A Case for the World's
First Coin:
The Lydian Lion

Lydian electrum
trite (4.71g, 13x10x4 mm). This
coin type, made of a gold and silver alloy, was in all likelihood the
world's first, minted by King Alyattes in Sardis, Lydia, Asia Minor
(present-day Turkey), c. 610-600 BC. It can be attributed, among other
ways, as Weidauer 59-75 (Type 15).

Lions have been considered
kings of the jungle, and symbols of kingly authority, from time
immemorial. One of the most fascinating coins of all time, a coin that I
believe is the first true coin, features one the most fascinating lions
ever to appear on a coin.

The coin illustrated above is
a Lydian third stater, or trite,[1]minted sometime around 600 BC in Lydia,
Asia Minor (current-day Turkey), a country in close geographic and
cultural proximity to the Greek colonies in Asia Minor.

These coins are pricey
(typically costing in the $1,000 to $2,000 range), and though scarce are
not especially rare,[2]just in significant
demand because of their history, the evocativeness of their design, their
metallurgic characteristics, and their mystery. Other coins may vie for
the title of the world's first coin, also from Lydia, nearby in Ionia, in
the Middle East, and across the world in India and China, though none do
so as persuasively.[3]

The Lydian Lion is the one
coin I'd personally call "The Coin." It directly preceded ancient Greek
coinage, which through Rome begot all Western coinage, and which through
the Seleukids, Parthians, and Sassanians
begot all Islamic coinage. Indian coinage has largely been a
product of Greek, Roman, and Islamic influences.[4]Chinese coinage, though
it probably developed independently, was succeeded by Western-style
coinage in the late nineteenth century.[5]Other countries in Asia,
in Africa, and elsewhere have adopted the Western approach to coinage as
well. It's not chauvinistic, and it's only mildly hyperbolic, to suggest
that virtually all coinage in use today is the progeny of the
Lydian Lion,
that
it's the
Adam of coins.[6]

With certain matters relating
to the first coinage, suggestions and speculation, deduction and
theorizing are necessities because of the paucity of written,
archeological, hoard, find spot, and die-study evidence. What we don't
know about this coin and other early coins is at least as great as what we
do know, and with what we think we know, there's can be much disagreement
and debate. Still, the totality of the evidence that exists points to
certain conclusions that can be beneficial in understanding the origin of
coinage as well as, for coin collectors, in appreciating our
collections.

Among what we know with
confidence is that the Lydian Lion trite was the most common Lydian
denomination of its time[7]and that it's made of
electrum, an alloy of gold and silver called "white gold" in ancient
times.[8]

The Lydian Lion trite may have
been worth about a month's subsistence, according to Ian Carradice
and Martin Jessop
Price.[9]R.M. Cook placed a
higher value on it, suggesting it may have had the buying power of about
eleven sheep.[10]Similarly, Richard Seaford felt it
could buy about ten goats.[11]But as an indication of how unsettled
certain matters involving these coins are, Michael Mitchiner placed a much
lower value on it, believing it to be worth approximately one sheep or
three jars of wine.[12]

Aesthetically, the Lydian Lion is
pleasing.[13]It has a captivating
archaic style, with the design consisting primarily of simple geometric
shapes. The composition is both balanced and dynamic. The hatch marks of
the lion's mane divide the coin roughly in half, diagonally. Most of the
visual "action" -- the roaring mouth with teeth bared, the fierce
triangle-shaped eye, and the mysterious starburst (often described as a
nose wart) -- takes place to the right.

The lion head
is sometimes referred to as a lion protome, with "protome" an
archeological term meaning decorative motif in the form of an animal or
human head. The lion's mane and sunburst vary in style between earlier and
later versions of the coin. As with most Lydian Lion specimens, the lion
on the coin pictured above faces right; with rare varieties, it faces
left. Other rare varieties feature an inscription or part of one on the
obverse, in some cases with part of another lion head confronting the
first lion head.

Like most of
the earliest coins, instead of a design, the Lydian Lion features on the
reverse an incuse punch created during the minting process, from the
hammer used to force the blank planchet into the anvil die. With the
trite, the punch consists of two squares that are joined or separate. The
punch on smaller denominations consists of a single
square.

The specimen
pictured above weighs 4.71 grams, has a diameter of 13mm at its widest,
and at 4mm, is thick as a nugget. It likely consists of about 55 percent
gold, 43 percent silver, 2 percent copper, and trace amounts of lead and
iron, with the the later variety consiting of slightly lower gold and
higher silver, based upon analyses of these coins by a number of different
researchers. The above variety can be attributed, among other ways, as
Weidauer Type 15 and Mitchiner Group C.

What we also don't know with
certainty about these coins is why they were minted and what exactly the
obverse design means, though there's been no shortage of proposed answers.
The dating of these coins has also been widely debated. Because of the significance of Lydian Lions, many numismatists
have researched and studied these and related questions, but there's still
much room for further research and clarity.

Obsidian,
a type of volcanic glass or hardened lava, is one of many materials that
were used as money before coins and afterward. (Photo courtesy of Oregon Department of Geology and
Mineral Industries.)

The First Coin

The most fundamental debate
involving these coins is whether the Lydian Lion is in fact the world's
first true coin. Much here depends on what definition you use for "coin."
I'm using a commonly held numismatic definition of what a coin is, which
is spelled out well in Webster, Second Edition: "A piece of metal (or,
rarely, of some other material) certified by a mark or marks upon it to be
of a definite exchange value and issued by governmental authority to be
used as money." Key here are "mark or marks" and "certified ... by
government authority."

Other electrum pieces without
a pictorial design but instead with an empty field, pellets, striations,
parallel lines, or crisscrossing lines across their obverse were minted at
about the same time or slightly later.[14]Colin M.
Kraay,[15]E.S.G.
Robinson,[16]Charles
Seltman,[17]and others have argued
that these aren't true coins, only precoins, because they lack an essential
feature of coins -- a "type," or mark, of a recognized issuing authority,
which in the case of these coins is a roaring lion.[18]Instead of types, the
obverses, which were crude at first and gradually became more stylized
with the later geometric pieces, were meant to keep the planchet in place
in the anvil die as the reverse die was struck with a
hammer.

Though some
numismatists have identified these typeless precoins as transitional
pieces leading to the Lydian coins (striated pieces with nascent types
within the striations, in turn, were transitional pieces between the
nontyped and fully typed), Mitchiner persuasively argued that they were
Ionian Greek and led to typed Ionian Greek coins, and that chronologically
they came after the Lydian coins.[19]This follows from their
more modern and elaborately designed reverses.

There's no
reason that fully typed coins couldn't have been the first coins. Stone
and clay seals with pictorial designs predated coins, and some scholars
have argued, persuasively, that the idea of stamping coins with designs
developed from the use of seals to designate ownership or
authority.[20]Whereas in Lydia the
transition appears to have been from typed seals to typed coins, in Ionia
it was from typeless bullion to striated and geometric bullion to striated
bullion with nascent types within the striations to fully typed
coins.

Money in the
form of ingots, rings, coils, and other pieces of precious-metal bullion,
typically silver, emerged as civilization was emerging in Mesopotamia and
Egypt,[21]though unlike coins
these had no mark of authority. Some adhered to a weight standard and had
a fixed exchange value, some didn't. The typeless western Anatolian
electrum precoins are more akin to these bullion pieces such as these than
they are to coins.

Numerous other items have
performed one or more of the roles of money -- store of wealth, medium of
exchange, and standard of value -- before and after Lydian Lions. These
items include but aren't limited to seashells, beads, obsidian (volcanic
glass), disk-shaped stones, bamboo, grain, salt, tobacco, cigarettes,
liquor, tea, cocoa beans, honey, butter, dried fish, spears, swords,
arrows and arrowheads, axes and axeheads, knives, guns, bullets, empty bullet
cartridges, hoes, spades, nails, plastic, paper, animal skins, cloth,
clothing, blankets, gemstones, jewelry, feathers, whale teeth, shark
teeth, ivory, bone, cattle, camels, slaves, and wives.[22]See Traveling
back in time: Nature's Objects, for photos and
descriptions of several natural objects that precede coinage.

The Lydian
trite is by far the most common Lydian electrum denomination. Though it's
called a trite, or third of a stater, the c. 14g stater as a denomination
likely came into existence later and may not even be Lydian. An electrum
stater with a roaring lion facing right and a more elaborate reverse
incuse (Sear 3397) exists, though it's rare, with only two specimens
believed to be extant.[23]Another rare stater
exists depicting two confronting lion heads, but it employs the same
incuse style (Sear 3396). Mitchiner argued persuasively that these coins
were more likely later issues of Greek Ionia. There is in fact nothing
Lydian about the elaborate reverse incuses, nothing that looks like the
reverses of Lydian coins, whether trites and smaller fractions of Alyattes
or following him staters and fractions of Kroisos. The existence of rare
inscribed c. 4.6g pieces with one lion head confronting part of another
lion head that's mostly off the flan can be explained by a failed
experiment with a larger denomination or by the die being deliberately
larger than the planchet to allow for the lion head to face either right
or left. Laura Breglia argued that the trite was the stater, or standard, of the
earliest coins,[24]which in all likelihood was the
case.

If relatively little is known
conclusively about Lydian Lions, even less is known about the numerous
other early electrum coins that were likely issued at about the same time
or somewhat later, about 300 types in all, according to Stefan Karwiese.[25]Some are tentatively
attributed to states in nearby Ionia, including Miletos, Ephesos, and Phokaia; some may have been issued in Lydia.
Many, perhaps most, of these other types may have been issued privately,
perhaps by employers, merchants, noblemen, or bankers[26](some numismatists have
disputed the likelihood of their being private issues).[27]

What is clear
is that none was issued in anywhere near the same quantity as Lydian
Lions. According to Karwiese, in an impressive exercise in inventory,
Lydian electrum coins featuring a lion's head comprised 21.2 percent of
the 2,057 early electrum pieces known to him from published hoards and
auction and sales catalogs, while Lydian electrum fractions featuring a
lion's paw comprised 4.6 percent, for a total of 25.7 percent for Lydian
Lion electrum coins. The next largest group of early electrum pieces were
typeless precoins, at 10.8 percent. Coins with a swastika pattern
comprised 8.8 percent. The remaining 54.7 percent were spread out over the
300 or so other early electrum types.[28]

None of the
other early electrum coins, I'd therefore maintain, has the same grounds
for claiming to be official government issues as Lydian Lions. Though a
small emission in itself doesn't rule out the possibility of any of these
other coins being issued by a ruling authority first, it doesn't argue for
it either. I'd argue that the rare early electrum coins of other types
were more likely issued privately, by merchants, and are thus more akin to
tokens than true coins.

Given the absence of
definitive evidence that clearly identifies the "first coin," one option
you're left with is what Kagan described as "the
feeling of numismatists."[29]The weight of what
evidence we do have, even though not conclusive, points to Lydia as the
source of the first coins, which many numismatists today
believe[30]and which the ancients
may have believed as well,[31]and to Lydian Lions as
being the first coin. The emperor could well be without clothes, but until
another coin comes along that can credibly claim the crown and royal garb
of first coin, the Lydian Lion rules, to my eyes.

Map of the
Aegean world c. 800-600 BC, at
the time Lydian Lions were minted. The areas in pink, including Athens,
were controlled by the Ionian Greeks. The areas in orange, including
Sparta, were controlled by the Dorian Greeks. The areas in yellow were
controlled by other Greeks. The areas in light green, including Lydia,
Thrace, and Macedonia, were controlled by non-Greeks, though the
Macedonians were closely related to the Greeks and moving toward
integration with Greece and the Lydians, with their capital of Sardis,
were in close contact with the Ionian Greeks. (Map courtesy of Hypatia.org.)

Lydia

If the Lydians were the first
to strike coins, why them, an interesting people but a people not
particularly celebrated in history, a people assimilated long
ago?[32]This is another question, like many
involving ancient coins for which there's a scarcity of hard evidence, that requires you to resort to deduction to
answer. The result may not be conclusive, but it can be persuasive, and
though it's only tentative, it can still be satisfying. The answer in this
case, I believe, has to do with the Lydians' prosperity.

First, the Lydians commanded
the electrum-rich Paktolos (Pactolus) River. According to Greek mythology,
the Paktolos River acquired its electrum when King Midas of nearby Phrygia
bathed in it to wash away his golden touch, which had turned even his food
into gold, a telling parable about the destructiveness of wealth. In
actuality, The Paktolos River acquired its electrum from electrum-laden
quartz deposits near Mount Tmolos (called Mount Bozdag today). The
Lydians, as did others elsewhere, probably sifted the silt, sand, and
gravel of the
Paktolos River as well as the Hermos River and
other waterways with sheepskins, a practice in the ancient world that
likely gave rise to the legend of the Golden Fleece.[33]Small quantities of
electrum can still be recovered today from the Paktolos River and nearby streams.[34]

Second, the Lydians were well
positioned at the juncture of trade routes between the Near East and
Europe. As the 19th century German historian Ernst R. Curtius wrote, "The Lydians
became on land what the Phoenicians were by sea, the mediators between
Hellas and Asia."[35]Lydians have also been
described as the inheritors of the knowledge and traditions of the
earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia and the main conduit for their
passage into the Mediterranean world.[36]This knowledge,
according to George M.A. Hanfmann, included the concept
of a state-guaranteed currency, the exact system of "Babylonian" weights,
and probably the technology of processing gold. The Lydians profited,
according to Mitchiner, by taking metals from the Babylonians, Assyrians,
and Medians and passing them on to the Ionian Greeks.[37]

Third, Lydians were both
commercial and savvy. In the fifth century BC, the Greek historian
Herodotos (Herodotus), albeit exaggerating, wrote that the Lydians were
the first merchants
(kapelois).[38]Some scholars today
believe that the Lydians created the world's first free
market.[39]Hanfmann wrote that Lydia was "the first and
prototypical example of the process of transition from an agricultural
barter economy to an early commercial monetary urban
economy."[40]It's clear that the
Lydians knew ... money. The expression "rich as Croesus" came about
because of the success this Lydian king had in amassing
wealth.[41]His
father,
Alyattes, was enormously wealthy as
well.[42]The Lydians were also a
literate people, with literacy spread throughout society instead of being
limited primarily to the elite, as with the Greeks but unlike with most
peoples throughout history.[43]

Even though coinage doesn't
appear to have initially served commerce or trade, it's likely that the
Lydians created coins as we know them because they were the first to
recognize their profit-making potential, as will be shown below. It would
still be possible of course for later governments to earn seigniorage
profits by issuing
coins in pure gold and silver, just not as easy.[44]

Electrum
, as found in nature. Electrum can be a naturally occurring alloy of gold
and silver, or it can be a man-made alloy, as in the case of Lydian Lions,
in which the Lydians carefully controlled the percentages of gold and
silver. (Photo courtesy of Claus
Hedegaard, who sells minerals such as this.)

Electrum

Perhaps the most intriguing
debate deals with why the Lydians minted these early coins in electrum, an
alloy of gold and silver. Many sources erroneously refer to these
coins as being made of naturally occurring electrum. According to those
who have done the metallurgical analyses, these coins have a higher
content of both silver and copper than naturally occurring electrum from
the area. Western Anatolian electrum, then as now, has a gold content of
70 to 90 percent,[45]while these coins have a
gold content of 50 to 60 percent, with most of those that have been
analyzed consisting of around 54 percent gold.[46]This indicates that the Lydians added
these metals to electrum. Silver was less expensive, as was copper, and it
was likely that the small amount of copper that was added was done so to
improve the coins' color and hardness. Though some scholars disagree, the
evidence, though not conclusive, suggests that the Lydians already
possessed the technology to refine pure gold and silver and that if they
wanted they could have produced pure gold coins, as they did shortly later
during the rule of Kroisos (Croesus).[47]

The reason they didn't is
debated. One theory, famously proposed by Sture
Bolin in 1958, is that the first coins were the first numismatic deception.
The Lydian ruling authorities may have deliberately and surreptitiously
debased naturally occurring electrum as a profit-making enterprise, to put
it politely, or as a state-sanctioned racket, to put it less politely.
Bolin used the phrase "an imposture, a large-scale
swindle."[48]This theory, sometimes
in a slightly different rendering, has been supported by most scholars
since then, including T.F. Carney,[49]Sally
Herbert Frankel,[50]Hanfmann,[51]Price,[52]Andreas
Fürtwangler,[53]Carradice and Price,[54]and most recently
John R.
Melville-Jones,[55]Robert Mundell,[56]Paul
T. Keyser and David D. Clark,[57]Georges Le Rider,[58]and Koray
Konuk.[59]

Fewer scholars, it seems,
have argued
that silver and copper were added to naturally occurring electrum for less
sinister reasons, to create a more consistent alloy, including Robert W. Wallace,[60]Andrew
Ramage,[61]John H.
Kroll,[62]and
Karwiese.[63]No logical reason exists
that both purposes weren't served -- creating a consistent alloy for a
consistent appearance, and earning profits. Gold could have been added to
naturally occurring electrum as easily as silver. That the Lydian king
earned what were undoubtedly large seigniorage profits wasn't criminal,
just opportunistic.

It used to be thought that
coins came into existence to facilitate commerce, preventing merchants
from having to weigh bullion with each transaction. The weight of Lydian
trites, in fact, is remarkably consistent,
with most hovering very close to 4.7 grams.[64]But one of the things we
now know about the function of the first coins with any degree of
assurance is that they weren't used as coins were used later on in ancient
times, and as coins are used today, that is, for everyday market
transactions.

It's clear that it took some
time before ancient coins were used for commerce and trade. Even the
smallest-denomination electrum coins, perhaps worth about a day's
subsistence, would have been too valuable for buying a loaf of
bread.[65]Electrum coins have been
conspicuously absent from archeological finds in the marketplace in
Sardis, capital of Lydia.[66]Gold and silver bullion
were likely still used for commerce in western Asia Minor, including
Lydia, at the time that electrum coins were minted.[67]The first coins to be used for
retailing on a large-scale basis were likely small silver fractions minted
by the Ionian Greeks in the late sixth century BC.[68]

What's more, evidence shows
that Lydian Lions weren't used in international trade, not showing up in
substantial quantity in hoards outside of western Anatolia.[69]That role would be
served later on by silver coins, whose intrinsic value could be more
easily determined than electrum coins, beginning en masse with Athenian
Owls and to a lesser extent with the coins of Aegina, Corinth, and the Thraco-Macedonian tribes.[70]The uncertain intrinsic
value of electrum was the primary reason it was largely superseded as a
numismatic metal by silver and to a lesser extent until the time of
Alexander the Great by gold. (Electrum was also used in Asia Minor for the
coinage of Ephesos, Miletos, Phokaia, Smyrna, Chios, Kyzikos/Cyzicus,
Halikarnassos, Lampsakos, and Mytilene and elsewhere for the coinage of
Carthage, Syracuse, the Celts, the Thraco-Macedonian tribes, the Kushans,
and Bosporos.)

Instead of commerce and trade,
these earliest coins were in all likelihood used for other purposes. What
follows is a suggested scenario: Bullion had long been used as money. The
Lydian king, Alyattes, a crafty and powerful figure who ruled for half a
century, figured out that if he controlled the bullion market, or part of
it, he'd further amass his wealth. So he deemed that only bullion with his
mark, the roaring lion, could be used for official purposes -- the state
paying state workers and mercenaries and the people paying taxes and
making religious donations. Other purposes that this first coinage were
soon put to likely included gifts as part of treaty ceremonies, wedding
presents, and hospitality offerings. Along with typical seigniorage
profits that later minting authorities would enjoy, Alyattes further
enriched himself by debasing naturally occurring electrum with silver and
copper. To facilitate acceptance, he carefully controlled the weight of
each piece of this new type of bullion. Merchandisers and traders
continued to use regular bullion until the Greeks, clever traders that
they were, took what the Lydians invented and went a step further. They
figured out that silver coins, being more difficult to debase, would be
more accepted in more places than electrum coins for retailing and trade
while still earning them profits. Coinage, invented by the Lydians, was
thus spread by the Greeks.[71]

Ancient Coin
Timeline

Pre-Man

14 billion-2.6 million BP (Before Present)

13.7 billion BP (Before Present) Universe born in Big
Bang

13.7-4.6 billion BP Elements heavier than iron created
primarily in two ways: rapid collapse and explosion of massive stars
at end of their life into supernovas, and slow expansion of second-
or third-generation mid-size stars such as Sun at end of their life
into red giants; supernovas account for gold, platinum, and most
silver, fusion in massive stars and supernovas for copper and
nickel, red giants for most tin, fusion in massive stars and
supernovas and red giants for zinc

Stone Age

2.6 million BP-3500 BC

6000 BC Discovery of gold

Bronze Age

3500-1200 BC

3500 BC Bronze, strong man-made alloy of copper and tin,
invented independently in Middle East and Far East

2500 BC Indo-European speaking peoples begin arriving in
Europe from Pontic-Caspian steppe (region northeast of Black Sea and
northwest of Caspian Sea corresponding to ancient Scythia and
Sarmatia and present-day eastern Ukraine, Russian Volga and Southern
districts, and western Kazakhstan)

2200 BC Mycenaean Greeks, an Indo-European speaking
people, begin entering mainland Greece from north, founding cities
such as Mycenae, Thebes, and Athens

2000 BC Italic tribes begin arriving in Italy

Iron Age

1200-800 BC

1200-1100 BC BC Dorians (Spartans) immigrate from north
into Greek mainland, ending Mycenaean civilization; Sea Peoples, who
may have been barbarian mercenary infantry soldiers who rebelled
against ruling kingdoms, invade Mediterranean coasts, destroying
Hittite Empire and weakening Egyptian Empire; Dorians and Sea
Peoples succeed with use of iron weaponry; drought and earthquakes
may have created instability that helped the invaders

1100-1000 BC Ionians (Athenians), displaced by Dorians,
immigrate into Asia Minor

Archaic Age

800-500 BC

610 BC Lydians of Asia Minor invent coinage; shortly
afterward it spreads to Greek cities in Asia Minor, then Greek
islands, then Greek mainland, then rest of world

600 BC China issues its first coins, cast bronze pieces in
shape of farm tools

560 BC Lydians invent bimetallic coinage, issuing coins of
pure gold and pure silver

550 BC First coinage minted in mainland Greece, in Athens
and Corinth

509 BC Rome replaces monarchy with aristocratic republic

507 BC Athens initiates
world's first democracy, with power shared by male
citizens

Classical Age

500-330 BC

499-495 BC Unsuccessful Ionian revolt against Persian
domination of Greek Asia Minor

490 BC First Persian invasion of Greece; Battle of
Marathon

480-479 BC Second Persian invasion of Greece; Persians
defeat Spartans at Thermopylae; Persians occupy Athens; Greeks
defeat Persians at Salamis

477 BC Athens-dominated Delian League formed to unite
Greece against Persians

449 BC Greeks and Persians make peace, the Peace of
Callias

450 BC Sicilian Greeks issue Western world's first bronze
coins

443-429 BC Pericles is leader of Athens during its Golden
Age

431-404 BC Athens fights and loses Peloponnesian War to
Sparta, ending its military domination of Greece

395-340 BC Warfare among rival Greek leagues

392 BC Rome begins conquest of Italy, sacking Etruscan
city of Veii

338 BC Philip of Macedonia founds League of Corinth, ends
autonomy of Greek city states

336-323 BC Alexander the Great's reign; conquers Persian
Empire and most of known world east of Greece, spreading Greek
culture

Hellenistic Age

330-30 BC

323-148 BC Greek city states remain relatively
independent; frequent warfare continues among rival leagues

289 BC Rome issues its first coins, crude heavy cast
bronzes

280 BC Celts arrive in the Balkans and Asia Minor

264-146 BC Rome defeats Carthage in three Punic Wars,
establishing dominance in western Mediterranean

250 BC China introduces its first round coinage, cast in
copper with hole in middle; similar coins used by China until 1912

221 BC China unites for first time, under Qin (Ch'in)
dynasty

215 BC Rome introduces denarius, silver coin replacing
slightly larger drachm; serves as main Roman coin denomination for
500 years; evolves into French denier and English silver penny and
later both English copper penny and U.S. cent

200-196 BC First Roman victories over Greece

168 BC Rome wins Third Macedonian War

148 BC Rome annexes Macedonia, making it Roman province,
and begins stripping it of material wealth

146 BC Rome conquers Greece, sacking Corinth and ending
Greek independence

88-86 BC Athens joins revolt against Roman rule led by
Mithradates the Great of Pontos, Asia Minor, which ends in sack of
Athens by Roman general Sulla

64 BC Rome annexes Syria

57 BC Caesar conquers Gaul

55 BC Caesar invades Britain

50 BC Rome introduces the gold coin aureus

31 BC Octavian defeats Antony and Cleopatra and annexes
Egypt, ending Hellenistic Age

Roman Empire

27 BC-476 AD

27 BC Octavian becomes Augustus, first Roman emperor

27 BC-180 AD Pax Romana, 200-year period of relative peace
within Roman Empire, corresponding to pinnacle of Roman influence,
ending with death of emperor Marcus Aurelius

9 AD Rome loses the Battle of Teutoburg Forest to the
Germanic Cherusci tribe, ending its northern expansion

43 AD London founded as Roman settlement

70 AD Roman emperor Titus destroys Temple of Jerusalem and
sacks the city, leading to the diaspora of the Jews to Armenia,
Iraq, Iran, Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Spain, and Greece

267 AD Gothic tribes (East Germanic tribes who probably
originated in southern Sweden) sack Byzantium, Athens, and Corinth

306-337 AD Rule of Constantine the Great, first emperor to
fully embrace Christianity; moves Roman capital to Byzantium

360 AD Beginning of the intensification of Germanic
incursions into Roman territory, with Visigoths, Ostrogoths,
Vandals, Burgundians, and Franks increasingly threatening Roman
hegemony in the West

360-363 AD Reign of Julian the Philosopher, last Roman
emperor who tried to restore classical paganism

410 AD Rome withdraws from Britain

476 AD Romulus Augustulus, last Western Roman emperor,
exiled and replaced by Germanic king Odoacer; traditionally
considered end of the Roman Empire, though the Eastern Roman Empire
of the Bytantines, with Constantinople as its capital, would last
until 1453

Note: Many of the above dates are approximate and debatable; some
early events are commonly accepted theories; division of time into
particular ages is partly from a Western perspective. See Traveling back in time:
Nature's Objects for photos and descriptions of several natural
objects that span the eons. See Ancient Timeline
for a more comprehensive timeline.

Dating

The dating of Lydian Lion
coins is "the most challenging question in ancient Greek numismatic
scholarship," according to Nicholas Cahill and John H. Kroll.[72]I believe the Lydian electrum trites
were minted during the reign of King Alyattes, c. 610-560 BC,[73]and that the first
Lydian coinage was minted during the early part of Alyattes' reign (scholars disagree on the years
of Alyattes' reign, with the date of his assuming
power ranging between 619 and 609 BC and the date of his death typically
being 561 or 560 BC). Alyattes was the father of Kroisos (Croesus), the Lydian king of legendary wealth who was likely
the first to strike coins of pure gold and silver.[74]The Mermnad (Mermnadae) dynasty of Lydia consisted of, in
chronological order, Gyges, Ardys, Sadyattes, Alyattes, and Kroisos
(Croesus).

Alyattes is infrequently referred to as Alyattes II. One
well-respected ancient coin auction house recently changed its
attributions of these coins to Alyattes II, and a few other auction houses
and dealers have since followed suit. Wikipedia uses "Alyattes II," based on
the online
Encyclopaedia of the Orient, though this online work provides no
references. The auction house that uses "Alyattes II" said it bases this
on John Lempriere's 1788 Classical Dictionary (Biblioteca Classica), its
full name being Classical Dictionary of Proper Names Mentioned in Ancient
Authors Writ Large, With Chronological Table. This may have been the source used by
the online Encyclopaedia of the Orient as well. But Classical Dictionary also doesn't reference its source of
the "Alyattes II" usage.

It's likely that Classical Dictionary
based it usage on ancient epigraphs or on works whose usage was based on
ancient epigraphs, epigraphs being lists of kings on clay tablets and
other media. According to the epigraphic tradition,, "Alyattes I" was an
earlier king of Lydia, during the eighth century BC, and part of the
Tylonid dynasty. The Tylonid dynasty allegedly consisted of Ardys I, Alyattes
I, Myrsos, and Kandaules and preceded the Mermnad dynasty. The Tylonid
dynasty, in turn, was allegedly preceded by the Heraklid (Sons of
Herakles) dynasty, though sometimes the two dynasties are referred to as
one, the Heraklid/Tylonid dynasty. According to these lists, the demigod
Herakles was the progenitor of the Lydians.

Using old references can shed interesting light on the state
of scholarship in the past, but it can be problematic with ancient coin
attributions when done in isolation. Epigraphic lists are known by
historians today to be generally unreliable as historical documents. For
one thing, they sometimes combine kings from different regions. Livio C.
Stecchini contended, for instance, that Gyges was the first Lydian king
and those before him, including the earlier Alyattes, were kings of nearby
Maionia, a Phrygia dependency.[75]What's more, epigraphic lists are often
legendary rather than annalistic, including as they do, for instance, the
mythic hero Herakles as a city's founder, with Lydians as with other
peoples, so another strong possibility is that "Alyattes I" was a
legendary rather than a historical figure. Even Wikipedia acknowledges that the Lydian dynasties
earlier than the Mermnads were wholely or
semi-mythical. In general when consulting ancient sources, from Herodotos
and Plutarch to Xanthos and Nikolaos of Damaskos, the further back in time
you go, the more history recedes into legend and myth.

The ancient historians
Herodotos and Strabo both refer to Kroisos' father as Alyattes and make no
mention of an earlier King Alyattes of Lydia in their writings on Lydia.
The same is true of modern historians, archeologists, and numismatists who
have focused on Lydia, including George M.A. Hanfmann, John Griffiths
Pedley, Robert W. Wallace, Koray Konuk, and Andrew Ramage. Likewise, other
newer references such as Oxford Classical Dictionary and Encyclopaedia
Britannica don't use
"Alyattes II" and make no mention of an earlier Lydian king named
Alyattes. No ancient coin attribution reference that I've found uses
"Alyattes II" either.

Because of the unreliability
of the epigraphy and because of the uncertainty about where "Alyattes I"
reigned or whether he even existed, it makes little sense to refer to the
historical Alyattes as Alyattes II in describing these coins. The
first auction house has just gone back to using "Alyattes," and no doubt
the auction houses and dealers that copied it will follow suit as
well.

My dating of the above coins
to the reign of Alyattes is based on the archeological evidence
uncovered in 1904 and 1905 by D.G. Hogarth
and the British Museum at the Temple of Artemis
at Ephesos, also called the Ephesian
Artemision
(which
would later evolve into one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world), on
archeological work done by a team from Harvard University and Cornell
University led by Hanfmann beginning in the late 1950s, on evidence
uncovered there more recently by the Austrian Archaeological
Institute,[76]on interpretations of
the archeological evidence by various scholars, and on the timing of the
subsequent spread of coinage throughout the Aegean
world.

Early numismatists such as
Barclay Head believed that Lydian coins were minted as early as c. 700
BC,[77]or even earlier,
and some dealers
today still date these coins the way they were dated a century ago,
following "high chronology." But much archeological evidence has surfaced
since then, and the dating of Lydian Lions has been inching forward in
time, with most numismatists today arguing for later dating, or "low
chronology." Kraay in 1976 wrote that the first coins were
minted in "the second half of the seventh century BC,"[78]Price in 1983 "the last
quarter of the seventh century [BC],"[79]G.K. Jenkins in 1990 "no
earlier than in the late seventh century BC,"[80]Carradice in 1995 likely from "the late seventh to early sixth centuries
BC,"[81]and Le Rider in 2001 not
"before 590-580 [BC]."[82]

Often these coins are dated
today by dealers c. 650 to 561 BC, which is how David R.
Sear dated them in his 1979 standard Greek Coins and Their
Values. Other times they're dated very broadly -- before c. 561 BC,
this being approximately the year that Alyattes died and Kroisos assumed power. This is both
overcautious and potentially misleading, suggesting the possibility that
they could have been minted at any time before Kroisos.

A minority of
numismatists have diverged from these dating patterns, dating them
earlier[83]or
later.[84]

Because of the dating uncertainty
involving these coins, "one should not rely too strongly on any published
dates at this point," according to Wayne G. Sayles.[85]This advice may turn out
to be wise, but it's unsatisfying. Just as there are negatives in basing a
conclusion on insufficient evidence, there are negatives in failing to
suggest a conclusion when evidence, even if sparse or debatable, supports
it.[86]

In their attributions, Lydian
Lions are often associated with "Uncertain King," which I believe is also
overcautious. While it's not certain that these coins were minted by
Alyattes, the body of evidence and opinion
strongly suggests they were, and attributing them to Alyattes (who reigned for about half a century) strikes me as being no
more rash than the putting forth of much else that has become knowledge in
ancient numismatics. SNG von Aulock and SNG Kayhan got the dating right
for these coins, I believe, and SNG Fitz. got the attribution to Alyattes
right. SNG Tübingen, Boston MFA, and the auction houses Fritz Rudolf
Künker and Hess-Divo both date and attribute these correctly, I believe,
giving them to Alyattes c. 610-561 BC. With the caveats in mind, I'm dating
the first coin illustrated on this page, the first coin below, and all
coins of its type to c. 610-600 BC and the second below and all coins of
its type to c. 600-560 BC.

First coin above:
Lydian electrum trite, first major variety (4.71g, 13x10x4 mm),
Sardis, Lydia, Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), c. 610-600 BC. This is the
first main variety of Lydian Lion, seen far less commonly than the second
and minted over a far shorter period. Inscribed varieties, even rarer, are
likely contemporaneous with this one. It can be attributed as Weidauer
59-75 (Type 15), Mitchiner 9-11 (Group C), SNG München Plate 1, 2, SNG
Lockett 2976, Rosen 653, Babelon Traité 4, and BMC Lydia 2. It likely
consists of about 55 percent gold, 43 percent silver, 2 percent copper,
plus trace elements of lead and iron. It's slightly redder in hue than the
coin underneath, which likely indicates a slightly higher gold and copper
content.

Second coin above: Lydian electrum trite, second major
variety (4.74g, 12x11x4 mm), Sardis, Lydia, Asia Minor (present-day
Turkey), c. 600-560 BC. This is the second main variety of Lydian trites,
later, slightly more refined in style, and considerably more common than
the first. The sunburst above the lion's eye typically has more rays, and
the hatches making up the lion's mane point downward instead of upward. It
can be attributed as Sear Greek 3398, Weidauer 86-89 (Type 16), Mitchiner
14-19 (Group D), SNG Cop. 449, SNG Kayhan 1013, SNG Fitz. 4836, SNG
Lockett 2977, SNG Hart 1005, SNG Berry 1135, SNG Delepierre 2787-2790, SNG
Tübingen 3648, SNG von Aulock 8205, SNG München Plate 1, 1, Dewing
2421-2423, Winterthur 3672-3673, Rosen 655-656, Boston MFA 1763-1765,
Babelon Traité 6, and BMC Lydia 7. It likely consists of about 54 percent
gold, 44 percent silver, 2 percent copper, plus trace elements. (Photo of
this coin courtesy of Electrum USA Ltd.)

Varieties

The first major variety of the
Lydian Lion trite, Weidauer Type 15/Mitchiner Group
C, is distinguished from the second major variety, Weidauer Type 16/Mitchiner Group D, in the
following way: It was more crudely designed, portrayed a different
forehead knob shaped like a cross instead of a sunburst (likely a more
primitively rendered sunburst), and portrayed a lion's mane with hatch
marks pointing up in the shape of chevrons instead of down in the shape of
Vs. Weidauer Type 15/Mitchiner Group
C is believed by Kraay,[87]Jeffrey
Spier,[88]Mitchiner[89], and others to be
earlier -- perhaps by a decade or two. Robinson pointed out that the last
coins in this series feature a lion's eye that's smaller and less
triangular and a forehead knob that shrinks to a discreet
pellet.[90]

The many die links of the
earlier variety, Weidauer Type 15/Mitchiner Group C, indicate it
was minted over a far shorter period of time than this later
variety,
Weidauer Type 16/Mitchiner Group D, which was minted in far greater
numbers. Because these later coins show evidence of few die links, this
indicates they were minted over a longer period of time.

Varieties identified as
Weidauer
Types 17
and 18 or Mitchiner Groups A and B are rare coins carrying an inscription
and sometimes part of another lion head that confronts the first one. The
truncation of the other lion head indicates that these coins may have been
struck on a die larger than the planchet, preventing part of the design
from appearing. There are no bona fide extant staters, however, showing
both heads in full. If such coins existed, they existed in very small
numbers. A number of attempts have been made to explain these rare
truncated issues. One possibility is that they resulted from early trial
issues -- early experiments -- with the dies used for them soon cut down
in size to produce the more practical trites. The crude attempts at the
letterforms, and the difficulty today in reading them, support this being
a failed experiment. But Lydian confronting-head types exist with smaller
fractions as well. So another possibility is that the dies were
deliberately designed so the coins could be struck with either a lion head
facing right or left.

Type 17/Group B carries the inscription, depending on how it's
read and transliterated, of "Walwet," "Walwel," "Welwes," "Welwet," "Valvet," "Valvel," or "Valvei," which has been variously
interpreted, including Alyattes, Of the King, lion, a
local governor, a mint official, a private merchant, a mint, a river, or
an Anatolian deity.
One Type 17/Group B variety, seldom seen, depicts the lion
facing left. Weidauer Type 18/Mitchiner Group A carries the inscription "Kukas,"
"Kalil," "Kalim," "Rkalil," "Rkalim," "Rhas," "Kikalil," or "Kukalim," depending on how it's read, which
has also been variously interpreted, including Gyges, Ardys, Sadyattes, a government official, or
Alyattes' wife.

Karwiese as have others before
him argued that the Type 17/Group B inscription means Alyattes, or more completely, "I am
of Alyattes" (Walwet is short for Walwettes, which
is the Lydian name for Alyattes), and the Type 18/Group A inscription
refers to another member of the royal family, perhaps his wife, who is
thought to have played an important role at the court.[91]Mitchiner agreed with
the Type 17/Group B Alyattes translation but argued that Type 18/Group A
was earlier, with the inscription meaning Sadyattes, who was Alyattes'
predecessor. Wallace, through his examination of the reverse punches,
concluded that some Type 18/Group A specimens were minted after some Type
17/Group B coins, meaning that the inscription couldn't mean Sadyattes or
any other predecessor of Alyattes and instead stood for a member of
Alyattes' royal family, which is in line with Karwiese's thinking.
Mitchiner feels that Type 17/Group B and Type 18/Group A both precede Type
15/Group C and the more common Type 16/Group D. Wallace, more
convincingly, argued that Type 15/Group C, Type 17/Group B, and Type
18/Group A were all contemporaneous and preceded Type 16/Group
D.[92]

Mitchiner suggested that the inscriptions were used on the
coins of Sadyattes and the first coins of Alyattes to clearly identify the
issuer, with the inscriptions on later Group C and D Alyattes coins no
longer needed. The 15 years he allots for Type 16/Group D, however, is
likely too short to account for all the die varieties in existence. What's
more, he doesn't account for why Kroisos didn't put his inscription on his
first coins. Wallace argued, more credibly, that Type 17/Group B and Type
18/Group A were experiments.

Less credibly, Wallace argued that Kroisos/Croesus assumed
power not in 561 or 560 BC, as is widely believed, but as early as c. 580
BC. Though he doesn't state it explicitly, this would suggest that many
Lydian Lions were minted by Kroisos/Croesus. But Wallace's only
justification is that he's "quite sure" that Herodotos made up some of his
facts upon which the Kroisos/Croesus dating is based; he doesn't expound
on why he's quite sure.[93]Nonetheless, at least
one auction house has begun to attribute Lydian Lions to "Time of Alyattes
II to Kroisos." As things currently stand, it makes little sense to redate
Kroisos' and Alyattes' reigns, and the only electrum coins that can be
securely attributed to Kroisos are rare transitional electrum pieces
featuring Kroisos' iconography of a lion confronting a bull. The auction
house that attributed these coins this way appears to have reverted to its
previous attributions.

Lydian Lion
trite sunburst. Sometimes
described as a nose wart, this design appears on the forehead of Lydian
Lion electrum coins. Type 15 trites portray a crudely designed sunburst,
shaped like a cross, with four rays. Most Type 16 Lydian Lions feature a
sunburst that has five rays, like the above specimen, but the number of
rays can range from three to seven.

Sunburst

There's also much disagreement
about the design device on or above the lion's forehead on these coins. It
has been called, undoubtedly among other things, a nose wart, hairy knob
on nose, tuft of hair on forehead, globular protuberance on nose,
prominent knob, forehead knob, forehead protuberance, spiky protuberance
on forehead, claw, radiate globule on forehead, rayed knob on forehead,
star-shaped protuberance, radiate star, comet, sun, rising sun, and
sunburst.

The most likely, and most
intriguing, explanation is that it was meant as a sun symbol. Later coins minted in
Lydia depicted a stand-alone sunburst or star symbol, including those of
Alexander III and Philip III and cistophoric coinage. The Lydian Lion
sunburst is too far
above the nose to be a nose wart. On well struck and preserved specimens,
the clearly delineated rays indicate that it's more than a generic bump.
It can have from three to seven lines, so it was not likely meant as a
claw. One possibility is that it may have been intended to be seen as the
sun off in the distance behind the lion's head rather than attached to the
forehead. But latter coins and earlier sculpture, using a similar device,
clearly show it attached to the lion's forehead. This doesn't mean these
devices can't still be sun symbols, which go all the way back to the
beginnings of civilization, and before; sunbursts and their cousins,
halos, are still used as symbols of divinity. What it does mean is that
the lion gains complexity.

Robinson suggested that the
lion-with-sunburst was an attribute or symbol of Sandon (Sandan, Sandas, Sandes, Santesh, Shamash), the Hittite/Babylonian sun, storm,
or warrior god who the Greeks equated with Herakles (though the Hittites
regarded him more as a Zeus-type figure) and who the Lydians believed
their royal house descended from.[94]Sardis
(Sardes, Sardeis), the capital of Lydia, may have been
named after
Sandon. Hanfmann, less persuasively, argued that lions
on Lydian artifacts were meant as an attribute of Kybele (Cybele, Kuvava),[95]the Anatolian mother
goddess who the Greeks sometimes equated with Demeter. Rather than a sun symbol, Karwiese contended that the forehead device is
an abstraction of a feline brow bunching up as the lion roars, an
explanation that though creative seems unlikely.[96]

Whatever its genesis, the
lion-with-sunburst was the heraldic emblem, the dynastic badge, used by
the kings of Lydia, the Mermnad dynasty, to indicate their legitimacy
to rule.[97]Lions in general show up
with "enormous" frequency in Lydian art, according to Hanfmann.[98]In ancient literature,
the Lydian king was described as carrying a lion cub around the walls of
the Sardian acropolis as protection against
attack.[99]The lion-with-sunburst
design was also used beforehand by the Hittites, Assyrians, and
Babylonians[100]and afterward by
the Parthians.

Lions on early
coinage were far from unique to Lydia. The lion in fact was the most
frequently used device on sixth century BC coinage, used elsewhere in Asia
Minor and nearby islands including Miletos, Samos, Smyrna, Kyzikos,
Termera, Knidos, Kamiros, Lindos, Mylasa, and Cyprus as well as on the
coins of Velia in Italy and Akanthos in Macedonia.

Lion paw electrum 48th
stater (0.27g). This coin
features on the obverse a lion's paw. There's disagreement over whether
these fractions are Lydian. (Photo of this coin courtesy of Classical Numismatic
Group.)

Denominations

Besides the trite, other
Lydian Lion denominations are collectible, some more than others. The
stater features the entire forepart of a lion rather than its head but is
exceedingly rare and, as previously noted, is likely not an issue of Lydia
at all. The
sixth stater (hekte) and twelfth stater
(hemihekte), which feature a
lion's head like the trite, are common enough but are seen less often than
the trite, though they're typically less expensive because of their
smaller size. The twenty-fourth, forty-eighth, and
ninety-sixth
staters typically feature a lion's paw, sometimes a lion's head,
sometimes just a featureless blob, and are seen even less often, as is
typical of very small fractions, which circulated more and were hoarded
less than larger coins.

There's much
uncertainty with fractions below the twelfth. Mitchiner contended that
these aren't coins of Lydia but issues of the Ionian Greeks, arguing that
the style of the lion and the incuse punch are more Greek than
Lydian.[101]Karwiese disputed this,
pointing to die links with the larger coins.[102]Rosen 658 is a lion head forty-eighth
stater that Rosen (Nancy M. Waggoner) attributed to Lydia, while Rosen 659
and SNG von Aulock 8208 (same coin) is an electrum lion head ninety-sixth
stater that both references attribute to Lydia, though Waggoner
acknowledged questions about both of these attributions. Rosen 283 and 284
are electrum lion's paw twenty-fourth staters that are listed in the "Asia
Minor: Uncertain" section but that are described as being "probably
Lydian." Rosen 302 is an electrum lion's paw forty-eighth stater and Rosen
303 an electrum lion's head forty-eighth stater that are also listed in
the "Asia Minor: Uncertain" section, but Waggoner mentioned that Rosen
302-303 and SNG Berry 1031-1033 are similar coins that SNG Berry
tentatively attributed to Caria, which is just south of Lydia and Ionia.
Head in BMC Lydia listed but didn't illustrate lion head twenty-fourth,
forty-eighth, and ninety-sixth staters that he attributed to Lydia. Head
described the twenty-fourth stater as having a globule on the lion's
forehead and one of the forty-eighth staters as having a tuft of hair on
the lion's forehead, which are good arguments for these issues being
Lydian.

The possibility exists that
the lion head pieces were minted in Lydia and the lion paw fractions were
minted elsewhere.

Lydian electrum
trite with nine countermarks.
Unlike later coins in which countermarks were used to certify that a coin
was of good metal or was legal tender in a location other than where it
was minted, countermarks on these very early coins are likely marks of
ownership.

Countermarks

Many Lydian Lions have
countermarks, with some individual pieces having more than ten, all
different, on the obverse, reverse, and edge. The countermarked coin
illustrated above has nine countermarks. The most countermarks I've seen
or read about on one of these coins is eighteen. A.R.
Bellinger
wrote that
the countermarks on Lydian Lions "were doubtless intended to identify
individual pieces for their owners" since the countermarks he observed
on Gordion Hoard coins were all different. Because
of the number of different countermarks on Lydian Lions, it's unlikely
that they served as money changers' stamps to mark them as acceptable
currency, as countermarks did on later ancient Greek coinage, though this
has also been disputed.[103]

I believe that
the fourree I've illustrated below, with eight different countermarks,
proves that countermarks on these first coins couldn't have been used as
marks of authenticity. It's illogical to think that eight different
testers would have certified this underweight counterfeit as being
authentic. You can feel the difference in weight, about 28 percent
lighter, just by holding the coin in your hand. And unlike some later
coins, Lydian Lions didn't circulate beyond the area in which they were
minted, so there's no likelihood that they were countermarked in a foreign
land to certify them as official currency.

First coin above:
Lion head electrum hemihekte. This coin, like similar issues
thought by many numismatists to be ancient imitations of Lydian electrum
coins, features a crude outline of a lion's head. It may have been minted
by the Kimmerians or Thracians. More likely though it wasn't an imitative
issue at all but instead an official issue of Kolophon or Priene. (Photo
of this coin courtesy of Harlan J. Berk.)

Second coin above: Lion head
electrum trite (4.66g). This coin appears to have a much better claim
to be a Kimmerian or Thracian imitative of a Lydian lion head coin. It's
higher relief, and the reverse incuse isn't designed. (Photo of this coin
courtesy of Classical
Numismatic Group.)

Imitatives

Variants of Lydian Lion coinage with a crudely rendered low-relief outline
of a lion,
typically depicting the lion facing right, sometimes left, include coins usually attributed as
"barbarous imitations." If they are in fact imitative issues, they may
have been struck by the Kimmerians (Cimmerians) from the north, who
overran central Asia Minor and a significant part of the Lydian Empire
during much of the seventh century BC, or they may have been struck by the
Thracians allied with them, who imitated later Greek
coinage.

Examples of
these coins, all attributed as barbarous issues, are pictured in
Sear's Greek Coins and Their
Values
(SG 3406),
The Weber Collection:
Greek Coins (Weber
6769), Weidauer's Probleme der frühen Elektronprägung (Weidauer 117-118), Seltman's
Greek Coins: A History
of Metallic Currency and Coinage Down to the Fall of the Hellenistic
Kingdoms (Seltman
Plate 1, 14), Babelon's Traité des monnaies grecques et romaines (Babelon Traité 56), and
Head's
Catalogue of Greek Coins in the British Museum: Lydia
(BMC Lydia 27). A hekte of the same type is pictured above.
SNG Kayhan, on the other other hand, categorized these coins under "Early
Electrum from Uncertain Mints in Ionia."

Mitchiner also
doesn't feel these pieces are Lydian imitatives, and he reattributed them
as official coinage from Kolophon or Priene.[104]As he illustrated, other
very early official coinage also exhibits similar crude, low-relief
designs. What's more, the reverse style of the alleged imitatives, more
designed, is completely different from the style used by the Lydians for
their punches. This doesn't mean that the Kimmerians, Thracians, or other
peoples didn't imitate Lydian lion head electrum coins. The trite
illustrated above, for instance, appears to be crudely engraved in an
imitative or barbarous fashion, but it more clearly uses the Lydian trite
as a prototype.

Lydian electrum
trite fourree with eight countermarks (3.41g). The diagnostics of this ancient fake are
its low weight and the exposed silver interior. The electrum plating has
worn off in some areas, leaving the silver interior exposed at the high
points of the obverse and reverse. The impressed areas wound up with
thinner plating, which caused the interior silver to be also exposed at
the incuse square and countermarks. The dark areas show uncleaned darkly
toned silver.

Fakes

Contemporaneous plated
counterfeits (fourrees), having silver, billon, or lead cores, were struck
as well. If
Lydian Lions were the first true coins, these were the first counterfeit
coins. Deceptive plated precoin ingots were made as
well.

Fourrees of
Lydian Lions are much more difficult to find than official issues.
Fourrees of these coins are also seen more with smaller fractions than
with trites. The reason for this may be that it was easier to deceive with
the smaller pieces, the weight difference between them and official coins
being less, so more fourree fractions were made in ancient times. Since
2003 I've seen only three trite fourrees on the market. One was sold as a
fourree, one as a "possible ancient counterfeit," and the above specimen,
despite its low weight, was sold as an official coin. The European auction
house mistook the exposed toned and cleaned silver for "black and silver
deposits."

Plating a
gold/electrum coin in ancient times was done using a number of different
techniques. The most common, foil gilding, involved wrapping gold/electrum
foil around a roughened planchet and securing it by tapping it with a
hammer, burnishing it, and heating it before striking the coin. All
fourrees were plated before being struck to prevent loss of
detail.

The flans of
some Lydian Lions show evidence of light-colored platinum group
inclusions. These bits of metal were in the original matrix and didn't
separate out during the refining process, which is thought to have
involved "cupellation" with heat, to separate gold and silver from copper
and lead, and "cementation" with salt, to separate silver from
gold.[105]Such inclusions may
detract from eye appeal but can be one indication of
authencity.

Modern counterfeits of Lydian
Lions, according to counterfeit coin expert Robert Kokotailo, are seldom seen because these coins,
on one hand, aren't among the most pricey, and on the other hand, don't
have mass market appeal.[106]I found three Lydian
trite forgeries documented in the Bulletin on Counterfeits, two in the
Vol. 22 (1997), No. 1 issue, one in the Vol. 20 (1995), No. 1 issue. The
diagnostics include the following: the metal is too red or brown, the
obverse fields are too flat, and the reverse incuse punch is too regular
in shape.

Lydian electrum trite
plastic replica. Severely
underweight at just 0.4 grams, this is an obvious replica, made of plastic
and gold painted. It's the correct size, and from its online picture, it
doesn't look terribly inauthentic, though it's a bit muddy looking and the
coloration is too saturated. Novelty pieces such as this aren't
dangerous.

Modern Turkish
gold proof commemorative coin.
This noncirculating coin, minted by the Turkish State Mint as a
collectible, has a face value of 1 million lira, which when the coin was
minted in 1997 was the equivalent of about $10. Compared with Lydian Lion
trites, the coin is undersized, weighing 1.24g and measuring 14.0mm in
diameter. It consists of .999 gold and has a reeded edge. It commemorates
the Weidauer Type 15/Mitchiner Group C Lydian lion trite, Lydia being a
kingdom whose territory was within present-day Turkey. The obverse
inscription translates into "First coin of the world, Lydia, 640 BC." This
dating is likely a bit too early, and the hatches of the lion's mane point
in the wrong direction. The reverse inscription translates into "Turkish
Republic." You can find current and past Turkish State Mint commemorative
coins at its excellent Web
site.

Modern Lydian Mint proof
quarter-ounce gold bullion coin.
As a bullion coin, this piece, minted by the Lydian Mint, a private mint
in Ann Arbor, Mich., is a way to invest in gold. Compared with Lydian Lion
trites, the coin is oversized, weighing 0.25 troy oz. (7.79g) and
measuring 22.0mm in diameter. It consists of .999 gold and has a reeded
edge. The obverse is based on the design of ancient Lydian electrum
trites, hektes, and hemihektes, the reverse on the design of smaller
ancient electrum fractions from Lydia or elsewhere in Asia Minor. It
contains three times as much gold as the approximately 2.6g of gold in
Lydian trites. The Lydian Mint also produces 1 troy oz. gold bullion
pieces as well as 1 oz. and 1/4 oz. silver bullion pieces using the same
design. More at its Web
site.

Endnotes

[1]As is
customary in numismatics, I'm using the term "stater" here, which the
ancient Greeks used and which in ancient times meant "weigher" or "that
which balances the scales." A stater was the standard denomination upon
which the smaller denominations were based, and it could refer to an
electrum, gold, or silver coin. The term "trite" was also used by the
ancient Greeks as a denomination of electrum coins, for one-third of an
electrum stater. Silver fractions were typically referred to as drachms,
obols, and so on instead of as trites, hektes, and so on. M. Mitchiner in
his recently published Ancient
Trade and Early Coinage, Hawkins
Publications, London, 2004, p. 215, makes a case that instead of "stater"
a more appropriate term that should be used in conjunction with these
Lydian coins is "shekel," which was a traditional Mesopotamian term for a
given weight of bullion, which became the term for the standard coin
denomination of the Asian kingdoms and many Eastern cities, and which the
Greeks subsequently Hellenized to "stater." The term "shekel" or "shiklus"
goes back to ancient Sumer, according to R. Mundell in "The Birth of
Coinage," scheduled to be published in the Zagreb Journal of Economics,
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/economics/discpapr/DP0102-08.pdf, pp. 5, 6.
Sumer is the most often theorized location for the beginning of
civilization.

[2]S.
Karwiese in "The
Artemisium Coin
Hoard and the First Coins of Ephesus," Revue belge de numismatique 137
(1991), p. 8, indicated at that time he had counted 436 extant Lydian Lion
Head specimens from published hoards and auction and sales
catalogs.

[3]Numerous
claims have been made for other sources of origin for the first coin.
Disputing each is beyond the scope of this article. As just three
examples, C. Thompson argued for Cisjordan (Israel
and the West Bank of the Jordan River) in her article "Sealed Silver in
Iron Age Cisjordan and the
'Invention of Coinage'," Oxford Journal of Archeology 22, 1 (2003), pp.
67-107; T. Chandler argued for Jerusalem in his article "Hypothetical
History: Scrabble of the Ancient World," Celator, May 1992, pp. 42, 43;
and M. Balmuth argued
for northern Syria in her paper "Remarks on the Appearance of the Earliest
Coins," Studies
Presented to George M.A.
Hanfmann, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, 1971, pp. 1-7. In "A Hoard of Early
Multi-Denominational Electrum Coins," SAN Vol. XXI (2002), pp. 17-19, E.
McFadden didn't explicitly argue for Western Asia Minor "geometric"
electrum as being the first coinage, but he did argue that these coins,
which feature a geometric pattern on both obverse and reverse, may have
preceded coins that feature a typeless punch for a
reverse.

[4]N.
Mahajan puts
forth the contention that India developed the world's first coins in a
book scheduled to be published by S. Hirano. On the other hand, M.
Mitchiner, pp. 741-742, argued as others have before him that Indian coins
developed from Western prototypes, which Indians came in contact with
through Babylonian traders. D. Schaps, The
Invention of Coinage and the Monetization of Ancient
Greece, University of Michigan Press, Ann
Arbor, 2004, pp. 232-234, disagrees, feeling that Indian coins developed
independently of Lydian and Greek coins, but later than
them.

[5]Coins are
generally thought to have developed independently in China, with the first
coin-like devices being cast bronze miniatures of hoes, spades, and
knives. They eventually carried inscriptions and mint marks, perhaps first
appearing this way c. 700 BC, according to M. Tameanko, "The Coins of
Hsienyang -- City of the First Emperor of China," Celator, July 2005, pp.
6-23. The first inscribed round metal disks, without designs and with
central holes so they could be carried on a string, appeared later,
perhaps c. 300 BC, though some scholars have dated them earlier, with
Tameanko dating them to c. 600 BC, about the time that coins were emerging
in the West. On the other hand, M. Mitchiner, pp. 1125-1126, contended
that Chinese coins developed from Olbian dolphin money brought to China by
Skythian traders. As with Indian coins, D. Schaps, pp. 234-235, contended
that Chinese coins developed independently but later than Lydian and Greek
coins. G. Davies, A History of Money: From Ancient Times
to the Present Day, University of Wales Press, Cardiff,
1994, pp.54-57, 62, contended that Chinese spade, hoe, and knife money
preceded Lydian coinage but refers to them as
"quasi-coins."

[6]J.
Porteous, "The
Nature of Coinage," Coins: An
Illustrated Survey, 650 BC to the Present
Day, edited by M. Price,
Hamlyn, London,
1980, pp. 9-12, presents an outline of the introduction of coinage in
several locations in the world. S. Karwiese,
p. 9, called Lydian coins the "mother of all
coinage."

[7]E.
Robinson, "The Coins from the Ephesian
Artemision
Reconsidered," Journal of Hellenic Studies 71 (1951), p. 159; G. Jenkins,
Ancient Greek
Coins, Seaby, London, 1990, p.
14.

[8]The
Greeks initially used the term "white gold" but eventually used
"elektron," a word that became "electrum" to the Romans. Following the
Roman naturalist Pliny in the first century AD (Natural History
33.80-1), most numismatists in modern times have defined electrum as gold
alloyed with 20 percent or more silver.

[9]Carradice and
Price, Coinage in the Greek
World, Seaby, London, 1988, p. 27. They postulated
that the ninety-sixth stater was worth a day's subsistence. A third stater
was worth 32 times more.

[10]R.M.
Cook, "Speculations on the Origin of Coinage," Historia 7
(1958), p. 260.

[11]R.
Seaford, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer,
Philosophy, Tragedy, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2004, p. 135. He postulated out that the ninety-sixth stater
was worth about one-third of a goat.

[12]M.
Mitchiner, p. 214.

[13]As with
virtually everything else about ancient coins, not everyone is in
agreement with the eye appeal of Lydian trites. R. Holloway described Lydian
trites as being
"artistically maladroit" in his article "The Date of the First Greek
Coins: Some Arguments from Style and Hoards," Belgian Review of
Numismatics 130 (1984), p. 8.

[14]M. Price,
"Thoughts on the Beginnings of Coinage," Studies in Numismatic Method,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983, p. 4; S. Karwiese, p. 10;
J. Spier, "Notes
on Early Electrum Coinage and a Die-Linked Issue from Lydia,"
Studies in Greek Numismatics in Memory
of Martin Jessop
Price, Spink
& Son, London, 1998, p. 328.

[15]C.
Kraay,
Archaic and Classical Greek
Coins, Methuen & Co., London, 1976, pp.
21, 22.

[16]E.
Robinson, p. 164.

[17]C.
Seltman, Greek Coins: A History of Metallic
Currency and Coinage Down to the Fall of the Hellenistic
Kingdoms, Methuen & Co., London, 1933, p.
16.

[18]"Certification by the state is one of the ways in which
coinage is quite different from anything that had performed money
functions in the past," R. Seaford, p. 114. Types "confer official
character upon the coin, and in effect declare the readiness of the
issuing authority to receive it back in payment," C. Kraay, p. 321. The
modern numismatic term "type," meaning design imprinted onto a coin's
surface, comes from the ancient Greek word typos, meaning the effect or imprint of a
blow, Carradice and
Price, p. 25.

[19]M.
Mitchiner, pp. 210-211.

[20]R.
Seaford, pp. 115-118; M. Balmuth, p. 2; R. Holloway,
Catalogue of the Classical Collection,
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Brown
University, Providence, 1998.

[21]Whether
civilization first emerged in Mesopotamia or Egypt is another issue that's
currently debated by scholars, though Mesopotamia appears to have the
stronger case.

[22]C.
Opitz provides
a comprehensive discussion of primitive money in his book
An Ethnographic Study of Traditional
Money: A
Definition of Money and Descriptions of
Traditional Money, First
Impressions Printing, Ocala, 2000.

[23]J.
Spier, p. 331.
For a photo of one, see Sear 3397.

[24]M.
Mitchiner, pp. 210 and 219. On the other hand, S. Karwiese, p. 12,
disagrees with Mitchiner, arguing that the same type is repeated on later
Lydian coins of Kroisos. This follows a long numismatic tradition of
identifying these staters as Lydian, but this tradition appears to be in
need of revision. L. Breglia, "Il materiale proveniente dalla base
centrale dell'Artemession di Efeso e le monete di Lidia," Istituto
Italiano di Numismatica Annali Vols. 18-19 (1971/72), pp.
9-25.

[25]S.
Karwiese, p.
15.

[26]M. Price,
pp. 6, 7; S. Karwiese, p. 23;
I. Carradice,
Greek
Coins, University of Texas Press, Austin,
1995, p. 22.

[27]R.
Wallace, "The Origin of Electrum Coinage," American Journal of Archeology
91 (1987), p. 386; C. Howgego,
Ancient History from
Coins, Routledge, London,
1995, pp. 3, 4.
With his four articles and papers dealing extensively with Lydian Lions
published from 1987 to 2006, Robert W. Wallace has written broadly and
deeply about the subject.

[28]S.
Karwiese, p.
8.

[29]D.
Kagan, "The
Dates of the Earliest Coins," American Journal of Archeology 86 (1982), p.
358. Kagan himself, however, opposed this majority-view
thinking.

[30]"There is
a widespread view that the first coin was created in Western Turkey, by
the Lydians," according to R. Mundell, p. 14. C. Thompson, p. 68; M.
Kroll, review of G. Le Rider's La
naissance de la monnaie,
Schwizerische
Numismatische
Rundschau 80
(2001), p. 526; and D. Sear, Greek
Coins and Their Values Vol. 2,
Seaby, London,
1979, p. 317, made similar statements. In the nineteenth and early
twentieth century, numismatists exhibited a prejudice toward the ancient
Greeks and the superiority of Greek culture and against the East and
couldn't fathom how the Lydians, possibly descended from the Hittites,
could have beaten the Greeks, originators of Western civilization, to such
a culturally and economically important invention. E. Babelon encapsulated
this sentiment with his statement that such a clever invention as coinage
must have come from the Ionian Greeks, as reported by C. Seltman, p. 15.
Babelon attributed Lydian Lions as Greek coins of Miletos in
Traité des monnaies grecques et
romaines, Renouard, Paris,
1907.

[31]How
widespread the belief was in ancient times that the Lydians were the
source of the first coins is uncertain. E. Pászthory made the
statement that Lydian coinage was generally recognized in antiquity as the
earliest known coinage in his article "Investigation of the Early Electrum
Coins of the Alyattes Type,"
Metallurgy in
Numismatics Vol. 1, Metcalf and
Oddy, Royal
Numismatic Society, London, 1980, p. 151, and others have made similar
statements, though without definitive support. The fifth century BC Greek
historian Herodotos
(Herodotus) wrote famously, but ambiguously, that the Lydians were the
first to use gold and silver coins in his Histories (I.94).
He could have been referring to the later pure gold and silver coins of
Kroisos
(Croesus) or to the gold-and-silver alloyed (electrum) coins of the
earlier period. Still, as Carradice and
Price, p. 24, point out, Herodotos'
statement is usually thought to refer to the invention of coinage in
general. Xenophanes, a Greek
philosopher who lived in the sixth century BC, was quoted as saying that
the Lydians were the first to strike coins, but he was quoted four
centuries later by the Greek rhetorician Pollux in his ten-volume Onamasticon (9, 83).
Pollux also
suggested other possible inventors of coinage.

[32]The
Lydian ruling class may have been descended from the Hittites, who like
the Lydians (and unlike the Assyrians) spoke an Indo-European language. On
the other hand, Hanfmann, p. 68, says that the Lydian connection to the
Hittite Empire, at least according to archeological evidence, is
"tenuous." The Hittites may, or may not, have been the same people
referred to in the Bible as the Hittites or more accurately the Hethites
(Children of Heth). The Hittites dominated western Asia from c. 1600 to
1200 BC, including Lydia, and were renowned for their use of iron and
chariots. The Hittites were defeated c. 1200 BC by the Sea Peoples, who
may have been the Philistines of the Bible (the word "Palestine" is
derived from "Philistine"), though more likely the Philistines were one of
several different Sea Peoples, including the Achaeans, or early Greeks,
who pirated and pillaged, contributing to a dark age that lasted until c.
800 BC or somewhat later. Lydia enjoyed more than six centuries of
relative independence after the fall of the Hittite Empire until its
defeat by Cyrus the Great of Persia c. 546 BC, according to M. Mellink,
"The Native Kingdoms of Anatolia," Cambridge
Ancient History, Vol. III, Part 2: The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and
Other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries
BC, edited by I. Edwards, et. al.,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991, p. 621. At the time of the
first coinage, because of close contacts with the Ionian Greeks, Lydia was
significantly Hellenized, according to Hanfmann, Seaford, and others.
After the conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC
and the Roman conquest in the second century BC, the Lydians were
completely assimilated.

[33]A.
Spawforth, "Jason and the Golden Fleece," Minerva Vol. 1 No. 7 (9/90), pp.
13-17; G. Jenkins, p. 14.

[34]A.
Ramage, "Golden
Sardis," King
Croesus' Gold: Excavations at Sardis and the History of Gold
Refining, edited by A. Ramage and P. Craddock, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, 2000, p. 14.

[35]E.
Curtius,
The
History
of Greece Vol. 1, Richard Bentley & Son,
London, 1868, p. 76. M. Mitchiner, p. 206, also wrote about the importance
of the Lydians in intermediating between Asia and Greek sea
traders.

[36]G.
Hanfmann, "Lydian
Culture and Society," Sardis
from Prehistoric to Roman Times, edited
by G. Hanfmann, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 67, 98. Taking this line of
thinking further, it can be enjoyable to trace Western civilization today
back to Renaissance Europe, Rome, Greece, Lydia, Babylonia, Egypt, and
Sumer,
allowing for numerous other influences along the way. Admittedly
oversimplifying, the Renaissance gave us independent thought (again), the
Romans organization and Christianity, the Greeks science and democracy,
the Lydians coinage, the Babylonians codified law, the Egyptians advanced
mathematics, astronomy, and medicine, and the Sumerians writing, the
wheel, bricks, sewers, and how we tell time. Viewed from this perspective,
the contribution by the Lydians was relatively unimportant ... unless
you're a coin collector.

[37]M.
Mitchiner, p. 206.

[38]Herodotos,
Histories I.94.
Herototos was likely referring to the signicant role that retailing played
in Lydian society. The importance of the merchant class in Lydia is
supported by the use in Lydia of a term for a legally defined societal
class, agoraios or
"People of the Market," according to G. Hanfmann, p. 80.
That Herodotos was exaggerating is almost self-evident. D. Schaps, p. 47,
points out that fixed places for retail trade certainly existed in
Mesopotamia before this time and that few societies throughout history, in
fact, have had no type of market exchange.

[39]G.
Hanfmann, p.
69.

[40]G.
Hanfmann, p.
83.

[41]Many in
ancient times wrote about "Golden Sardis," including such Greeks as
Archilochos,
Herodotos,
Xenophon,
Diodorus
Siculus,
Dio
Chrysostom,
Pausanias,
Lukian, and
Diogenes Laertes,
according to Ramage, Goldstein, and Mierse, "Lydian Excavation Sectors,"
Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman
Times, edited by G. Hanfmann, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, 1983, p. 38.

[42]M.
Mellink, p.
646.

[43]G.
Hanfmann, p. 88.
Even so, neither Lydia nor Greece achieved the mass literacy of
industrialized society today. A maximum of 20 to 30 percent literacy was
achieved in the ancient world, and even here it occurred in Hellenistic
cities, according to W. Harris, Ancient
Literacy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
1989. Harris pointed out that the literacy rate in both archaic and
classical Greece as a whole was likely no more than 10
percent.

[44]"Through
the history of money, countries have sought to use the profits from
overvaluation as a fiscal
resource. The extent to which they are able
to exploit this resource depends on the power of the state
and the
extent of its empire," according to R. Mundell, p. 12.

[45]R.
Wallace, "Remarks on the Value and Standards of Early Electrum Coins,"
Hacksilberto Coinage: New Insights into the Monetary History of the Near
East and Greece,
American Numismatic Society, New York, 2001, p. 127; M. Cowell, K. Hyne,
N. Meeks, P. Craddock., "Analyses of the Lydian Electrum, Gold and Silver
Coinages," Metallurgy in Numismatics Vol. 4 (1998), p.
529.

[46]M. Cowell
et. al., pp. 529-530; Keyser and Clark, pp. 105-126; M.
Cowell and K.
Hyne,
"Scientific Examination of the Lydian Precious Metal Coinages,"
King Croesus' Gold: Excavations at
Sardis and the History of Gold Refining, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 169-174. Some scholars have
reported that these coins have varying amounts of gold. But this likely
results from the imprecision of testing methodologies. Different tests can
come up with different results for the same coin. What's more, surface
enrichment, deposits, and porosity can all compromise results. Previous
testing by various people has shown that Lydian Lion electrum coins have a
more consistent gold content than some other early electrum coins, which
likely were other early experiments in seigniorage profit
making.

[47]Gold can
be found in nature in relatively pure form or alloyed with other metals.
Some scholars, such as Ramage and Craddock, and M. Mitchiner, pp. 206-208,
believe that the Lydians only later, during the time of Kroisos, learned
to refine pure gold from gold alloys. But the archeological evidence
suggests that pure gold may have been refined at Sardis as early as the
third millennium BC, according to G. Hanfmann, p. 76.
Furthermore, textual evidence suggests that pure gold was being refined in
Mesopotamia in the second millennium BC, according to P. Keyser and D.
Clark, "Analyzing and Interpreting the Metallurgy of Early Electrum
Coins," Hacksilberto Coinage: New Insights into the Monetary History of the Near
East and Greece,
American Numismatic Society, New York, 2001, p. 110. Hanfmann pointed
out that there's no proof of continuity into the first millennium BC,
though it seems unlikely that such an important technology would have been
lost even during the "dark age" that followed the fall of the Hittite
Empire c. 1200 BC. Mundell, p. 28, points out that the Egyptians were
refining gold as early as c. 2000 BC.

[48]S. Bolin,
State and Currency in the Roman Empire
to 300 AD, Almqvist and
Wiksell,
Stockholm, 1958, p. 36.

[49]T.
Carney, The
Shape of
the Past: Models and Antiquity,
Coronado Press, Lawrence, 1975, pp. 103, 104.

[50]S.
Frankel, Money and
Liberty, AEI Press, Oxford, 1980, pp.
15-17.

[51]G.
Hanfmann, pp. 76,
77.

[52]M. Price,
p. 7.

[53]A.
Fürtwangler,
"Neue
Beobachtungen
zur
frühesten
Munzprägung," Revue
suisse de
numismatique 65
(1986), pp. 153-165.

[54]Carradice and
Price, p. 28.

[55]J.
Melville-Jones, "The Value of Electrum in Greece and Asia,"
Studies in Greek Numismatics in Memory
of Martin Jessop Price, ed. by
R. Ashton, Spink, London, 1998, p. 263.

[56]R.
Mundell, pp. 30-32.

[57]Keyser
and Clark, p. 116.

[58]G. Le
Rider, La naissance de
la monnaie: Practiques
monétaires
de
l'Orient
ancient,
Presses universitaires de
France, Paris, 2001, pp. 85-100.

[59]K. Konuk,
From Kroisos to
Karia, Graphis Matbaa, Istanbul, 2003, p.
34.

[60]R.
Wallace, "The Origin of Electrum Coinage," pp. 390-392, as well as
"Remarks on the Value and Standards of Early Electrum Coins," p.
127.

[61]A.
Ramage, p.
17.

[62]J. Kroll,
pp. 204-206.

[63]In an
October 2, 2003, e-mail interview.

[64]R.
Wallace, "The Origin of Electrum Coinage," p. 386.

[65]C.
Kraay, p. 318.
Also earlier in "Hoards, Small Change,
and the Origin of Coinage," Journal of the Hellenistic Studies 84 (1964),
p. 89. But R. Wallace disagreed with this in
"On the Production and Exchange of Early Anatolian Electrum Coinages,"
L'or
Perse
et
l'Histoire
Grecque, Table
ronde CNRS,
Bordeaux, 1989, pp. 93, 94. He stated that the relatively low gold content
of electrum coins and the wear on many smaller coins indicates that they
could have been used in commerce. M. Price, in a comment at the end of the
paper, disagreed with Wallace and supported Kraay's view,
stating that it's unusual for early electrum coins to show significant
wear and that it's unlikely that even the smallest electrum fractions were
regularly used in the marketplace. M. Mitchiner, p. 214, circumvented the
high-value argument for Lydian electrum coins not being used in retail
transactions by assigning a lower value to them. But most numismatists
seem to support the argument that Lydian electrum coins weren't used in
retail markets.

[66]G.
Hanfmann, pp. 73,
77. R. Seaford, p. 128, points out, "The nearly total lack of ... coins in
the excavated commercial-industrial areas of Sardis suggests that they
were concentrated in the hands of the king and possibly wealthy
merchants."

[67]J. Kroll,
"The Inscribed Treasury Record from Beneath the
Archaic Artemisium
at Ephesus
(IK Ephesos
IA, No. 1): Receipts in Gold and Silver
Bullion and the Problem of Early Electrum," paper presented at the XIII
International Numismatic Congress in Madrid, Spain, Sept. 15-19, 2003; G.
Le Rider, chapter one.

[68]M.
Mitchiner, p. 214.

[69]C.
Kraay, pp.
318-320; R. Wallace, "The Origin of Electrum Coinage," p. 386. M.
Mitchiner, pp. 213-214, disputes this, contending that Lydia initiated
coinage to facilitate trade. His book, Ancient
Trade and Early Coinage, has
been criticized, however, for overemphasizing the importance of trade as a
factor in early coinage. As K. Konuk, p. 36 points out, "That [Lydian
Lions] were specifically designed to facilitate trade or commerce is
doubtful." Similarly, D. Schaps, p. 97, wrote, "It is not ... likely that
coins were designed ... to facilitate retail trade.... The earliest coins
not only were not invented for international trade but were not even used
for it."

[70]C.
Howgego, "Why
Did Ancient States Strike Coins?" Numismatic Chronicle 150 (1990), pp. 3,
4.

[71]Ancient
literary sources are as inconclusive as modern numismatic sources about
the purposes of the first coins. Plato (Republic ii,
371b, 8, 9) and Aristotle (Ethics v,
1133a, 17-20, and Politics
i, 1257a,
19-41) both speculated on the origins and purposes of coinage, but it's
clear they were talking about how coins had evolved to be used in their
times. People today are often guilty of the same, projecting current
practices backward to account for original uses. There's no
contemporaneous documentation regarding the reason coins came into
existence, and the archeological evidence is inconclusive as well.
Economic and anthropological models are just that, models. C.
Howgego took
this unsettled state of affairs to what I believe is an unjustifiable
extreme with his statement, "We know nothing about the function of the
earliest coinage," in Ancient
History from Coins, p. 3.
It's not without irony that the Lydians, known for their retail prowess,
may have learned from the Greeks how to use coins for
retailing.

[72]N. Cahill
and J. Kroll, "New Archaic Coin Finds at Sardis," American Journal of
Archaeology, Vol. 109, No. 4 (October 2005), p. 613.

[73]Others
also have made this assessment. As A. Ramage, p. 18, pointed out,
Alyattes is a
"frequent candidate" for the honor of the ruler responsible for minting
the first coins.

[74]This is
disputed as well, with some numismatists believing that Croesus didn't
issue "croeseids." See I.
Carradice,
Coinage and Administration in the
Athenian and Persian Empires, British
Archaeological Reports, Oxford, 1987, pp. 73-108. A. Ramage, p. 18, argued persuasively based on
the archeological evidence that Kroisos
(Croesus) did in fact initiate bimetallic coinage. Cahill and Kroll
conclusively demonstrate that Kroisos did issue croeseids based upon new
coin finds in an archeological context.

[75]L.
Stecchini, "Gyges and Homer,"http://www.metrum.org/gyges.

[76]A.
Bammer, "A
Peripteros of the
Geometric Period in the Artemision of
Ephesus," Anatolian Studies 40 (1990), pp. 137-160.

[77]B. Head,
Catalogue of Greek Coins in the British
Museum: Lydia (BMC Lydia), British Museum, London,
1901, pp. XVII-XXII, 1-5, Plate 1; B. Head, Historia
Numorum: A Manual of Greek Numismatics,
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1911, pp. 643-645. Head believed the typeless
electrum coinage, with striations, was likely initiated during the reign
of Gyges, which he dated 687-652 BC in Historia
Numorum, and that the Lydian Lion type coinage
was initiated during the reign of Ardys, which he dated 652-615
BC.

[78]C.
Kraay, p.
317.

[79]M. Price,
p. 4.

[80]G.
Jenkins, p. 13.

[81]I.
Carradice, p.
23.

[82]G. Le
Rider, p. 65.

[83]J. Milne,
Greek Coinage,
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1931, pp. 7, 16; C. Seltman, p. 18; L. Weidauer,
Probleme der frühen
Elektronprägung, Office du Livre, Fribourg, 1975
(English translation by Dane Kurth available via email for $20 through [email-masked]); D.
Kagan, pp. 343-360; R. Mundell, p. 32; G. Browne, "A New Lydian Text,"
Kadmos 39 (2000), pp. 177, 178.

[84]M.
Vickers, "Early Greek Coinage, A Reassessment," Numismatic Chronicle 145
(1985), pp. 1-44; M. Weissl, "Grundzüge der Bau- und Schichtenfolge im
Artemision von Ephesos," Jahresheftedes Österreichischen Archäologischen
Instituts in Wien, Band 71 (2002), pp. 313-346.

[85]W.
Sayles, Ancient
Coin Collecting II: Numismatic Art of the Greek
World, Krause Publications, Iola, 1997, p.
4.

[86]In his
review of C. Howgego's
Ancient History from
Coins, American Journal of Numismatics 11
(1999), p. 154, R. Bauslaugh talks
sagely about the "danger" of this kind of "all-encompassing skepticism."
More often in ancient numismatics, however, the error seems to be in the
opposite direction, with conclusions based on inadequate
support.

[87]C.
Kraay, review
of L. Weidauer's
Probleme
der
frühen
Elektronprägung, Gnome
50 (1978), p. 212.

[88]J.
Spier, p.
334.

[89]M.
Mitchiner, p. 210.

[90]E.
Robinson, p. 161.

[91]S.
Karwiese, pp.
11-13.

[92]M.
Mitchiner, pp. 210-211; R. Wallace, "KUKALIM, WALWET, and the Artemission
Deposit: Problems in Early Anatolian Electrum Coinage,"
Agoranomia: Studies in Money and
Exchange Presented to John H. Kroll, edited
by P. van Alfen, 2006, pp. 39-40.

[93]M.
Mitchiner, p. 210; R. Wallace, "KUKALIM, WALWET, and the Artemission
Deposit: Problems in Early Anatolian Electrum Coinage," p.
39.

[94]E.
Robinson, pp. 161, 162. A cult of Sandon persisted in western Asia Minor
into Roman Imperial times.

[95]G.
Hanfmann, pp. 91,
92, 95.

[96]S.
Karwiese, p.
9.

[97]K. Konuk,
p. 24, wrote, "There is no reason to doubt that [Lydian Lions] were issued
under the direct authority of the king of Lydia, probably
Alyattes."

[98]G.
Hanfmann, p. 84.
In "The Sculpture of the Prehistoric, Lydian, and Persian Periods,"
Sculpture from Sardis: The Finds
through 1975, by M. Hanfman and N.
Ramage, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, 1978, Hanfmann
illustrated examples of lions in Lydian art. E. Robinson, pp. 160, 162,
does so as well.

[99]Herodotos,
Histories I.84,
Favorinus,
De
Fortuna 22.

[100]E.
Robinson, pp. 159-163. Robinson and S. Karwiese, p. 10,
also pointed to the Assyrian origins of the particular pattern of the
lion's mane -- the herringbone ruff -- on Lydian Lions. In her article "An
Assyrian Bronze Disc," Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 48
(1950), pp. 2-8, E. Porada described how the Assyrian kings identified
themselves with the lion and used its image for their royal
emblem.

[101]M.
Mitchiner, p. 219.

[102]S.
Karwiese, p. 12.

[103]A.
Bellinger,
"Electrum Coins from Gordion,"
Essays in Greek Coinage: Presented to
Stanley Robinson, C.
Kraay and G.
Jenkins, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968. Six of the 45 Gordion Hoard
coins were countermarked. In "Countermarks on Popular Ancient Silver Coins
- Part I," Celator,
December 2002, p. 8, J. van der Dussen wrote that the debasement of early
electrum coins may be the reason many were countermarked. Head, BMC Lydia,
p. XII, also made the argument that countermarks were made by money
changers because of the debasement of these coins. Later bimetallic
Persian coins from the same area, however, were often countermarked in the
same way as well. This, and the plethora of countermarks on individual
coins, makes the debasement argument seem unlikely. Kraay, pp. 15, 16,
argued that despite the fact that individual coins have been found having
as many as eighteen countermarks, and despite the fact that the marks are
very varied (pellet, crescent, caduceus, anchor, triskeles, and a number
of different animal and human heads), they were likely money changers'
marks indicating they had accepted a particular coin. Kraay acknowledged
that Persian darics and sigloi were marked in the same way and even
acknowledged that "It has been suggested that these are owners' marks,
presumably intended to identify property deposited with a banker or a
temple," though he didn't acknowledge in the body of his text or in a
footnote that it was Bellinger who suggested this. Bellinger's position is
the more logical.

[104]M.
Mitchiner, pp. 250-252.

[105]Ramage
and Craddock, pp. 10-13.

[106]In an
e-mail message. Kokotailo heads up ACFDL (Ancient
Coin Forgeries Discussion List).

The material here is
an elaboration of articles of mine that appeared in the May 2004 issue of
The
Numismatist magazine
and the September 2004 issue of The Journal of the Classical and Medieval
Numismatic Society.

Oldest Coins

First Coin Article

Earliest
Coins References

Other Lion Coins

Lion
Coin References

Other glomworthy coins:

Oldest Coins

Athenian Owls

Alexander the Great Coins

Medusa Coins

Thracian Tetradrachms

House of Constantine

Draped Bust Coins

Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles

Other coin sites:
Coin
Collecting: Consumer Protection Guide
Glomming: Coin Connoisseurship
Bogos:
Counterfeit Coins
Pre-coins

© 2010 Reid Goldsborough

Note: All of the coins
illustrated on these pages that are in my possession are stored off site.