tury. The siglos weighed 11.2 g, and the silver content was more than 90 percent. The darics in particular served as the gold standard throughout the western part of the Persian empire and Asia Minor (Olmstead, p. 83), but another mint for gold was established some time in the 5th century, probably in Babylonia, and there may have been several mints for gold in the 4th century (Carradice, p. It has been suggested that a large proportion of Achaemenid currency was struck exclusively to pay for the military establishment, gold for the army, silver for the navy. E.) the Greek legends become so conventional as to be unintelligible (Sellwood, 1980, p. 331-32), and even at major mints coins were not necessarily struck every year (Göbl, 1971, p. Šāpūr II (307-79) transported minting equipment on his eastern campaigns; the court mint (heterogram BBA = “court”) is also thought to have remained ambulatory for some time (Göbl, 1971, p. Sasanian coins are often countermarked, probably by later Sogdian and Muslim rulers, certifying that they remained valid currency in regions under those rulers’ control (Göbl, 1971, p.
In western Asia the earliest coinage is believed to have been issued at Sardis in Lydia in the 6th century B. E.; the first examples were of electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver. The purpose was apparently to provide a uniform standard of value throughout the empire and also, according to Herodotus (4.166), to demonstrate Darius’ own power, “to leave a memorial of himself, such as no king had ever left before . The Babylonian weight standard, which was already in use on the Persian plateau, was adopted in general outline (Mitchiner, 1973, p. confirms that merchants paid “according to the stone (weight) of the king”: 1 (Olmstead, p. Twenty sigloi were equivalent to 1 daric; the ratio of value between silver and gold was thus theoretically 13.3:1. This curious division may have reflected the fact that silver was the common currency in the Mediterranean, whereas the army operated mainly in western Asia, where gold was preferred (Burns, p. The Achaemenid royal coinage was neither the unique nor the universal medium of exchange in the empire, however. 56; idem, (see coptic manichean texts) there is an extended metaphor in which the minting process is compared to the minting of the Word. 334), in keeping with the rulers’ policy of centralized control, which resulted in a quite uniform coinage. From the Islamic conquest to the Mongol invasions As the Arabs of the Ḥejāz had used the s of the Sasanian emperors, the only silver coinage in the world at that time, it was natural for them to leave many of the Sasanian mints in operation, striking coins like those of the emperors in every detail except for the addition of brief Arabic inscriptions like in Arabic.
In mercantile centers they were used as money, each issue with its own value, but often they were treated simply as another species of bullion and are found in hoards mixed with silver ingots of different forms. All were, however, based on the Persian reformed weight standard, which had also been adopted in the kingdoms of Choresmia, Bactria, and Sogdiana (Mitchiner, 1973, p. In contrast, on the Persian-Afghan plateau trade seems to have been conducted largely by means of bullion transactions, with the silver ingot as the weight standard and the gold shekel as the unit of account (Mitchiner, 1975, I, pp. Despite the wide acceptance of Achaemenid trade coins, the development of monetized relations was severely hampered by limits on the available supply of specie (Dandamayev and Lukonin, pp. There were no important gold or silver mines in Persia, and even copper usually had to be imported. After his conquest of the Achaemenids Alexander established the Attic weight standard throughout his own empire, which also included Choresmia, Bactria, and Sogdia (Mitchiner, 1973, p. His standard coinage consisted of the gold stater, weighing 8.6 g, and the silver tetradrachm (four drachmas) with the head of Hercules draped in a lion skin on the obverse and a seated Ze