Heraios

Silver coin with HIAOY

Heraios as ruler of Kushana owes his existence to the attempt to use the term HIAOY on silver coins of approx. 15 and 0.6 g. to be interpreted as a proper name. The term follows the Greek TYRANNOUNTOS, which identifies him as the sole ruler, and before KOPPANOY, which identifies him as "Kuschan", d. H. as the legal ruler of an area in Bactria . The R in Heraios comes from the misreading of the iota second in HIAOY. This can be read like "chiau" and represents the Chinese xihou, better known in its Turk-language form as yabghu. The coins of the alleged Heraios do not contain a proper name, only titles. The reference to King Kujula Kadphises arises from two copper coins (Cribb 1996; Falk 2015: 86), which have the same title, but also the name Kujulas, in front of identical pictorial representation. The TYRANNOUNTOS coins can be found along the Oxus (Amu Darya) in northern Afghanistan and southern Tajikistan . Since they seem to fit the beginning rather than the end of Kujula's rule, they are dated to the first half of the first century AD. to date.

literature

• Joe Cribb: The 'Out' coins: their attribution to the Kushan king Kujula Kadphises c. AD 30-80. In: Martin Price , Andrew Burnett, Roger Bland (Eds.): Essays in Honor of Robert Carson and Kenneth Jenkins. Spink, London 1993, ISBN 0-907605-38-9 , pp. 107-134.
• Harry Falk (Ed.): Kushan Histories. Literary Sources and Selected Papers from a Symposium at Berlin, December 5 to 7, 2013 (= monographs on Indian archeology, art and philology. 23). Hempen, Bremen 2015, ISBN 978-3-944312-24-8 , p. 86.

predecessor	Office	successor
no predecessor	Ruler of Kushana approx. 30-50 AD	Vima Takhtu