Coins, Ancient

History of Development

Trading based upon a bartering system using objects, such as shells, skins, salt, grain, cattle, and precious metals such as silver and gold, predates the first coins by millennia. When people began using metal for bartering, value was based upon the weight and purity of the metal, not the form or shape of the metal. An early standard of value was based on the price of cattle, such as an ox. Over time, people came to prefer to exchange metal because it did not wear out as easily as other materials and generally remained stable in value.

The first coins were struck in the 7th century BCE in the kingdom of Lydia, a region corresponding to modern western Turkey. These coins were made of electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver; however, electrum quickly ceased to be used in preference to gold and silver. These coins were of an oval shape and had a lion figure stamped on one side and one or more punch marks on the other (what historians call punch-mark coinage). Due to close ties with and influence from Greece, coin usage speedily spread throughout the Greek colonies and into the larger Mediterranean world by the mid-6th century BCE.

Greece quickly developed a preference for silver coins and issued few gold coins. Although Athens and Corinth had the first mints, silver coins became so popular that they began to be minted in areas all around the Mediterranean Sea. By 500 BCE, these mints were using dies—striking a blank disc between two die—to stamp out coins rather than using single punches. The obverse die was seated in the anvil and the reverse die was on the base of the punch. The craftsman placed a blank piece of metal and struck the punch several times, thus making a coin.

Because of the existence of many mints, a custom developed that a particular mint would stamp its own design on a coin to identify the location where the coin was made; hence, the first mint marks. In the 200s CE, Roman mints began using standardized mint marks for their coins; these were located at the bottom of the reverse side.

The Romans began producing coins early in the 3rd century BCE, being highly influenced by Greek coins. About this same time (289 BCE), coins began being used for the first time as money, that is, having an exchange value not based on metal or weight. Initially, the Romans minted only coins of silver but by the late 3rd century BCE had begun issuing large quantities of bronze coins. After the unprecedented financial demands of the wars with Carthage (264–241, 218–201 BCE), Rome standardized its coin values based upon the denarius for silver coins and the as for bronze. Because Rome took booty and tribute from the people it conquered, silver and gold became scarce in the provinces, and coins made of those metals petered out by the middle of the first century BCE except in Rome. Throughout the first centuries CE, coin usage vastly expanded throughout the empire, [Page 202]mainly via the army. This trend continued to the end of the empire. Roman coins had become so common in usage for purchasing goods or paying laborers that their impact continued to influence the coins of European groups well into the Middle Ages.

...