Figure 2 - from "Ardashir and the Sasanians' Rise to Power"

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xwaday “lord,” may have been a calque from Greek avtoxpdatmp.” The later kings of Persis had the title of MLKA / Sah “king.” One of these rul- ers by the name of Darayan II made substantial changes, not only in linguistic mat- ters, but also to the iconographic and the religious traditions.*° Consequently, it appears that the Sasanian historical memory placed this ruler in the formulaic pe- riod of Daray i Darayan, that is, the time between the two Dariuses. These kings of Persis included Darayan I, followed by Wadfradad, Darayan II, ArdaxSahr / Ar- daxSir, WahuxSahr, Wadfradad, Maniihr, ArdaxSahr / ArdaxSir, Manii¢ihr,”’ and Nambad. These kings all in all seem to have been subservient to the Arsacid kings, as Strabo (15.3.24) tells us and no real disturbance appears to have taken place in Persis.”** Only once we hear of a revolt in Persis against the Arsacids, and that is contained in the Chronicle of Arbela”’ whose factuality is dubious at best.*”

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On the coins of the Persis lord Wahbarz, for example, we find the legend whwbrz prtrk’ zy ‘thy’ br prs “Wahbarz, Frataraka of the Gods, son of a Persian.” This is important because the early Sasanian legend MNW ctry MN yzd’n / ké cihr az yazdan “from the race of gods” is reminiscent of the Frataraka’s title. Thus, the Sasanians combined both the Frataraka and Persis kings’s traditions Panaino takes the legend to mean “the governor (for the sake/for the account=in the name) of the Gods,” referring to the gods, namely Ahuramazda, Mithra and Anahita, who were upheld by the Achaemenids.'’ Skjzrve, with whom Panaino agrees in principle, takes the legend to mean “the one (set) ahead (of others) of = by the god.”'® For now let us take the legend to mean “Frataraka of the Gods.” These Fratarakas were protectors of the bayan “Gods,” but these baydn I believe were not Ahuramazda, Mithra and Anahita as Panaino believes, but the Achaem- enid kings themselves. Callieri, in an important article on the iconography of the coinage of the Fratarakas, has made the very important observation that the para- phernalia, namely the banner, the funerary monuments and the gesture of the person standing before it all, emphasize a tie with the Achaemenid kings. D. Potts also takes this line of reasoning, but believes that the Fratarakas may have been ignorant of the original function of the funerary monuments of Ka‘ba and Zendan, but they still had an ideological significance for them." I believe, as Callieri has rightly pointed out, that the bayan are none other than the Achaem- enid kings who after their demise were deified by the Seleucids.”” This may be the reason for which we may read the title bay on the coinage of Ardaxsir and the early Sasanians as “divine,” in its Hellenistic sense.”'

epigraphic form ssn designating Sasan as a deity. But because of its absence in the Avesta and the Old Persian documents, it is difficult to know how it was related to the Zoroastrian religion.*° Recently, Martin Schwartz has shown that the deity represents Sesen, an old Semitic god which is found in Ugarit as early as the second millennium BCE.”” Be that as it may, in the first century CE we find coins in Taxila with the name Sasa, which may be con- nected to Sasan because the emblem on the coin matches the coat-of-arms for Sabuhr I.** We also have coinage from a certain Farn-Sasan in Arochasia who may have been living in the third century and belonged to the Indo-Parthian clan in the East. Ph. Gignoux has suggested, SGsa@n may very well have been known throughout Asia as a protective deity invoked against sorcery. This fact is shown by the exis- tence of a seal which reads in part: sasa@n ham sdsan i bay ud sasan pasban “O Sasan, the same Sasan who is god and Sasan the protector.” Whatever or whoever Sasan was, he was not native to the province of Persis and Sasan’s origins appears only to the east and west of the Iranian Plateau. Then why would ArdaxSir trace his lineage to Sasan who was not very well-known in Persis? Thus, as far as it can be gathered Sasan is not native to Persis and appears to be a foreign element. As mentioned, the stories vary about Ardaxsir’ Ss origin and his lineage vis-a- _ Ath . .

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