Trade · late 7th century BCE
First coins in Lydia
Sardis, Lydia (western Türkiye)
In Lydia and the neighbouring Greek cities of Ionia, the first coins, small lumps of electrum (a natural gold–silver alloy) stamped with a design, were struck in the late 7th century BCE; the electrum coin of Phanes from Ephesus dates to about 625–600 BCE. Around 550 BCE King Croesus issued the first coins of refined gold and silver, and workshops for separating electrum into pure gold and silver have been excavated at the Lydian capital, Sardis.
Why it mattered
Coins of guaranteed weight and purity made trade, taxes and paying soldiers far simpler, and coinage soon spread through the Greek and Persian worlds.
Elsewhere
In China, shovel-shaped bronze coins were cast at a mint in Henan between about 640 and 550 BCE, a separate tradition; India's punch-marked coins followed by the 4th century BCE, possibly earlier.
Related
- The world in 700 BCE: The Assyrian Colossus chapter
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