The Rise of Silver Coinage in the Ancient Mediterranean
December 2021 | Vol. 9.12
By Gil Davis
Why was money invented? The question is seldom asked nowadays because money is all-pervasive in modern developed economies, but this was not always the case.
The traditional answer to why money was invented is based on Aristotle’s contention in his Nicomachean Ethics that it was a development from barter, leading to his oft-quoted formulation that ‘money is the measure of everything’. In other words, money was useful because it was a universal denominator but also, it was a virtually imperishable, easily portable, readily exchangeable store of wealth.
A sophisticated ‘commodity exchange’ was used in the great Eastern and Egyptian empires in which silver was valued against wheat, dates, figs, olives, copper, gold and other commodities. Silver was extracted in Western Asia from the fourth millennium BCE and used extensively in the form of Hacksilber (lumps of silver, often chopped up jewellery). There is an argument in the literature as to whether this constituted a form of proto money, but thorough investigation of Hacksilber hoards in the southern Levant combined with elemental compositional analysis has shown that the weights and composition of the silver are too variable to have been used as coinage.
Hacksilber in a pot – the Tel Dor hoard. Israel Antiquities Authority. Photo © Ardon Bar-Hama
Tel Dor hoard Hacksilber after cleaning. Israel Museum. Photo © Haim Gitler
The earliest coins were minted in Lydia around the end of the seventh century BCE dated by their find in a foundation deposit under the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos (the so-called ‘Artemision Hoard’). The attribution of the invention to the Lydians comes from Herodotus 1.94, but the use of money was closely followed by local Greek Ionian cities along the coast of western Asia Minor including Miletos, Teos and Phokaia. The coins were minted in electrum which is a mixture of gold and silver. Until recently, electrum was believed to have occurred naturally in the form of nuggets found in the Pactolus River which flowed through Sardis, the Lydian capital, but this has been proved incorrect.
Electrum was manufactured to a recipe from its inception of 55% gold and 45% silver with minor amounts of copper. This regularized the composition of the earliest money and therefore its value, by state fiat. Arguably, when Greek city-states adopted coinage, they turned to pure silver because they lacked access to gold, but also because gold was intrinsically too valuable for everyday purchases. Even electrum coins were usually tiny with the smallest of them weighing only 0.08 g with a diameter of 2.5 mm (1/192 stater).
Silver was mined in modern Turkey and Iran. The Phoenicians developed trade all the way across the Western Mediterranean accessing silver from Sardinia and Spain. Silver ore could be found in many places in the Greek world most famously and extensively in Lavrion (Attica) and Thraco-Macedonia (Northern Greece) and in some of the Greek islands, albeit in lesser quantities.
Entrance to a mine shaft reaching almost 80 m straight down at Lavrion, Attica. Seams were followed laterally as encountered. Photo credit Gil Davis
Entrance to the Mavri Trypa mine in the Palaea Kavala area of northern Greece. The iron-rich oxides indicate mineralization. Photo credit Markos Vaxevanopoulos
Entrance to the Koryfis mine in Mt Pangaeon, northern Greece. Ancient miners followed seams of mineralization from the hillside. Photo credit Markos Vaxevanopoulos
Mineralization in the Aegean occurs at the subduction zones where tectonic plates from Africa and Asia Minor meet and super-heated water filled with minerals concentrated in marine sediments (similar to the genesis of oil fields) is forced up to the surface with the minerals settling between layers of schist and marble. Ancient miners could detect its presence from the discoloration caused by oxidizing minerals. They were seeking minerals such as galena and jarosite from which silver (and other minerals especially lead and gold) could be extracted through a difficult and environmentally unfriendly process of mining, crushing, roasting and cupellating. There is some evidence that the Phoenicians used a more efficient method than the Greeks allowing them, and later the Romans, to mine relatively low-grade ores.
Until recently, understandings of early silver sources were hindered by an over-reliance on literary evidence and assumptions drawn from numismatics and archaeology. Relatively few Archaic period coins had been analyzed due to the damage done by sampling. A new technique developed by the ‘Silver’ group based at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ERC Advanced Grant ‘Silver Isotopes and the Rise of Money’) of which the author is part, removes only a few micrograms with no visible damage to the coin. This has encouraged museum curators to allow access to larger quantities of material for testing. The group also uses a new clustering method to identify statistically distinct groups of data and determine which coins are in the groups, providing objective, and frequently surprising, results.
State-of-the-art, high-precision lead isotopic data is also greatly improving our understanding of ore sources. Newly utilized silver isotopic fractionation as well as chemical analysis, allows for further discrimination of overlapping lead isotope fields. Isotopes do not significantly change their composition in the manufacturing process that makes them ideal both for tracking ore sources and subsequent use. Mixing of more than two silver sources does cause problems for the interpretation of provenance. Chemical analysis rarely helps with provenance but gives valuable information on composition and technological processes.
Coinage was always minted to meet the expenditure requirements of the state. It could also assist with regulating payments to the state for instance of taxes and harbour dues. Ancient states had no demonstrated interest in money supply; this was a by-product of expenditure. Coinage was only accepted at face value in the areas controlled by a state. It was issued at a discount usually around 5%. This discount is termed ‘seigniorage’ and represents the profit made on the creation of money; the difference between the face value and the cost of materials (bullion plus manufacturing costs). The undervaluation makes money ‘fiduciary’ and stems from the power of the state to monopolise the money supply and enforce the use of its own currency. The transition from pure commodity money essentially backed by its bullion value to over-valued money is seen in the issue of bronze coinage from Classical times.
Some states issued coins that traded widely. The most famous of these was the Athenian ‘owl.’
Silver Athenian ‘owl’ tetradrachm, c. 410 BC. Image: cgb.fr CC By-SA 3.0
In Classical times, it became accepted all around the Mediterranean and was widely imitated in the Near East. Many states did not issue coinage at all until Hellenistic times with Sparta being a celebrated example. Presumably, they met their coinage needs from other states. It is important to note that silver in the form of bullion or larger denomination coins would have been used to settle larger transactions. Perhaps as little as 10% of silver was coined. By Hellenistic times, if not earlier, coins were minted primarily to meet military expenditure.
The study of coins using new analytical techniques and statistical methods together with wider surveys of mining districts and a more nuanced conception of the geology of ore deposits is quickly changing our understanding of silver sources. The literary evidence is seen to be anecdotally useful but potentially misleading especially concerning the range of ore sources. Silver was accessed from Spain to Iran and traded largely independently of, or despite, political factors. Ironically, to end this story where it began, a main reason why money was invented was so the state could enforce payments at a profit.
How to cite this article:
Davis, G. 2021. “The Rise of Silver Coinage in the Ancient Mediterranean” The Ancient Near East Today 9.12. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/rise-of-silver-coinage/.
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