Heraios

Who is Heraios?

Heraios was a clan chief of the Kushans, one of the five constituent tribes of the Yuezhi confederacy in Bactria in the early 1st century CE, roughly at the time when the Kushans were starting their invasion of India.

Silver coins were made in the Hellenistic style and used the Greek writing. The reverse shows the winged Greek god of victory Nike holding out a wreath over the clan chief mounted on a horse. The clan chief wears a tunic and has a large bow on the side. The portrait shows Heraios with a marked artificial skull deformation, a characteristic of several Kushan portraits and sculptures of the 1st century CE.

On the coins, the clan chief's name appears as "ΗΛΟΥ" or ""ΗΙΛΟΥ", which has been variously transliterated as "Ilou", "Maou" or "Miaou".