Hatra in Mesopotamia, 116-150 AD., Æ 25, SNG Cop. 232.

Hatra in Mesopotamia, struck ca. 116-150 AD.,
Æ 25 (23-25 mm / 10,57 g),
Obv.: "HTR DSMS" , (= Hatra of Shamash, city name in Aramaic) , Aramaic legends to r. , radiate head of sun god Shamash (or Sol, Helios) facing right, with features of Trajan.
Rev.: large S C , inverted; above, eagle standing right, head left, with wings spread; all within laurel wreath.
SNG Cop. 232 ; J. Walker, The Coins of Hatra, NC 1958, 168, 1 and pl. XIV, 1 (obv. die match) type A ; J. J. Slocum, Another Look at the Coins of Hatra, ANS MN 22 (1977), 38, series 1 .

The Hatran eagle dominates above an inverted SC. The inverted SC was an expression of anti-Roman sentiment as the "SC" was a familiar symbol of Roman power in the area (eg. spread on the coinage of Antioch).

Hatra (Arabic: الحضر‎ al-Ḥaḍr) is an ancient city in the Ninawa Governorate and al-Jazira region of Iraq. It is currently known as al-Hadr, a name which appears once in ancient inscriptions, and it in the ancient Iranian province of Khvarvaran. The city lies 290 km (180 miles) northwest of Baghdad and 110 km (68 miles) southwest of Mosul.
Hatra was probably founded under the Seleucid kingdom by Ancient Arab tribes some time in the 3rd century BC. It rose to prominence as the capital of Araba, a small semiautonomous state under Parthian influence. A religious and trading centre under the Parthian empire of Iran, it flourished during the 1st and 2nd centuries BCE. Later on, the city became the capital of possibly the first Arab Kingdom in the chain of Arab cities running from Hatra, in the northeast, via Palmyra, Baalbek and Petra, in the southwest. The region controlled from Hatra was the Kingdom of Araba, a semi-autonomous buffer kingdom on the western limits of the Parthian Empire of Iran, governed by Arabian princes.
Hatra became an important fortified frontier city and withstood repeated attacks by the Roman Empire, and played an important role in the Second Parthian War. It repulsed the sieges of both Trajan (116/117) and Septimius Severus (198/199). Hatra defeated the Iranians at the battle of Shahrazoor in 238, but fell to the Iranian Sassanid Empire of Shapur I in 241 and was destroyed.