Hemidrachm ca. 1st century A.D. Parthian 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, curly 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 reverse type is all but impossible to discern.This coin was minted by King Pakor I of Persis, sometime in the first century A.D. Persis refers to a region in southwestern Iran which was 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 f