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Double-die style struck coin from Ancient India, c 304-232 BCE featuring an elephant on one face and a lion on the other. Since that time, coins have been the most universal embodiment of money. These first coins were made of electrum, a naturally occurring pale yellow mixture of gold and silver that was further alloyed with silver and copper.
The practice of using silver bars for currency also seems to have been current in Central Asia from the 6th century. [8] Cyrus the Great introduced coins to the Persian Empire after 546 BC, following his conquest of Lydia and the defeat of its king Croesus, whose father Alyattes had put in place the first coinage in history. [7]
According to Herodotus, the Lydians were the first people to use gold and silver coins and the first to establish retail shops in permanent locations. [43] It is not known, however, whether Herodotus meant that the Lydians were the first to use coins of pure gold and pure silver or the first precious metal coins in general. [44]
The right of coinage in the Holy Roman Empire (in German Münzregal) [1] was one of the so-called regalia (also called royal privileges or sovereign rights).It consisted of the right to issue regulations governing the production and use of coins.
Coins were an important means of disseminating this image throughout the Empire. [12] Coins often attempted to make the emperor appear god-like through associating the emperor with attributes normally seen in divinities, or emphasizing the special relationship between the emperor and a particular deity by producing a preponderance of coins ...
The use and export of silver coinage, along with soldiers paid in coins, contributed to the Athenian Empire's dominance of the region in the 5th century BC. The silver used was mined in southern Attica at Laurium and Thorikos by a huge workforce of slave labour. A major silver vein discovery at Laurium in 483 BC led to the huge expansion of the ...
Coins were used and may have been invented by the early Anatolian traders who stamped their marks to avoid weighing each time used. Herodotus states that the first coinage was issued by Croesus, King of Lydia, spreading to the golden Daric (worth 20 sigloi or shekel), [4] issued by the Achaemenid Empire and the silver Athenian obol and drachma ...
The three most important standards of the ancient Greek monetary system were the Attic standard, based on the Athenian drachma of 4.3 grams (2.8 pennyweights) of silver, the Corinthian standard based on the stater of 8.6 g (5.5 dwt) of silver, that was subdivided into three silver drachmas of 2.9 g (1.9 dwt), and the Aeginetan stater or didrachm of 12.2 g (7.8 dwt), based on a drachma of 6.1 g ...