Susa (Persian Shush) was a city in the province of Khuzestan, in south-western Iran. The earliest evidence suggests that it had been an urban settlement since approximately 4200 BC. The city appears in the Bible, and was an important location in the ancient Near East. Susa was made one of the four capitals of the Persian Achaemenid Empire during the reign of Cyrus the Great’s son, Cambyses II, and formed the setting for Aeschylus’ tragic play The Persians. The city was witness to the mass weddings of Persian women and Macedonian soldiers, organised by Alexander the Great, and later was one of the two capitals of Parthian Iran, along with Ctesiphon. Under the Sasanian dynasty, Susa was both a winter retreat and a place of refuge when Ctesiphon was threatened. It was during this time that the city gained the honorific title Eran Xvarrah Shapur (Shapur the glory of Iran).

It seems likely that the city was host to a mint in the Sasanian period. The mint of Airan at one point seemed to represent the country itself, and was often thought to stand for a peripatetic mint, perhaps attached to the army. However, the recent recognition that the city of Susa bore the honorific of Eran Xvarrah Shapur, and that Susa significantly lacked any other attributable coins, it now seems probable that coins from the mint of Airan originated from this city.

24 Related Objects