Ancient Lydia holds the distinction of creating the first coins in the world; at first not much more than blobs of metal with basic stamps, they soon evolved into beautiful works of art in and of themselves, featuring figures from Greek mythology.
Created as a means to authenticate payment, coinage represents a sea change in human development that was part of the increasing complexity in trade between peoples as far back as 600 B.C.
Coinage as we know it today was minted first in Lydia, an Anatolian kingdom with ancient Greek ties. The realm of the legendary King Croesus, it is only fitting that the coins produced there were of shining gold and silver.
Gold staters from Lydia were first coins in the world
Croesus is responsible for constructing the temple of Artemis (Artimu in Lydian), which was one of what many historians consider to be the seven wonders of the world; Lydians and Greeks worshiped the same gods, as is clearly seen on their coinage.
The Lydian stater became the official coin of the Lydian Empire, which flourished for many years before it fell to the Persian Empire. The earliest coins of any on the planet are believed to date back to approximately the second half of the 7th century BC, during the reign of King Alyattes, who was in power from 619 to 560 BC.
Numismatic historians agree that the Lydian stater was the very first coin officially issued by a government and it served as the model for virtually all subsequent coinage everywhere.
Unlike other tokens, or items used in barter, coins are issued by a central authority or government. Of course, a coin can be made of any substance but because of a need for durability they were made of metal from this period onward.
Naturally, when made of a precious metal like gold, they had their own intrinsic value. Other features of coins which made them so revolutionary are that they are portable, hard to counterfeit, and have some kind of value, whether intrinsically or by a decree established by the government.
Gold coins from Lydia also featured stunning artwork, symbols of cities
According to the nineteenth-century historian Barclay V. Head, “the precious metals had long…commended themselves to the civilized peoples of the East as being the measure of value least liable to fluctuation, most compact in volume, and most directly convertible.”
The precious metals of gold and silver had long been used as currency in trace before the first coins came into being, of course. Either in the form of rings or ingots (or bars), they were used by traders all across the ancient world.
Their use, however, was cumbersome since they had to be weighed and verified each time such a transaction took place in order for their true value to be ascertained. This situation, however, created a Eureka moment for one unknown individual, who was the first person in the world to have the idea of creating one easily-carried token issued by a central government, with an agreed-upon value.
With standardized weights, coins eliminated this time-consuming and vexing problem, making them quickly become a universally-accepted means of trade.
It was the great ancient Greek historian Herodotus, known as the Father of History, who said with perhaps some stretching of the truth that the Lydians were the world’s first merchants. Whether or not this is technically true, they undoubtedly lived at a great crossroads of peoples in Asia Minor, and had a well-earned reputation for being at the center of commerce.
In his work titled “The Coinage of Lydia and Persia,” Barclay Head acknowledged “the spirit of commercial activity which the natives of Lydia possessed,” while another 19th-century historian, Ernst R. Curtius, said they were like Phoenicians in that they occupied an essential niche in trade: “The Lydians became on land what the Phoenicians were by sea, the mediators between Hellas (Greece) and Asia.”
Situated near the Bosporus and Hellespont, which connect the Black Sea to the Aegean, it comes as no surprise that the Lydian Empire even as far back as the late 7th and early 6th century BC would already have risen to be a commercial power.
No comments:
Post a Comment