The First Coins
Courtesy Peter Jones
Around 3200 BCE, they used barley as money in Mesopotamia. One grain of barley weighed 65 milligrams. You will still hear colonial numismatists talking about coin weights in grains today.
In Africa and China they used cowrie shells as jewelry and money (shown top left). China later made imitations of cowrie shells in clay, bone, and around 900 BCE, bronze as token equivalents. But this was not bullion money. Likewise, China issued bronze spade and knife token money around 700 BCE. But this money was not bullion, the money was a state regulated token. China's first bullion money came in the 200s BCE.
Around 1800-2000 BCE, western states used bits of cut silver wire and plate, weighed out and tested with a touchstone for purity. Today we call this hacksilver (shown top right). The Vikings continued to use hacksilver in medieval times.
The idea of money is not a universal truth, but a social construct - ideas that humans have agreed upon in various societies, places, and times. Other social constructs are beauty, religion, laws, countries, measurement, etc. The three functions of money are:
- A store of value
- A pricing mechanism
- A medium of exchange
The first coins made as round blobs of bullion with a design came not from Greece, but from the kingdom of Ionia and Lydia. By 585 BCE, Lydia occupied about the western half of modern day Turkey. The coins were made of electrum (a naturally occurring alloy of at least 20% silver with gold) from the Pactolus River. The first coins were plain on one side with an incuse punch on the other side (see left). Shortly after the plain side became striated. In 625 BCE, they started the first design - a stag with the inscription, "I am the badge of Phanes" (shown above on the right).
Soon the king of Lydia, Alyattes (635-585 BCE) struck electrum with a lion and a sunburst around 600 BCE. Many coins simply showed the sun without a sunburst, leading early numismatists to say it was a wart on the lion's nose (see right). The lion and the sun were divine and powerful and signified royal legitimacy.
King Croesus succeeded Alyattes in 585 BCE and invented bimetallism. This means the government made a fixed rate of exchange between the two metals as currency. His gold stater is shown on the left, depicting a lion facing a bull. Hunting lions attack from behind, so this imagery suggests contrast not conflict - perhaps the lion represented Lydia and the bull represented her neighbor Phrygia, but we don't know for sure.
King Midas was different. He was a mythical king from Phrygia, next door to Lydia. The myth said he entertained a satyr named Silenus, whom he later returned to his foster father, Dionysos, in Lydia. In return, Dionysos offered Midas a wish.
Midas asked that whatever he touched would turn into gold. But he later hated the gift. Dionysos told him to wash in the Pactolus River. When Midas touched the waters, his power flowed to the river, turning the river sands to electrum. That is where Ionia and Lydia's electrum coins came from!
Then the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great conquered Lydia, ending Croesus' kingdom in 546 BCE. Cyrus took over production of the same bimetallic coins. The next Persian king, Darius the Great, started his own bimetallic coins, the daric and the siglos, around 520-510 BCE.