Characene Coinage

Characene coinage refers to the coins struck by the kings of Characene, a small kingdom at the head of the Persian Gulf in what is now southern Iraq and south-western Iran. Issued from the late 2nd century BCE until the early 3rd century CE, the series began as silver tetradrachms in the Hellenistic tradition and ended, after long decline, as coins of copper and base alloy.

The kingdom took its name from its capital, Charax Spasinou, near the meeting of the Tigris and Euphrates. Its coins are valued by historians because many carry dates, making them a main source for the kingdom's otherwise poorly recorded line of kings.

Characene emerged from the break-up of the Seleucid kingdom. Hyspaosines, a Seleucid governor of the region, made himself independent in the 120s BCE and for a brief period around 127 BCE also held Babylon. His coins, struck in that period, are the start of the series. For most of its history Characene was a vassal of the Parthian kings, while keeping its own dynasty and its own currency. The kingdom was absorbed by the new Sasanian state under Ardashir I in the 220s CE.

The first tetradrachms follow Seleucid coinage closely. The obverse shows the diademed head of the king, and the reverse shows Heracles seated, holding a club, with a Greek legend naming the ruler. This design, which earlier Seleucid kings had used, remained the basic type for generations.

Many Characene coins carry a year in the Seleucid era, the dating system used across the former Seleucid lands. These dates allow numismatists to arrange the rulers, such as the several kings named Attambelos, in sequence. Over time the Greek lettering became crude and partly illegible, and in the last phase legends in an Aramaic script appear. The changes mirror developments in the larger Parthian drachm series to the north.

The silver content of the Characene tetradrachm fell steadily. Early issues were of good silver on a weight close to the Attic standard used for the Attic drachma; later ones were billon with a small share of silver, and the final issues were essentially copper or bronze while keeping the size and look of a tetradrachm. This is one of the clearer ancient examples of currency debasement, in which a coin keeps its name and design while its metal value falls away.

Smaller bronze coins were also issued for local use. Because the late tetradrachms were themselves base metal, the line between "silver" and "bronze" money in Characene becomes hard to draw in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE.

Characene's importance came from its position. Charax and the nearby river ports linked Mesopotamia with the sea routes of the Persian Gulf, Arabia and India. Inscriptions from Palmyra record caravans and merchants travelling to and from Charax, which ties this coinage to the trading world of Palmyrene coinage and, further south, to the incense routes associated with Nabataean coinage.

Finds of Characene coins in Gulf coastal areas support the picture of a kingdom whose money followed its merchants. They also show how small states on the edge of larger empires used their own coinage to assert local authority while their economies depended on long-distance trade.

The series ended with Sasanian conquest, after which the region used the Sassanid drachma. Characene coinage remains a specialist field, but it fills real gaps: without the coins, the names and order of most of the kingdom's rulers would be unknown. For the wider role of coined metal in this period, see money.

• British Museum
• American Numismatic Society