Heraios ( Bactrian: Ηλου ''Ēlou'', sometimes Heraus, Heraos, Miaos) was apparently a king or clan chief of the Kushans (reign: c. 1 –30 CE), one of the five constituent tribes of the

Yuezhi The Yuezhi were an ancient people first described in China, Chinese histories as nomadic pastoralists living in an arid grassland area in the western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu, during the 1st millennium BC. After a major defea ...

, in

Bactria Bactria (; Bactrian language, Bactrian: , ), or Bactriana, was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization in Central Asia based in the area south of the Oxus River (modern Amu Darya) and north of the mountains of the Hindu Kush, an area ...

, in the early 1st century CE.Ancient Coin Collecting VI: Non-Classical Cultures p.92 Wayne G. Sayles F+W Media, Inc, 1999
/ref> Several scholars question his existence as a separate historical figure and suggest that "Heraios" may have been another name for his nominal successor

Kujula Kadphises Kujula Kadphises (Kushan language: Κοζουλου Καδφιζου, also Κοζολα Καδαφες; Kharosthi: 𐨐𐨂𐨗𐨂𐨫 𐨐𐨯, International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, IAST: ', '; ; r. 30–80 CE, or 40–90 CE accor ...

. For example, numismatist Joe Cribb points out the similarity of coins minted by Kujula to those of a Greco-Bactrian predecessor named Hermaios Soter (or Hermaeus Soter). Moreover, some portraits of Kujula resemble Hermaios, suggesting that Kujula may have initially reused the design of coins issued during the reign of Hermaios Soter. The coins bearing the name Heraios were silver and made in the

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

style, using the Greek script. The reverse shows the winged Greek goddess of victory Nike holding out a wreath, over Heraios mounted on a horse. He wears a tunic and has a large bow on the side. Some portraits show Heraios with a marked artificial skull deformation, a characteristic of several Kushan portraits and sculptures of the 1st century CE. On some of the Heraios coins, his name has sometimes been read as ΗΛΟΥ or ΗΙΛΟΥ, which has been transliterated as "Ilou". However other readings of the same texts include "Ηaou" and "Ηiaou". File:Kushan Empire. Heraios. Circa CE 1- 30 to 50.jpg, Another coin type of Heraois, - 30/50 CE File:Koshanoy.jpg, The

ethnonym An ethnonym () is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used ...

"KO Ϸ ϷANO" (''Koshshano'', "Kushans") in

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

(with the addition of the letter Ϸ, "''Sh''") on a coin of Heraios. File:Tetradrachm Heraos NMAT H377-1.jpg, Tetradrachm, obverse: diademed Heraos right, 1st half of the 1st century CE. From Vakhsh,

Tajikistan Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital city, capital and most populous city. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the Afghanistan–Tajikistan border, south, Uzbekistan to ...

References

Sources

* * {{s-end Kushan monarchs 1st-century monarchs in Asia