130 
SHAPOOR ZOOLAKTAF. 
muz III.; who, when he rebelled against that monarch, veiled 
his ambition for a while, by causing the new money with which 
he paid his troops, to be struck in the name of Khosroo Purviz, 
the son of the deposed king. I draw my conclusions, not so 
much from the young manly face of the crowned head, as from 
the form, and filleted decoration of the altar, being so very like 
that used by Khosroo Purviz himself in the foregoing medal: 
hence, probably, it was the fashion of the altar of the times. 
But the most striking peculiarity of the coin is in the sup¬ 
porters ; one wears a royal diadem, the other a helmet. The 
first may represent the young king; the second, his general 
Baharam, assisting in the preservation of the state. The omis¬ 
sion of the usual deifying legend on the reverse, seems an argu¬ 
ment in favour of my conjecture ; since Baharam, when striking 
the coin, intended at no distant day to assume to himself the 
fullness of the royal honours. 
No. 8. This piece of money is more frequently met with than 
any other of the Sassanian dynasty. It is larger than most of 
the ancient currency, and, on the whole, very slightly executed. 
The diadem of the king has the singularity of being more in the 
shape of a helmet than a crown; it is winged, but surmounted 
by a crescent and star, instead of the customary globular form. 
The bust is encircled by a treble range of pearls, marked in 
equidistant divisions by a star and a crescent. The letters 
which compose the legends are very complicated, running into 
each other like rapid writing. On the face of the medal, they 
produce Shapouri Mezdezn , &c. and on the reverse, Shapouri, 
with other letters too defaced to decipher. This Shapour, must 
be the second of that name, (the seventh in descent from the 
first, who was the conqueror of Valerian;) and he also was a 
