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Silver In Lydia 600 B.C. |
During the 6th and 5th Centuries before Christ, the Lydian empire with its impregnable capital of Sardis perched high on Mount Tmolos changed world history.
Contrary to the neighboring Phrygians, who had been in Anatolia since just 1200 B.C., the Lydians were an ancient race whose origins were planted in earlier Hittite cultures. Lydia, lying at the Mediterranean end of an ancient trade route that led all the way to the Arabian coast of Mesopotamia, had always been prosperous, but under the reign of King Alyattes II and later his son and heir Croesus, it became one of Asia's richest empires in gold and silver.
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After beating back the attacking Cimmerians, Lydia absorbed Phyrgia its wealth of gold and silver, and all its lands including the source of King Midas’ wealth: the gold and silver rich Paktolos River. To extract precious metals from the river, the Lydians dredged the river’s sediments, filtering out the electrum, gold, and silver particles using sheepskins. The lanolin, a waxy material found in wool, captures the precious metals but allows sand to wash over it. It is believed that this method may have given rise to the legend of ‘The Golden Fleece’. Contrary to supposition, concrete proof of Lydia’s metallurgical prowess and its use of the river’s precious ores were later found at archeological excavations near Lydia’s capital city, Sardis. | | |
Archeologists, on discovering an ancient industrial quarter near the Paktolos River just outside Sardis, exposed a variety of objects including a blow-pipe nozzle, bellows, ovens, crucibles, cupules, and waste-materials, which corroborate that the local silversmiths had the ability to separate gold and silver from placer electrum by cementation and cupellation processes. Further discoveries of stone moulds also testify to the Sardians' utilization of their local supplies of gold and silver for the making of fine jewelry. |
However, the gold and silversmiths of Lydia didn’t make history with their ability to produce fine jewelry, but with the world’s first monetary system. While the much earlier established civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt were still bartering in the form of silver ingots, silver rings, and other items of precious metals, Lydians were using coins with a mark of authority at a fixed exchange value. | |
In the 6th Century B.C. under King Alyattes II, gold and silver coins as defined in Webster’s dictionary as “Metal certified by marks upon it to be of a definite exchange value and issued by government to be used as money.” were produced in great numbers.
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| The ‘Trite’, the most common Lydian denomination of its time, was made from electrum alloys and usually consisted of 53% gold, 45% percent silver and 2% percent copper. It was supposed that the coins were minted for trading in respect to the fact that Sardis was located at the end of a major trade route that extended all the way to the Babylonian gulf in Southern Mesopotamia, but this has been largely dispelled due to the gold and silver coins of being far too large a value, about a month's subsistence in total. |
Despite the large quantities of production, no Lydian gold or silver coins have been found in or around archeological digs associated with market trade in the Lydian empire, or elsewhere along the extensive connecting trade routes used at the time. It is instead believed that these gold and silver coins were intended as trade for tax payments, religious offerings, wedding presents, hospitality offerings, or salaries to mercenaries. | | |
Whatever the case Lydia was the first example of the transition from an agricultural barter economy to a commercial monetary urban economy. Today, scholars believe that the Lydians invented the world's first free market, and created gold and silver coins because they were the first to recognize their profit-making potential. This was proved in Lydia’s economic growth, which in less than a hundred years under King Alyattes II and his son and heir Croesus saw it go from a kingdom to an empire. Indeed, it is from this period that the expression ‘as rich as Croesus’ is derived. |
Soon, Croesus’ began to build diplomatic ties with mainland Greece, funding the building of one of the seven ancient wonders: the temple of the Greek goddess Artemis at nearby Ephesus, and inviting the Athenian statesman Solon to Lydia. During his stay Solon, who later formed the weight standards for the Athenian silver drachmas, became influenced by Lydia’s ingenious monetary reforms and carried the idea back to Greece. | | 
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