Hephthalites Silver Drachm, Napki Malka type, c. AD 475–575, fire altar

Hephthalites, Drachm, silver, circa AD 475–575, uncertain mint, 3.90 g, 30 mm. Obverse with crowned and draped bust right, the crown surmounted by a bull’s head and winged ornaments; beaded necklace; blundered Pahlavi legend of the “Napki Malka” type around within a pellet border. Reverse anepigraphic; Zoroastrian fire-altar with flames, flanked by attendants; pellet border. Struck on a broad, thin flan with irregular edge; reverse slightly off center; die axis 12h. Ref: Mitchiner 1507–08 (“Napki Malka” type).

This series adapts Sasanian royal and Zoroastrian imagery to the coinage of the Hunnic powers that dominated eastern Iran and Afghanistan in the late fifth to sixth centuries. The “Napki Malka” legend, rendered in Pahlavi script, is usually taken as a ruler’s name or title and is associated in scholarship with Hephthalite- or Nezak-controlled regions. The coins circulated widely along the trans-Iranian trade routes, illustrating the adoption of Sasanian monetary standards by steppe-origin elites during their period of hegemony after the defeat of the Sasanian king Peroz I in AD 484.