ՆԱԽՆԱԿԱՆ ԴԻՏԱՐԿՈՒՄՆԵՐ ՄԻՏՐԻԴԱՏ I ԹԱԳԱՎՈՐԻ ԴՐԱՄԻ ՄԱՍԻՆ, ՉՀՐԱՊԱՐԱԿՎԱԾ ԿՈՐՊՈՒՍ և ՄՏՈՐՈՒՄՆԵՐ ՆՐԱ ԹԱԳԱՎՈՐԱԿԱՆ ԳԱՂԱՓԱՐԱԽՈՍՈՒԹՅԱՆ ՄԱՍԻՆ / PRELIMINARY NOTE ON THE COINAGE OF KING MITHRADATES I. UNPUBLISHED CORPUS AND REFLECTION ON ITS ROYAL IDEOLOGY

<jats:p>Until the year 2000, it was factually established that the entire coinage of the kingdom of Greater Armenia, Armenia Minor, Sophene and Commagene, was exclusively composed of coin types with Greek legends. Thousands of coins discovered since modern times were proof of this, and the four main published catalogs attested to it. However, in 2008 two Armenian numismatists, R. Vardanyan and K. Vardanyan, published a series of coins from the first king of the Artaxiad dynasty, Artaxias I (190-164 BC ca.), with legends in Aramaic (VARDANYAN - VARDANYAN, 2008). Then, in 2015, J. Nurpetlian published a second monetary series, in Aramaic, whose attribution is left open (NURPETLIAN, 2015). In this article, we publish a third series of largely unpublished coins with legends in Aramaic and Greek about a king of Armenia Minor, named Mithradates. This set of thirty-two coin types includes twenty-three previously unpublished, constituting the largest series of coins attributable to Armenia Minor before its integration into the Roman Empire. This preliminary note is by no means definitive; however, it allows us to make a few general remarks. On the one hand, a parallelism between the coins of Artaxias I and Mithradates shows an intellectual, cultural and even religious affinity between the two royal courts that seems to be more considerable than previously thought. If our hypotheses were to prove true, we would have a series of confirmations of the spread of the same beliefs from one end of the Armenian plateau to the other. On the other hand, it’s possible that this corpus provides us with the only representations of Armenian deities previously known only from literary sources, such as aralez and vishap. Finally, this corpus also seems to include one of the earliest heraldic depictions: the eagle holding a lamb in its talons, still attested over a millennium later.</jats:p>