History
The First Coins: From Lydian Electrum to the Athenian Owl
Coins were invented in Lydia around 600 BCE. Here is how they spread to Persia and Greece and created the drachma, the talent and the world's first famous coin.
Before coins, people paid with weighed metal, grain, cattle or silver rings — the Mesopotamian shekel began as a unit of weight, not a coin. The breakthrough came in the kingdom of Lydia, in what is now western Turkey, in the late 7th century BCE.
Lydia and electrum
Lydian rivers carried electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver. Lydian rulers stamped lumps of a standard weight with a lion's head, guaranteeing their value. Users no longer had to weigh and test metal at every trade.
King Croesus (ruled about 560–546 BCE), whose wealth became proverbial, is credited with the next step: separate coins of pure gold and pure silver, the first two-metal currency system.
Persia: the gold daric
After Cyrus the Great conquered Lydia, the Persian Empire adopted coinage. Darius I issued the gold daric (about 8.4 g) and the silver siglos. Darics paid Greek mercenaries and bribed Greek politicians — Spartans joked that the Persian king defeated them with 'archers', the figure stamped on the coin.
Athens and the owl
Athens struck silver tetradrachms (four drachmas, about 17.2 g) showing Athena on one side and her owl on the other. Silver from the state-owned mines at Laurion paid for the fleet that beat Persia at Salamis in 480 BCE, and the owl became the trusted trade coin of the eastern Mediterranean.
The Greek system: 6 obols = 1 drachma, 100 drachmas = 1 mina, 60 minas = 1 talent. A talent — about 26 kg of silver, or 6,000 drachmas — was a unit of account for state budgets, not a coin anyone carried.
What these coins are worth today
Collectors value surviving coins very differently — a worn owl tetradrachm can sell for a few hundred dollars, while rare Lydian staters fetch thousands. Try the Ancient Currency Converter for spending-power estimates.
- Athenian drachma: roughly a day's wage, about $40–45 in spending power
- Athenian tetradrachm: about 4 days' wages
- Persian gold daric: roughly a month's pay for a mercenary soldier
- Silver talent: about 6,000 days of labor