Near Eastern borrowings: coinage

Coinage, another key borrowing from the Near East, enters our story here; it will become of enormous importance for cities of the Mediterranean and the Near East. The use of coins began

Figure 12.11 Lydian and Greek coins in the Numismatic Museum, Athens. Not drawn to the same scale. (a) Lydian silver coin, sixth century BC, with lion and bull, and simple punch mark; (b) Athenian silver tetradrachm, fifth century BC, with Athena and owl; (c) Gold stater from Panticapaeum, mid-fourth century BC, with Pan and a griffin

In the late seventh century BC in Lydia, a non-Greek kingdom in West Anatolia, whose capital, Sardis, was blessed with a stream that carried electrum flecks down from the mountains. Elec-trum, a natural alloy of gold and silver, was the material of the first coins. A crude motif was stamped on one side, a deep punch mark on the other. Coins evidently satisfied the need to regulate the measures of electrum used for payment. The ratio of gold to silver in the electrum varied, however, which proved a cause for dissension. By the mid-sixth century BC, the Sardians had learned how to separate gold from silver. Croesus (ruled 559—546 BC), the last king of independent Lydia, was the first to issue separate coinages in gold and silver, but these were still coins of large denominations (Figure 12.11a). Later, in the late fifth century BC, bronze coins, worth much less, were instituted. The invention of coinage took the Greek world by storm. From the early sixth century BC, many Greek cities issued coinage, always marked with a distinctive motif, such as the head of Athena and an owl for Athens, or the head of Pan and a griffin for the northern Black Sea city of Panticapaeum (Figure 12.11b and c). Sometimes the name of the city was inscribed, in whole or in part.

Contacts with the Near East and Egypt were indeed crucial in the development of Greek culture. Not only the alphabet and coinage but also art motifs (the Orientalizing movement of the late eighth and seventh centuries BC) and some cultic ceremonies came from the Near East, while Egypt contributed its vast experience of working stone for architecture and sculpture. The effects of this last, the Egyptian tradition of stone working, would change profoundly the appearance of the Greek city and landscape. It is thus to architecture and sculpture that we shall now turn.