a domed hat (called a ‘tiara’) with a diadem (the headband worn by victorious athletes in ancient Greece) tied over it. He also wears a necklace or torque around his neck. The design on the reverse is all but impossible to discern. This coin was minted by King Pakor II of Persis, sometime in the first century CE. Persis, or Pars, refers to a region in southwestern Iran which had been the heartland of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Seleucids and Parthians, Persis was ruled by client kings like Pakor, who combined elements of Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian iconography on their coins. The diadem worn by Pakor, for example, is a common feature on images of Seleucid kings. This coin was excavated at Qasr-i Abu Nasr, near Shiraz. Much of the material from the site dates to the Sasanian period (224-651); this coin is one the few objects suggesting it was occupied in the Parthian period as well.

Ancient Near Eastern Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art cares for approximately 7,000 works ranging in date from the eighth millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the emergence of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Objects in the collection were created by people in the area that today comprises Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean coast, Yemen, and Central Asia. From the art of some of the world's first cities to that of great empires, the department's holdings illustrate the beauty and craftsmanship as well as the profound interconnections, cultural and religious diversity, and lasting legacies that characterize the ancient art of this vast region.