In scholarship, the term Armenian tiara is used to refer to a spikey tiara that was characteristic of the coinage of Armenia during the Late Hellenistic period.[1] It originated from the insignia used by the royal and satrapal authority in the Achaemenid Empire.[2] The best known example was the one worn by the Artaxiad king of Armenia, Tigranes the Great (r. 95–55 BC).[1]
The tiara was notably worn by Monobaz I, the king of Adiabene. It may have been done as part of propaganda to display that his kingdom had replaced Armenia as a regional power in the Near East.[3]
Antiochus I of Commagene (r. 70–31 BC), the king of Commagene, adopted this tiara as an insignia of dominant power. The tiara, which he calls a kitaris was seen by him as a manifestation of the Persian and Orontid legacies.[4]
