Vol 83, No 3 (2023)

The paper presents an archaeological and numismatic analysis of the image of the ceremonial royal helmet on the coins of Diodotus Tryphon, the Seleukid usurper of the mid-2nd century BC. The archaeological analogies to the individual elements of the ‘Tryphon’s helmet’ design allow us to suggest the existence of a real royal helmet, which served as a prototype for this coinage. In terms of iconography, the ‘Tryphon’s helmet’ is a composite image where both Macedonian and Dionysian motifs can be found. Taking into account the political context, it is worth recognizing that the royal Tryphon’s helmet was not only an example of the Hellenistic ceremonial equipment, but also an important tool for legitimizing the usurper’s power, which relyed on the loyalty of the military elites of Apamea on the Orontes.

Following the Alexandrian campaign Caesar waged war on Pharnaces in the summer of 47 BC. Passing through Cappadocia, the Roman politician bestowed a certain territory to Ariarathes, brother of king Ariobarzanes, as evidenced in ‘De Bello Alexandrino’. However, the meaning of this order is unclear, since part of the text has been lost. Various suggestions were made by scholars in order to recover the missing part, but no consensus has been reached yet. The article attempts to fill this gap relying on the analysis of the text of ‘The Alexandrian War’ itself, as well as on its comparison with information contained in other historical sources. The conclusion is that the lost fragment probably contained information about the transfer of a part of Lesser Armenia to Ariarathes by Caesar. This seems to shed some light on Caesar’s Eastern policy towards Cappadocia, Lesser Armenia and one of the Galatians tetrarchs Deiotarus in 47 BC, and also clarify the logic of our literary source.

The paper is a publication of a Mithradatic hoard of 119 tetradrachms and drachms, found in the near chora of Tauric Chersonesus in 2013. It generally consists of the Mithradatic tetradrachms (79 coins) mixed with tetradrachms of the Bithynian kings, Nicomedes II and III (3 coins), late posthumous tetradrachms of Lysimachus struck at the mint of Byzantium (17 coins), and Athenian New Style tetradrachms (2 coins). Apart from 101 tetradrachms, the hoard includes 18 royal Cappadocian drachms: Ariarathes VII, Ariarathes VIΙI, Ariarathes IX, and Ariobarzanes Ι. The treasure includes tetradrachms of Mithradates VI with unrecorded dates. The latest of the drachms of Arioborzanes I dated back from 65/64 BC indicates that the hoard was formed after the arrival of Mithradates on the Bosporus and the flight of Machares, his son, to Chersonesus. More than a quarter of the Mithradatic tetradrachms are new coins of the last year of coinage, without traces of circulation, in a ‘mint state’, most struck from the same obverse dies or diecombinations in 67/66 BC. This fact certainly indicates the centralized issuance of silver money from the royal treasury. The hoard was most likely concealed during the anti-Mithradatic uprising in Chersonesus in 63 BC.

The article publishes and analyzes six pottery vessels found by the Nubian Expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1962 at the site of Khor-Daud (Southern Egypt) and subsequently transferred under the agreement with the Egyptian government to the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Four jars are Egyptian in shape and are typical for the Naqada culture; the other two can be characterized as Nubian; the dating of this group of pottery fits into the interval of Naqada IIB–IIIA (3600–3200 BC). Taking into account the nature of finds in Khor-Daud, which is located within the area of the Nubian A-Groups Culture, the site should be interpreted as a trading post where goods from Egypt, the region of the middle reaches of the Nile and the Nubian Desert were exchanged.