Armenian tiara

Coin of Tigranes the Great, Tigranocerta mint. Struck circa 80-68 BC.

In scholarship, the term Armenian tiara is used to refer to a spikey tiara that was characteristic of the coinage of Armenia during the Late Hellenistic period. ^[1] It originated from the insignia used by the royal and satrapal authority in the Achaemenid Empire. ^[2] The best known example was the one worn by the Artaxiad king of Armenia, Tigranes the Great (r. 95–55 BC). ^[1]

The tiara was notably worn by Monobaz I, the king of Adiabene. It may have been done as part of propaganda to display that his kingdom had replaced Armenia as a regional power in the Near East. ^[3]

Antiochus I of Commagene (r. 70–31 BC), the king of Commagene, adopted this tiara as an insignia of dominant power. The tiara, which he calls a kitaris was seen by him as a manifestation of the Persian and Orontid legacies. ^[4]

References

1. Marciak & Wójcikowski 2016, p. 89.
2. Marciak & Wójcikowski 2016, pp. 89, 91.
3. Marciak & Wójcikowski 2016, pp. 89–91.
4. Canepa 2018, p. 241.

Sources

• Canepa, Matthew (2018). The Iranian Expanse: Transforming Royal Identity Through Architecture, Landscape, and the Built Environment, 550 BCE–642 CE. Oakland: University of California Press. ISBN   9780520379206.
• Marciak, Michał; Wójcikowski, R. (2016). "Images of Kings of Adiabene: Numismatic and Scultpural Evidence". Iraq. IX. Cambridge University Press: 79–101. doi: 10.1017/irq.2016.8 .