Other Ancient Coins

The history of Ancient Greek coinage can be divided (along with most other Greek art forms), into three periods, the Archaic, the Classical and the Hellenistic. more...

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The Archaic period extends from the introduction of coinage to the Greek world in about 600 BCE until the Persian Wars in about 480 BCE. The Classical period then began, and lasted until the conquests of Alexander the Great in about 330 BC, which began the Hellenistic period, extending until the Roman absorption of the Greek world in the 1st century BCE. The Greeks cities continued to produce their own coins for several more centuries under Roman rule, called Roman provincial coins.

Archaic period

Coins were invented in the Kingdom of Lydia, in what is now western Turkey in about 650-600 BCE (they were independently invented in China and India in about 600 BCE). An important source of the metal used in these coins was the river Pactolus close to Sardis where there were alluvial deposits of gold mixed with as much as 40% silver and some copper; such a gold-silver mix is called (electrum). The earliest coins were made of electrum with a standardized 55% gold, 45 silver and 1-2% copper concentration and had either no design or a some apparently random surface striations on one side and a punch impression on the other. Electrum coinage spread to the independent city states of Ionia on the Aegean coast within a few decades.

The first bimetallic currency of pure gold and silver coins was introduced during the reign of King Croesus in Sardis (561-547 BCE) using a design of a lion or a lion and bull on one side; the other side remained a punch mark. By this time, coinage had spread to Greece proper and to the many Greek colonies spread from the Black Sea to Sicily and southern Italy (Magna Graecia).

In the \"Archaic period\" coins were fairly crude by later standards. They were mostly small disk-shaped lumps of gold, silver, or bronze, stamped with a geometric design or symbol to indicate its city of origin. As coining techniques improved, coins became more standardized as flat circular objects and the convention of putting a representation of the patron deity of the issuing city became established. Animal symbols such as the bees (sacred to Artemis) of Ephesus, turtles of Aegina, or the owl (sacred to Athena) of Athens were also widely used.

The Greek world was divided into at least a hundred self-governing cities and towns (in Greek, poleis), and most of these issued their own coins. Some coins circulated widely beyond their polis, indicating that they were being used in inter-city trade; the first example appears to have been the silver drachm of Aegina. As such coins circulated more widely, coins of other cities came increasingly to be minted to the same weight standard (the weight standard of the Aeginetan drachma was 6.1 g) although marked with the symbols of the issuing city. This is rather like today's Euro coins, which are recognisably from a particular country, but usable all over the Euro zone.

Read more at Wikipedia.org