Sale: Triton XIII, Lot: 584. Estimate $200.  Closing Date: Monday, 4 January 2010.  Sold For $400. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

KINGS of PARTHIA. Sinatrukes. 93/2-70/69 BC. AR Drachm (4.16 g, 12h). Rhagai mint. Diademed and draped bust left, wearing tiara with ear flap, long beard, and torque ending in pellet; all within pelleted border / BAΣIΛEΩΣ MEΓ AΛOV ΛPΣΛKOV ΘEOΠAΠOV/NIKATOPOΣ (sic), archer (Arsakes I) seated right on throne, holding bow. Sellwood 33.3 (Gotarzes I) var. (rev. legend); Shore 112 (Gotarzes I) var. (same). EF.

From the Todd A. Ballen Collection. Ex Pegasi XVI (8 May 2007), lot 207.

Two Nisa ostraca, Nos. 1760 and 307, reveal that Sinatrukes was the grandson of Phriapatius who in turn was son of the nephew of Arsakes I. Yet, the epithet ΘΕΟΠΑΤΩΡ on his S33 drachms implies that Sinatrukes must have been son of a deified king. If we take the text of a recently published ostracon, reading “King Arsaces, Great-Grandson of Arsaces”, to be a reference to Mithradates I who, according to the titulature of the S16 drachms of Phraates II, had surely been deified around 128 BC, then Sinatrukes can only have been an adopted son of Mithradates I. The epithet ΝΙΚΑΤΩΡ, “Victorious,” on his drachms attest to a great triumph over Mithradates II. Even so, Sinatrukes was soon supplanted in Ekbatana and Rhagae by Gotarzes I, the immediate successor of Mithradates II, then expelled in 88/7 BC from Susa by Mithradates III, and sought refuge among the “Guti” until about 77 BC, when he made a fresh attempt at gaining the Parthian throne.

The absence of both a clear reference to Sinatrukes in the extant Babylonian cuneiform material, and tetradrachms from Seleukeia indicates that he never held Babylonia and had no access to its royal mint. With this in mind, we may safely assign S33 drachms to him, as this emission alone out of the fourteen different “Dark Age” types (S29-41 and S44) lacks parallel tetradrachms.

This coin is an unpublished early issue of Sinatrukes, containing attributes of both Mithradates II and Sinatrukes. Most significantly, the torque here ends in a sea-horse, which is unknown on all of Sellwood type 33 coins. Also, although Sellwood type 33 coins do have a portrait that resembles that of Mithradates II, the length of the beard and protuberant cheeks on this coin are far more than merely a resemblance (more so than all plated examples of type 33 coins surveyed in the references). While the tiara style and legend clearly make this a coin of Sinatrukes, it must be one of his earliest issues.