Mihrdat I of Iberia


Mithridates I was the 1st-century king of Iberia whose reign is evidenced by epigraphic material. Cyril Toumanoff suggests 58–106 as the years of his reign.

Armazi inscriptions

Two inscriptions unearthed at Armazi, Georgia. One bilingual in Aramaic and Greek. The Greek inscription identifies Mithridates I as the son of the "great king" Pharasmanes, apparently the Pharasmanes I of Iberia of Tacitus’s Annals. The stone inscription in Greek speaks of Mithridates I as "the friend of the Caesars" and the king "of the Roman-loving Iberians". It also reports that the Roman emperor Vespasian fortified Armazi for the Iberian king in 75. His mother was an unnamed Armenian Princess of the Artaxiad Dynasty being the daughter of the Artaxiad Armenian Monarchs Tigranes IV and his sister-wife Erato.

Medieval Georgian chronicles

Mithridates I is ignored by the medieval Georgian chronicles which instead, report a joint rule of Kartam and Bartom – in the time when Vespasian’s destruction of Jerusalem in 70 spurred a wave of the refugee Jews to Iberia – and then of their sons – Parsman and Kaos – and grandsons – Azork and Armazel. Several modern scholars, such as Cyril Toumanoff, consider the Iberian diarchy a pure legend and a "deformed memory of the historical reign of Mithridates I". Of these royal pairs, Professor Giorgi Melikishvili identifies "Azork" as Mithridates I’s possible local name and "Armazel" as a territorial epithet, meaning in Georgian "of Armazi".