Instead of having to weigh out each piece of electrum and test it for fineness, stamped, pre-weighed, and guaranteed units of the metal could be exchanged instantaneously at sight. By effectively transferring valuation from the metal itself to the issuing authority, this solution hugely simplified the use of electrum in exchange transactions. 4 In any case, authorities in seventh-century Asia Minor hit upon a much simpler solution for making acceptable payments with electrum, namely by making them in the form of small, stamped ingots of uniform weight-that is, coins-the value of which was set and guaranteed by the authority whose stamp it bore. But, despite written evidence for gold-refining in second millennium Mesopotamia and Egypt, it is not certain whether a technique for fully parting silver and gold (as opposed to removing base metal impurities) from electrum had been developed before the sixth century. One way out of this dilemma would have been to avoid dealing in electrum bullion altogether and, if possible, separate it metallurgically into its pure gold and silver components, whose exchange use was straightforward. Over time, as the complexities and unreliability of electrum bullion became widely recognized, Lydians and their Greek and Carian neighbors who had accumulated large stocks of this metal must have found it increasingly difficult to utilize it in payments that others would accept. Even if each small piece were separately tested, it would have been exceedingly difficult to determine with any accuracy the value of an entire bag of pieces, each with a different weight and fineness. 16), and while such testing presented no problems with larger lumps of electrum, it would have been practically impossible to test a bagful of dozens of small nuggets and crumbs of the metal. When offered in a transaction, the quality of the metal first had to be tested visually from the color of streaks made on a touchstone (No. But because it was a mixed metal whose gold-silver proportions varied in nature and could be artificially manipulated by adding refined silver to dilute the gold content, it was poorly suited as a dependable means of exchange. As the most abundant precious metal in the land, electrum in the form of nuggets, weighed ingots, and bags of electrum “dust” must have been put to use in all sorts of payments for goods and services, at least for a time. An alloy in which gold occurs naturally in stream-bed deposits, electrum was indigenous to the region and, by the seventh century BCE, was being panned and dug from the Pactolus River and other Lydian streams and mines in legendary quantities, producing the fabulous wealth of the Lydian royal dynasty (see Greenewalt, “Lydian Gold and Silver Refining”). 3 To begin with, the electrum itself was Lydian. This historical linkage between Lydia, electrum, and the beginning of coinage is not hard to understand. Since a number of these earliest coins were inscribed with Lydian names in the Lydian alphabet, it is perfectly evident that they, too, were minted in Lydia by Lydians. 2 All earlier coins had been made exclusively of the gold-silver alloy known as electrum. The earliest coins made of solid gold were known throughout the ancient Greek world as “Croeseids,” after the Lydian king who introduced them. Apart from this statement of Herodotus, an earlier Greek authority, Xenophanes of Colophon, explicitly attributed the very invention of coinage to the Lydians, 1 and this is borne out by the evidence of the coins themselves. The Lydians were justly famous for their coinage. And of all men whom we know, the Lydians were the first to mint and use a coinage of gold and silver.
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