White Gold Studies in Early Electrum Coinage Edited by Peter van Alfen and Ute Wartenberg with Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert, Haim Gitler, Koray Konuk, and Catharine C. Lorber THE AMERICAN NUMISMATIC SOCIETY NEW YORK THE ISRAEL MUSEUM JERUSALEM  WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 1 1/16/20 11:11 AM ©  The American Numismatic Society and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem ISBN ---- Library of Congress Control Number:  Printed in Canada WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 2 1/16/20 11:11 AM WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 3 1/16/20 11:11 AM View of the exhibition White Gold: Revealing the World’s Earliest Coins at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2012–2013. Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, by Elie Posner. WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 4 1/16/20 11:11 AM Contents Preface vi Peter van Alfen and Ute Wartenberg. Introduction. White Gold and the Beginnings of Coinage: An Introduction to the Current State of Research  Part I: The Great Transformation . Kristin Kleber. As Skillful as Croesus: Evidence for the Parting of Gold and Silver by Cementation from Second and First Millennium Mesopotamia  . Haim Gitler and Oren Tal. A View from the Near East: The Transition from Metal to Coin Economy in the Southern Levant  . John H. Kroll. The Inscribed Account on Lead from the Ephesian Artemision  Part II: The Earliest Electrum: The Evidence . Selene E. Psoma. White Gold and Electrum in Literary Sources and Inscriptions  . Michael Kerschner and Koray Konuk. Electrum Coins and Their Archaeological Context: The Case of the Artemision of Ephesus  . Michael Kerschner. The Archaic Temples in the Artemision of the “Central Basis”  . Bernhard Weisser. An Archaic Striated Electrum Coin from the Sanctuary of Aphrodite at Miletus  . Kenneth Sheedy. The Question of Archaic Athenian Electrum  . Nicholas Cahill, Jill Hari, Bülent Önay, Esra Dokumaci. Depletion Gilding of Lydian Electrum Coins and the Sources of Lydian Gold  . Maryse Blet-Lemarquand and Frédérique Duyrat. Elemental Analysis of the Lydo-Milesian Electrum Coins of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Using LA-ICPMS  00-Frontmatter.indd 5 . Haim Gitler, Yuval Goren, Koray Konuk, Oren Tal, Peter van Alfen, David Weisburd. XRF Analysis of Several Groups of Electrum Coins  . Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert. Phanes: A Die Study  1/29/20 9:13 AM Part III: The Earliest Electrum: Interpretations—Why Coinage? . Alain Bresson. The Choice of Electrum Monometallism: When and Why  . François R. Velde. A Quantitative Approach to the Beginnings of Coinage  . Donald W. Jones. Mechanism Design Approach to Lydian Coinage  . John H. Kroll. Issue Identification, Dynastai, and the Plethora of Types in Early Electrum Coinage  . Peter van Alfen. The Role of “The State” in Early Electrum Coinage  Part IV: Electrum Continuation WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 6 . Ute Wartenberg. Was there an Ionian Revolt Coinage? Monetary Patterns in the Late Archaic Period  . François de Callataÿ. Prolegomena to a Die Study of the Electrum Coinage of Cyzicus  . Mariusz Mielczarek. Cyzicene Electrum Coinage and the Black Sea Grain Trade  . Selene E. Psoma. “ Ἥδε Κύζικος πλέα στατήρων”: How to Explain the Electrum Coinage of Cyzicus  Index of Coin Hoards  Index  1/16/20 11:11 AM Abbreviations ABADY Archäologische Berichte aus dem Yemen AAE Arabian Archaeology & Epigraphy AfO Archiv für Orientforschung AION Annali dell’Istituto orientale di Napoli AJA American Journal of Archaeology AnOr Analecta Orientalia ANRW H. Temporini, and W. Haase, eds. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Berlin: de Gruyter AOS American Oriental Society BBVO  Potts, D. T., ed. . Dilmun: New studies in the archaeology and early history of Bahrain. Berlin: Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient . BIFAO Bulletin de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale BiOr Bibliotheca Orientalis BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift CIS: Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum. Pars quarta. Inscriptiones ḥimyariticas et sabæas continens. Paris. 1889–1932. CNIP Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications CRAIBL Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres CSAI: http://csai.humnet.unipi.it EI Encyclopaedia of Islam, New edition FAOS Freiburger altorientalische Studien FFF 1983 Salles, J.-F., ed. . Failaka, fouilles françaises 1983, Lyon: Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient . FFF 1986–1988 Calvet, Y., and Gachet, J., eds., . Failaka, fouilles françaises 1986–1988, Lyon: Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient . IGCH Thompson, M., O. MØrkholm, and C. M. Kraay, eds. . An inventory of Greek coin hoards. New York: American Numismatic Society. JA Journal Asiatique JASP Jutland Archaeological Society Publications JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JOS Journal of Oman Studies JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society JSAI Jerusalem studies in Arabic and Islam JSS Journal of Semitic Studies N.A.B.U. Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires NC Numismatic Chronicle OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis OIP Oriental Institute Publications OLA Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta OLP Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica Or Orientalia PF Persepolis fortification text PSAS Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies RA Revue d’Assyriologie 00-Frontmatter.indd 7 1/29/20 9:13 AM RE Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft RES: Répertoire d’Épigraphie Sémitique. Paris. 1929–1968. RIM Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia RlA Reallexikon der Assyriologie RN Revue numismatique RSO Rivista degli studi orientali SAAB State Archives of Assyria Bulletin SC: Houghton, A., C. Lorber, and O. Hoover. 2008. Seleucid coins: a comprehensive catalogue. Part II. Seleucus IV through Antiochus XIII. Vol. I. New York and Lancaster/London: American Numismatic Society and Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. SD: Beeston, A. F. L., M. A. Ghul, W. W. Müller, J. Ryckmans. 1982. Sabaic Dictionary (English-FrenchArabic). Publication of the University of Sanaa, YAR. Louvain-la-Neuve and Beirut. SNGANS Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum. 1981. The collection of the American Numismatic Society. Part 6: Palestine-South Arabia. New York: American Numismatic Society. SBAW Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, philosophische-historische Klasse TMO Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient, Lyon ZA Zeitschrift für Assyriologie ZDMG Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 8 1/16/20 11:11 AM Preface The genesis of this volume took place in 2011 when then Numismatics Curator, Haim Gitler, conceived of a unique exhibition to be held at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, that would showcase the earliest coins in the Western tradition, those struck in electrum. Five hundred coins, all from the collections of Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan, Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza, and several from The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, were displayed in a spectacular exhibition, the first of its kind anywhere that looked at electrum coinage from the seventh to the fourth centuries BCE. Catharine Lorber soon joined Gitler in curating the exhibition, White Gold: Revealing the World’s Earliest Coins,1 a name suggested by Lorber, which opened in June 2012, with an exhibition catalogue of the same name written by Koray Konuk, Lorber, and edited by Gitler. Meanwhile, Gitler organized a conference on electrum coinage that was held at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the week the exhibit opened. Tom Kaplan and Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza, who have been keenly interested in this area of numismatic research, both actively participated in the conference. We are also most grateful for their most generous support, which funded the exhibition and conference, as well as this volume, and also for their help and enthusiasm for this project. Initially, Gitler, Lorber, and Konuk planned to publish the conference proceedings with The Israel Museum, Jerusalem’s imprimatur, but as many of the conference participants felt a follow-up meeting would be beneficial to address some of the outstanding problematic aspects of early electrum raised in Jerusalem, a second White Gold conference was held in November 2013 at the American Numismatic Society (ANS) in New York City. In 2016, it was decided that publication of the proceedings of the two conferences would be undertaken by the ANS with Peter van Alfen and Ute Wartenberg serving as the volume’s editors, who received considerable editorial and other assistance on several of the chapters from Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert. Since 2013, the scope of the volume grew. Scholars, notably Kristin Kleber and Donald Jones, who had not participated in the two original conferences were invited to contribute chapters, and others who had participated offered additional contributions. While the expanded scope of the volume delayed publication, nonetheless we can now offer a fuller and more detailed picture of the evidence at hand for understanding the various contexts in which early electrum coins were produced and used. A publication project of this size and duration has necessarily involved numerous individuals, many of whom have spent untold hours working on various aspects of production. Andrew Reinhard, the ANS’s Director of Publications, deserves our sincerest appreciation for designing and typesetting the book, an inordinately complicated task. Emma Pratte and Alan Roche, both at the ANS, provided aid with many of the illustrations, while Orla Mulholland loaned her German-to-English translation skills, and Theresa Huntsman her critical proofreading services. Finally, a note on spelling conventions for ancient names, places, and denominations. In general, we have opted to use the Latinate rather than Hellenized versions for notable ancient figures, places, and other terms since these are the ones most familiar to Anglophone readers. One exception to this is our adoption of the Hellenized version of some of the denominational terminology associated with early electrum coinage. To aid readers in understanding this terminology, and some of the associated variations used by authors in this volume, we provide an overview of denominational terminology in the front matter. . https://museum.imj.org.il/exhibitions//WhiteGold/index.html. WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 9 1/16/20 11:11 AM Electrum Denominations — 1/2 stater 1/3 stater 1/4 stater 1/6 stater 1/12 stater 1/24 stater 1/48 stater 1/96 stater 1/192 stater WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 10 stater(s) half(s) third(s) fourth(s) sixth(s) twelfth(s) twenty-fourth(s) forty-eighth(s) ninety-sixth(s) — hemistater(s) tritê/tritai tetartê/tetartai hektê/hektai hemiekton/hemiekta myshemiekton/myshemiekta tetartemorion/tetartemoria hemitetartemorion/hemitetartemoria — 1/16/20 11:11 AM White Gold, pp. – ©  The American Numismatic Society Introduction White Gold and the Beginnings of Coinage: An Introduction to the Current State of Research Peter van Alfen and Ute Wartenberg Introduction In June 2012, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem opened a spectacular temporary exhibition entitled White Gold: Revealing the World’s Earliest Coins, showcasing hundreds of electrum coins minted in Asia Minor and Greece between roughly 650 and 450 BCE.1 In conjunction with the opening of the exhibition, its curator, Haim Gitler, welcomed a dozen scholars to participate in a conference that sought to examine the beginnings of coinage in the Western world, seeking to answer two of the most perplexing questions in early numismatics: “Why coinage?” and “Why electrum?” As will be seen, there is no certain answer for why coins needed to be struck at all and why the first coins were struck in alloyed gold and silver—i.e., electrum—rather than unalloyed, as was commonplace in later centuries. In his keynote address at the opening of the exhibition, François de Callataÿ summed up the results of the two-day conference: “We are still confused, but on a higher level.”2 Roughly a year-and-a-half later, in November 2013, a follow-up conference was held at the American Numismatic Society in New York City, with the stated purpose of further exploring some of the issues left unresolved at the conference in Jerusalem. There, too, the participants came away with the sense of being better informed about the problems but still far from having definitive answers for our two most pressing questions. This volume, White Gold, which serves as the proceedings of both gatherings, offers readers the first systematic attempt in generations to lay bare what we know of the beginnings of coinage in the Western tradition from a factual standpoint and to offer a range of interpretations of the data. While it is certain that this volume offers a great . Konuk and Lorber . . A version of this talk was published in de Callataÿ .  WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 1 1/16/20 11:11 AM 2 Peter van Alfen and Ute Wartenberg deal that is new in terms of both data and interpretations, definitive answers remain maddeningly elusive; we still do not know why, exactly, the Lydians and the Greeks who were subject to them decided to strike the first coins in the seventh century BCE, or why they decided to do so in what Herodotus (1.50) called chrysion leukon, “white gold.” In what follows, we offer a synopsis of the problems and the current state of our answers to them.3 Part I: The Great Transformation The first coins were struck somewhere within what is today the westernmost part of the modern Republic of Turkey. Large parts of this region in the period that concerns us here, from ca. 650 to 450 BCE, came from the late seventh century onward under the control of the Lydians, an indigenous people with a distinct language and culture. They initially inhabited the region surrounding Sardis, which became the capital of the Lydian Empire.4 Herodotus’ rather fanciful account of the growth and spread of a powerful Lydian dynasty, the Mermnads, seeks to explain how they came to control all of Asia Minor west of the Halys River, including several wealthy and powerful Greek poleis, such as Miletus and Ephesus.5 For over a century, from the time of the first of the dynasts, Gyges, until the final king, Croesus, who lost his throne to the Achaemenid Persian onslaught in the middle of the sixth century BCE, the Lydian Empire was the wealthiest and most powerful entity that the Aegean region had yet seen;6 its rulers were especially renowned for their wealth and extraordinary dedications at Greek sanctuaries across the region.7 At some point during the period of Lydian hegemony, and at some place within the Lydian Empire, the first coins were struck. It remains unclear whether the initiative came from the Lydian throne, from the subject tyrants and oligarchs of the Greek poleis, or from otherwise independent elites. What is certain is that within a comparatively short span of time scores of producers, including the Lydian king, began to strike small, pre-weighed and pre-formed ingots of alloyed precious metals, usually with a design of some significance on the obverse. The rough date when this all began has long been a matter of controversy that has centered on the dozens of coins found in the archaeological excavations of the Artemision, the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, particularly those found in the so-called Central Basis, the cultic heart of the several temples built and rebuilt on the spot over the course of the Archaic and Classical periods.8 As detailed by Michael Kerschner in this volume, although the early twentieth-century British excavators D. G. Hogarth and A. E. Henderson were essentially correct in their dating of the earliest portions of the Central Basis to the seventh century BCE, the assumptions of the later twentieth-century Austrian archaeologist Anton Bammer, influenced in no small measure by numismatist Martin Price’s views of the stylistic progression of the early coins, encouraged a significant down-dating of the Central Basis, and thus the beginnings of coinage, to the first part of the sixth century.9 This late beginning of electrum coinage can be found in many of the publications of the last thirty years, but Kerschner’s careful reanalysis of the excavation records make it clear that a seventh-century BCE date for the . Two papers presented at the original Jerusalem conference are not published here, one by Katerini Liampi and another by Robert Wallace, who opted to publish it elsewhere (Wallace ). Two additional papers, however, have been added, those by Kristin Kleber (this volume) and Donald Jones (this volume). . For overviews of the Lydians, their culture, and empire see Cahill ; Roosevelt ; Payne and Wintjes . . Hdt. .–. . Dale  and Wallace  offer recent reassessments of the dynasty and the chronologies of the kings. . Herodotus (.–; .) records great quantities of pure gold and white gold in bullion form, along with worked objects in gold and silver sent to various Greek sanctuaries in Asia Minor and in mainland Greece; see also Buxton . . Konuk and Kerschner, this volume. . Kerschner, this volume. WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 2 1/16/20 11:11 AM White Gold and the Beginnings of Coinage 3 beginnings of electrum coinage best fits the archaeological and historical evidence. It now seems probable that the first coins were struck sometime in the third quarter of the seventh century, e.g., between 650 and 625 BCE, and that those deposited in the Central Basis a short time later were part of a ritual foundation offering to the goddess. While we can be certain that the introduction of coinage and its use marked a change in monetary habits in Archaic western Asia Minor, and eventually across the entire Mediterranean region, it is still unclear just how significant or transformative this change was, at least initially. Did the introduction of coinage mark a great transformation, or was it simply a continuation, albeit refined, of earlier monetary practices? One critical component of any answer to this question is the definition of “money,” a perpetually vexing problem. A number of scholars, including David Schaps and Richard Seaford, have argued at length that the introduction of coinage coincided with the introduction of money per se, at least as we think we understand it.10 Regardless of the evidence, for some degree of monetary thinking and the apparent use of non-coin monetary instruments, such as we find, for example, in the epics of Homer, they contend there was no all-purpose money before coinage.11 Thus the introduction of coinage entailed monetization to an extent and scale never before seen, along with its myriad economic, social, and political ramifications. Others, such as Michel Jursa, and Haim Gitler and Oren Tal in this volume, offer textual evidence, corroborated by finds of hoards of Hacksilber (cut pieces of silver) in the Near East, to insist on high levels of (non-coin) monetization in Mesopotamia and the Levant as early the second millennium BCE, but particularly widespread by ca. 900 BCE.12 This long-established Near Eastern silver tradition in turn seems, as John Kroll has argued, to have inspired a similar use of weighed monetary silver in the Aegean region before the first indigenous coins were struck in places like Athens, and possibly in Ionia as well.13 One problem in all of these arguments, as detailed recently by Peter van Alfen, is that the approach and methodologies used for defining money, which tend to be functionalist and materialist and include a checklist of sorts for what money is and does, continues to lead to a stalemate.14 Instead, van Alfen offers an approach to the problem of money before coinage that seeks to understand the theoretical frameworks as well as the physical aspects of the problem as a way forward. In any event, it seems probable that in Lydia there was a monetary tradition already in place that used precious metal bullion as a monetary instrument, one that continued well after coins were in general production and circulation.15 Textual evidence for this comes from a remarkable inscription found in the excavations of the Artemision that tallies what appear to be donations or revenues acquired by the temple. As both John Kroll and Alain Bresson discuss in their chapters here, these include significant sums of gold and silver in the form of unminted bullion.16 With a suggested terminus ante quem of 570 BCE for the document, it was probably written at least a generation or two after the first coins appeared, attesting to monetary transactions in an official, public context in which electrum coins were refused because, as Kroll and Bresson conclude, pure gold continued to be the money of account long after coins entered the picture. . Schaps , , a, b, , ; Seaford . . E.g., Il. .–: prizes in a wrestling contest valued in so many oxen; Od. .– : purchase of a slave girl for twenty cows. . Jursa ; Gitler and Tal, this volume; cf. Balmuth ; Thompson . . Kroll , , , , , ; but cp. Davis . . van Alfen ; cf. Peacock , . . See, for example, the Archaic hoard from Colophon(?) published by Kim and Kroll () that contained both coins and Hacksilber dating to ca.  BCE. . Kroll, this volume; Bresson, this volume; for the archaeological context of the tablet see Kerschner, this volume. WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 3 1/16/20 11:11 AM 4 Peter van Alfen and Ute Wartenberg The fact that for around a century, ca. 650 to 550 BCE, coins were struck only in electrum may have been a contributing factor to the Artemision treasurers rejecting them in payments to the temple. Then, as now, the value differential between gold and silver was significant; throughout most of antiquity the gold-silver ratio fluctuated between 1:10 and 1:14.17 Two of the most important components in the valuation of precious metal coinage are weight and alloy; ideally, all of the coins within a series are struck as close to the standard weight as possible and with an alloy that is consistent and publicly known. Although many of the issuers of early electrum coinage seemed to have taken great care in producing coins of good and consistent weight, the alloys known for the different series vary.18 Any slight fluctuation in the gold-silver ratio across a series of electrum coins would significantly alter the valuation of individual coins, thus requiring each coin to be separately checked and valued.19 Besides generally upsetting trust in coinage, such fluctuations could also slow transactions to a crawl as individual coins were submitted to the touchstone and balance, thus negating any transactional advantage, for the users at any rate, that coinage might have had over bullion.20 The treasurers of the Artemision may have sought to avoid any such uncertainties and hassles by insisting upon pure gold and silver bullion in payments rather than accepting electrum coins. If this was true, and if electrum coins were rejected in certain types of transactions in preference for pure gold or silver bullion, why was electrum used for coins in the first place? The answer to this question in recent years has been based on two assumptions: the Lydians in Sardis had access to an abundance of naturally occurring electrum, and at the same time, they initially lacked the technology to separate the gold from the silver for transactional use. There is little question that the Lydians were known from an early date to have derived significant wealth from the gold flowing past Sardis in the Pactolus River, washed down from deposits in Mt. Tmolus (modern Bozdağ).21 As detailed by Cahill et al. in this volume, earlier interpretations of a passage in Herodotus along with limited metallurgical analysis performed in the twentieth century on alluvial gold from the Pactolus led to the conclusion that the native gold available to the Lydians in Sardis typically contained 70–80% gold and 20–30% silver.22 Furthermore, the refinery discovered in sector PN in the excavations at Sardis was thought to have been established in response to the need to find a way to separate gold and silver for monetary purposes—a technology that the Lydians only developed in the sixth century.23 Based on these conclusions, coinage was seen to be a solution offered by state authorities to the problem of how best to monetize this native gold windfall and to deal with its comparatively high and variable silver content. The state nullified the problem by using its coercive powers to set the value of the coinage struck in this native white gold (i.e., electrum) at a rate sufficiently above the commodity value of the gold and silver within . Kroll, this volume, calculates the gold-silver ratio found in the Artemision table at :-/; cf. Bresson, this volume. . On the weights see Velde, this volume; for the alloys see Blet-Lemarquand and Duyrat, this volume, and Gitler et al., this volume. For a detailed analysis of the weights and alloys of electrum coinage struck at Miletus, see Hilbert . See further discussion below. . Fischer-Bossert, this volume, demonstrates that both the weight and alloy in the staters of the Phanes series changed over time, raising questions about the valuation of the individual coins in the series. Cf. Wallace . . The large number of early Lydian coins with countermarks indicates that individual coins were often checked; see Velde, this volume. Also, there seem to have been attempts by producers to disguise the fact that their electrum coins had a lower amount of gold than was expected by users; see Cahill et al., this volume, and Konuk . . Hdt. .. Psoma, this volume, discusses this and other literary passages. . Herodotus (.) provides the linear and mass measurements of pure gold and white gold ingots given to the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, which have been used to calculate the ratio of their gold-silver content; Cahill et al., this volume. . Ramage and Craddock . See also discussions in Kleber, this volume, and Cahill et al., this volume. WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 4 1/16/20 11:11 AM White Gold and the Beginnings of Coinage 5 it to dispel any transactional chaos, much like modern states do today with their token coinages. By guaranteeing the receipt of these coins in tax and other payments back to the state at the denominated value, the state could maintain their overvaluation and, at the same time, make a tidy profit on their issuance. The limited circulation of early electrum coins within the territories of the Lydian Empire would seem to corroborate this theory of a closed monetary zone within which overvaluation was enforced.24 New evidence, however, compels us now to discard this theory, at least in part. The most recent metallurgical analyses of alluvial gold from the Pactolus, as well as modern mining activity on Tmolus itself, indicate that the native gold found around Sardis is essentially pure.25 At the same time, as Kristin Kleber demonstrates, the technology for separating gold and silver was perfected long before Gyges took the throne and so must certainly have been known to the Lydians well before they struck their first coins.26 While it remains possible that the Lydians had access to native electrum from sources in northwestern Anatolia, as suggested by Cahill et al. in their chapter, even so there is now little doubt that the decision to strike coins in electrum was not just a calculated measure but that the alloy used was entirely of human design. The Lydians or Greeks, in other words, had the resources and technology to strike their first coins in either pure gold or pure silver but chose not to do so. It was not until generations later, ca. 550 BCE, when the last Lydian king, Croesus, issued the first gold and silver coins—called “croesids” by modern scholars—that electrum began to be abandoned as a coining metal by the majority of producers.27 Moreover, we can no longer be so certain that the production and circulation of early electrum coinage was confined to just the Lydian Empire in western Asia Minor. As chapters in this volume by Kenneth Sheedy and Ute Wartenberg show, early electrum coinage was also produced outside of the empire in the northern Aegean and in mainland Greece, problematizing the notions of an extreme overvaluation of electrum coinage and the necessity of a closed circulation zone to enforce this.28 A theoretical reassessment of early electrum coinage is therefore needed, requiring a concurrent fresh look at the hard evidence of the coins themselves. Part II: The Hard Evidence Since coins were mass produced, the study of ancient coinage typically involves assembling datasets using the largest number of extant coins possible, whether for metallurgical analysis, for other physical measurements, or for die studies (the comparison of existing coins struck from the same die or sets of dies).29 This volume offers a number of studies of large groups of electrum coins. Technological improvements in the techniques available for the metallurgical analysis of ancient coins over the last decade have yielded better and more reliable results for non-destructive methods. Two chapters in this volume present the results of two independent, large-scale, yet overlapping metallurgical analysis projects, one conducted at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Orléans, France, and the other at the Israel Museum, in Jerusalem.30 The project in Orléans, which analyzed 97 electrum coins, used LA-ICP-MS (Laser Ablation Induc. Wallace ; Le Rider . . Cahill et al., this volume. . Kleber, this volume. . Le Rider : ch. . . Sheedy, this volume; Wartenberg, this volume; cf. Wartenberg . . Hilbert (), for example, presents an investigation of several hundred early electrum coins of Miletus that includes a full suite of metrological, metallurgical, and die studies. . Blet-Lemarquand and Duyrat (this volume), and Gitler et al. (this volume). WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 5 1/16/20 11:11 AM 6 Peter van Alfen and Ute Wartenberg tively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry), although for comparative purposes the investigators analyzed many of the same coins using other techniques, including X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF); significantly, the results of their XRF analyses did not differ dramatically from those using LAICP-MS. In recent years, because of the comparatively low cost of hand-held XRF machines, this technique has become increasingly popular for non-destructive metallurgical analysis of ancient coins. Indeed, XRF was the sole technique used to analyze the 209 coins for the Jerusalem project. Both studies offer new insights into the production of electrum coins dating from the beginnings of coinage down to the last Classical-period electrum issues. Previous metallurgical studies had suggested that coins of the so-called Lydian royal series tended to have a highly consistent alloy of ca. 55% gold, 44% silver, and ca. 1% copper;31 both studies in this volume confirm these observations. Curiously, however, as additional tests performed on similar coins found in the archaeological excavations at Sardis suggest, some issues within the Lydian royal series may have undergone some type of surface enrichment to make the coins appear to contain more gold than they actually did.32 This type of deception, if this was indeed the purpose of this surface treatment, has been observed in other series as well, in which significant amounts of copper were added to the alloy to darken a mixture lighter on gold and heavier on silver.33 Overall, the metallurgical studies in this volume illustrate that there was a considerable degree of variation found in the gold-silver alloys, with the range of gold content observed between 2% and 74%. Within most individual series, however, there seems to have been an attempt to maintain consistency, but in some cases, there is enough variation—beyond a 2% deviation in the amount of gold—to raise questions about the intent of the producers. To what degree this variation was deliberate or haphazard is difficult to say, although we may presume, given the precision we find in the other physical measurements of the coins as well as in textual evidence from later periods, that the alloy mixtures were not accidental.34 If this was the case, this further confounds our understanding of the earliest coins and how readily they might have been accepted across a range of payments. While the alloys in some cases varied considerably, the weights of the coins generally did not. Using a dataset comprised of 3,367 of electrum coins, François Velde’s statistical analysis of their weights demonstrate that great care was generally taken to ensure that individual coins were struck impressively close to the ideal weight for the standard.35 For larger denominations, particularly the staters on the Milesian standard of ca. 14.2 g, the standard deviation in the weights is less than +/- 2%, the benchmark for precision for mass-produced items from antiquity. The standard deviation in the smaller denominations is larger, but considering that a 1/96-stater’s ideal weight on the Milesian standard was 0.15 g, the mint workers still did impressively well considering their limited technologies for achieving high precision with such miniscule coins. Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert’s die study of the Phanes coinage, one of the best-known series of early electrum coinage, indicates that there could be subtle, and deliberate changes in both the weight and alloy during the production of a series particularly if it was comparatively long-lived.36 Fischer-Bossert’s observations suggest that authorities might have adjusted coin weights and al. Cowell et al. ; Keyser and Clark . . Cahill et al., this volume. . Konuk . . An inscription (IG XII , ) dated to ca.  BCE concerning the joint electrum coinage produced by Mytilene and Phocaea (see below) is primarily focused on the quality and consistency of the electrum alloy to be used in the coinage; for the text, translation, and commentary, see Mackil and van Alfen : –. . Velde, this volume. . Fischer-Bossert, this volume. WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 6 1/16/20 11:11 AM White Gold and the Beginnings of Coinage 7 loys in response to market forces in order to ensure that the desired margins in expenditure and revenue in the production of the coins was maintained. His observations also underscore the critical need for more die studies of early electrum series in order to determine, among other things, if the patterns seen in the Phanes coinage were replicated elsewhere. This is a task that hopefully will be made easier with the completion of a full catalogue of all known early electrum coins that he and Ute Wartenberg are now in the process of publishing online.37 In general, there is need for continued physical analysis of the coins in the form of die studies, weight analyses, and metallurgical studies to help answer what appear to be, from a monetary standpoint, the mutually exclusive characteristics of these early coins: high precision in their weights but variation in their alloys. Variation in either could drastically affect the valuation of the coins either in series or individually, again adding to rather than reducing potential transactional problems. For what reason, then, were these coins produced, and who used them? Part III: Why Coinage? Based on our current assessment of the numismatic evidence the advent of coinage does not appear to have been a solution initiated by the state to monetize native electrum. If we accept that there were already relatively elevated levels of monetization and use of precious metals in the form of bullion as monetary instruments in western Asia Minor prior to the advent of coinage, as seems likely to be the case, we still are faced with the question: Why coinage? What did coinage, especially electrum coinage, do or offer that other monetary instruments did not? Who needed these coins? A number of chapters in this volume seek to answer these questions or aspects of them, touching on a range of not just economic but also political and social motivations that issuers and users might have had in producing, adopting, and perpetuating a form of currency that required higher levels of cooperation and trust between all parties than anything that came before them. Coin producers needed to be trustworthy enough that users could accept the coins as having an inherent and stable value and be able to pass them along simply by counting out rather than checking and weighing. The images and (abbreviated) words found on coins, we might presume, symbolized the aspiration of trust, functioning as a sort of assertion or guarantee, in so far as they could be directly associated with the producer. No such aspirations or guarantees were made for or by Hacksilber, an anonymous currency that transactors either accepted at their own risk or otherwise subjected to testing. Because the resources required to produce coinage are great in terms of procuring the necessary materials, metallurgical know-how, and skilled labor, and because the generation of trust in coinage once issued would seem to require the awe-inspiring, coercive powers of the state, it would make sense that Archaic states, like those today, had a monopoly over coin production.38 States, it is generally assumed, claimed this monopoly from the very beginning of coin production. There are, however, two problems with this assumption: 1) What exactly was “the state” in the Archaic period and how extensive were its powers; and 2) How do we interpret the plethora of types or discrete designs found among the earliest electrum issues? . This project is noted in Wartenberg . The online catalogue will be hosted by the American Numismatic Society. In the meantime, Fischer-Bossert has taken advantage of the collected material to complete die studies of other early electrum series; see Fischer-Bossert a, b, . . For an overview of coin production and its associated technologies, see Casoli and Wahl . On state control of monetary production, see de Callataÿ a. WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 7 1/16/20 11:11 AM 8 Peter van Alfen and Ute Wartenberg The earliest coins had a developed type, or image, only on one side of the coin, the obverse, produced by a die immobilized in some fashion, such as fixing it within an anvil. A blank flan was placed over this fixed die then struck with another die, the reverse, generally held in one hand while a hammer was held in the other.39 The reverse dies on the majority of the earliest electrum coins, and on most coins including silver issues down to around 500 BCE, were simple, unadorned punches. Their purpose was less decorative than functional: to push the metal on the far side of the coin into the obverse die and raise the design. A number of series of early electrum coins feature up to three different reverse punches on the largest denominations, the staters and 1/2-staters, with the number of reverse punches progressively reduced to two, then one on 1/3-staters, 1/6-staters, 1/12-staters, and so on. The number of reverse punches may have served in this case to distinguish between some of the denominations.40 It was only after ca. 500 BCE that reverse types featuring a developed image became more widely used. By that time, it is clear that both the obverse and reverse types played a role in helping users identify the political authority that issued the coinage. It is often assumed that the obverse type on the earliest electrum coins performed a similar deictic function. To date, however, roughly 400 discrete series of early electrum coins have been identified based on obverse types.41 Die studies have shown that the same reverse punch or punches were used for two or more series with discrete obverse types, suggesting that the linked series were produced in the same workshop under the same authority.42 A similar phenomenon is found with the legacy electrum coinages issued by Cyzicus, Mytilene and Phocaea, which all produced electrum coins down to the time of Alexander, each mint changing the obverse type at least one time per year, if not more frequently.43 If the practice found associated with these later electrum coinages reflects earlier practice, it is clear that the changing obverse type did not necessarily reflect the highest level of authority, the sovereign polis, but rather a lower level authority like a magistrate, or perhaps nothing more specific than simply artistic exuberance among a polis’ die engravers.44 Earlier commentators suggested that the plethora of types found among the earliest electrum coins instead reflect a large number of private producers such as bankers or merchants who issued coins for their own purposes in an economic milieu that lacked significant state oversight and enforcement.45 Many have pushed back against this idea of non-state or non-sanctioned coinage in the Archaic period, again assuming that all if not most early coinage was state-produced. But as van Alfen notes in his chapter, these arguments are based on modern notions of state power and control that might not be fully applicable to a period in which states, however we might want to define them, were in a process of slowly acquiring powers.46 Furthermore, even within the Lydian Empire the distribution of power among dynasts scattered about the countryside might have limited the central government’s ability to claim a total monopoly on coin production. As John Kroll notes in his chapter, an apt parallel can be found in neighboring Lycia, which saw many individual dynasts producing their own coinages without any strong, central oversight during the later Archaic . For the production of ancient coinage and an experiment to reconstruct ancient minting practices in order to answer questions about these practices, see Faucher et al. . . See Velde, this volume, for a discussion of punches and their relationship to denominations. . In their attempts to catalogue all extant early electrum coins, Ute Wartenberg and Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert have identified over  discrete series based on obverse types; cf. Wartenberg . . Weidauer ; Fischer-Bossert a. . See below for further discussion of these later electrum coinages of Cyzicus, Mytilene, and Phocaea. . Cf. de Callataÿ, this volume. . Cf. Kroll, this volume; van Alfen, this volume. . van Alfen, this volume. WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 8 1/16/20 11:11 AM White Gold and the Beginnings of Coinage 9 and Classical periods.47 Phanes, an individual who signed early electrum coins, but about whom there is nothing in the historical record, may have been just such an elite.48 If such a picture applies to the production of early electrum coinage in Lydia, we can expect that state monopolization of coin production came about not necessarily by an initial decree, but by means of a process of state building and ongoing negotiations between elite stakeholders. For some period of time, economic or political elites may have produced coinages with little to no control or oversight alongside those produced by greater political powers like the Lydian king or Greek tyrants. While we can presume that a king or tyrant produced coins for the purposes of meeting payment obligations of various kinds, it is less clear why other elites, such as Phanes, would have produced coins, unless the early electrum issues were a type of special-purpose currency. Decades ago, in fact, Martin Price suggested that the earliest electrum issues were not coins as we understand them—that is, all-purpose currency—but rather served as a special type of bonus payment for mercenaries.49 As we shall see shortly, those few series of electrum coins that continued to be produced until the end of the Classical period in Cyzicus, Mytilene, and Phocaea, did serve as a type of special-purpose currency distinct from the more prevalent silver currencies in much wider circulation.50 Other aspects of early electrum coinage might suggest such was the case. Despite the fact that early electrum coinages are found in a wide range of denominations, from staters down to 1/192-staters—hugely inconvenient tiny coins weighing less than 0.10 g—the exchange value of even the tiniest coins was quite elevated. Using a variety of comparanda, François Velde suggests that a 1/96 electrum stater had enough exchange value to feed a laborer for a week. In other words, these almost impossibly small coins were not small change, while the larger coins in the series would certainly have had exchange values that precluded their use in what we might consider everyday transactions, such as purchasing food. Curiously, although the coins had rather high values, some of them, such as the Lydian royal tritê (1/3 stater), seemed to have circulated at rates high enough to induce wear and to attract a number of countermarks, presumably placed there by private money changers or other interested parties wanting to further validate their authenticity or value.51 The fact that there are plated counterfeits of some early series indicates not only that such precautions were necessary, but also that the coins saw enough circulation to warrant the effort to counterfeit them.52 Even if we still are at a loss to explain who exactly was producing the first coins and for what purposes, we may be getting closer to answering at least part of the question: Why? Alain Bresson argues that there was an abundance of gold that could be monetized but also that there was a concurrent desire to solidly fix the exchange ratio between gold and silver, thus avoiding variable exchange rates that could undermine the system, one of the age-old problems of bimetallic currency systems.53 Electrum coins might therefore have provided an elegant solution for avoiding that particular problem. By artificially creating a fixed gold-silver ratio within the coinage, producers could be assured that their coins would maintain a comparatively stable value over time, no matter the fluctuations in the gold-silver ratio in the marketplace. . Kroll, this volume. . Fischer-Bossert, this volume; Bresson, this volume. . Price . . de Callataÿ, this volume; Mielczarek, this volume; Psoma, this volume. . Velde, this volume. . For examples of plated counterfeits of early electrum coins, see Blet-Lemarquand and Duyrat, this volume. . Bresson, this volume. WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 9 1/16/20 11:11 AM 10 Peter van Alfen and Ute Wartenberg Besides ancient historians and numismatists, the question “Why coinage?” has also attracted the attention of economists, who have applied formal economic analysis to the problem. Jacques Melitz, for example, developed a formal model for the beginnings of coinage that allowed him to conclude that it was not, in fact, profitable for early states to produce coinage initially. The motivation for the production and promotion of coinage was instead a calculated political strategy to gain a postponed advantage in economizing on payments. In other words, producers were playing a long game rather than seeking immediate returns; the idea that producers were seeking immediate profits had been argued earlier by George Le Rider among others.54 In this volume, Donald Jones offers a formal approach for the beginnings of coinage that utilizes Mechanism Design Theory to consider the choices made by producers in issuing the coins and by users in accepting them.55 While Jones does not offer a specific reason for the initiation of electrum coinage, he does demonstrate how formal economic analysis of the problem can help shape the questions we ask and the answers we might receive in return. Whether or not we will be able to recover the actual reasons for its beginnings, coinage clearly had a considerable appeal, as did the use of artificially produced electrum as a coining metal.56 As the many coins, from many different series, from the Artemision illustrate, the new medium of coinage must have met with immediate popularity. Over the next 75 years after its introduction, it became widely accepted, and even after the introduction of gold and silver coinage, probably by Croesus, the last Lydian king, electrum coins continued. As Ute Wartenberg shows in her chapter, a steady stream of electrum coinage continued to be issued primarily by producers in Ionia, Caria, and in the northern Aegean down to the end of the sixth century.57 Part IV: Electrum Continuations Roughly a century after the first electrum coins were struck and hundreds of series had been released by scores of producers, many of the same producers began to turn away from electrum. The Lydian king, probably Croesus, appears to have been the first to do so, issuing separate gold and silver coins in a succession of weight standards that probably reflect attempts to adapt to changes in the gold-silver value ratio.58 After 500 BCE, gold became a secondary coining metal while a solid preference for silver coinage took hold; within a comparatively short period of time, the idea of coinage—in silver—rapidly spread across the Greek-speaking world, with over one hundred poleis and political entities from Cyprus to Sicily producing coins for the first time by the end of the sixth century BCE. Electrum coinage, however, did not die out but was produced primarily by three mints—Cyzicus, Mytilene, and Phocaea—each of which churned out large volumes of electrum coinage on a continuous basis for nearly two centuries, from the end of the sixth century down to the time of Alexander the Great near the end of the fourth century. Other mints such as Lampsacus and a few other cities occasionally minted electrum, often as emergency issues. The electrum coinages of Cyzicus, Mytilene, and Phocaea share certain peculiarities, however. For their coinages, the authorities in Mytilene and Phocaea formed a cooperative agreement . Le Rider :  suggests that the profits earned on electrum coin production, because of their presumed overvaluation, could have been as high as . . Jones, this volume. . For the complex problem of the introduction of separate gold and silver coinages, see Le Rider : ch. ; cf. Bresson, this volume; Cahill and Kroll ; for the later electrum issues, see Wartenberg, this volume, Fischer-Bossert . . Wartenberg, this volume. . Le Rider ; Bresson, this volume. WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 10 1/16/20 11:11 AM White Gold and the Beginnings of Coinage 11 near the end of the sixth century that stipulated that each polis would take turns minting electrum coins in a single denomination, the hektê of 1/6-stater, the alloy of which would be closely controlled.59 Although the Phocaeans on their hektai included a small phokê (seal) on the obverse as a mintmark, the main types on their coins and those of the Mytileneans changed constantly. In his comprehensive study of the Mytilene-Phocaea coinage, Bodenstedt identified hundreds of obverse types, several of which replicate types produced by other mints, such as the head of Athena and the owl of contemporary Athenian coinage.60 The Phocaeans also used a simple incuse square as their reverse type, while the Mytileneans used a full type. Notably, at the same time that both poleis were producing their cooperative electrum hektai, they were also producing silver coinages. Presumably, the electrum hektai issues served a different purpose than the silver issues, but just what that purpose was has confounded scholars.61 Clues to the purpose of the Cyzicene electrum issues, on the other hand, are provided by their findspots, which tend to be limited to the Black Sea region, where examples have been found in large numbers in hoards and in archaeological excavations. Given the importance of Black Sea area grain exports to feed poleis in the Aegean, it has long been thought that the production of the coins was linked to the grain trade, a view that Mariusz Mielczarek endorses here.62 Like the Mytilene-Phocaean issues, the Cyzicene issues also used hundreds of obverse types and like the Phocaean hektai they maintained the rather old-fashioned incuse reverse. The purpose of these changing types, no less than the purpose of the coinage itself, has long fueled speculation. In the hope of providing a more factual basis on which to understand these types, François de Callataÿ has begun a die study of the coinage, a preview of which he provides here along with preliminary thoughts on the nature of the changing types.63 For de Callataÿ, the abundance of types does not necessarily reflect an administrative purpose, such as indicating the magistrate(s) responsible for the particular issue, but rather a free hand given to engravers to express their art and skill. Conversely, Selene Psoma suggests that the types found on the coins reflect commissions from groups, whether states or otherwise, wanting Cyzicenes struck for them.64 This kind of on-demand production of coinage served a variety of users for a variety of purposes, and also served to enrich the Cyzicenes, who had discovered a profitable export industry with their electrum coinage. Conclusions The wide-scale production and use of electrum coinage in the ancient world was limited primarily to the Aegean region and to a period between ca. 650 BCE, when the first coins in the western tradition were struck in Asia Minor, down to the last of the Cyzicenes and Mytilene-Phocaea issues of ca. 330 BCE, when the Mediterranean world began to sift through the destruction and changes left in the wake of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire. As discussed extensively elsewhere, the numismatic and monetary world changed rapidly following Alexander, with many civic coinages and more limited circulation zones falling by the wayside as the conqueror’s became . See n.  above. . Bodenstedt . . Mackil and van Alfen , for example, suggested that the coins were produced specifically to generate revenue from their sale to traders who in turn required them for specific markets. . Mielczarek, this volume. . de Callataÿ, this volume. . Psoma, this volume. WhiteGold-ANS-Copy.indb 11 1/16/20 11:11 AM 12 Peter van Alfen and Ute Wartenberg the coinage of his vast realm. 65 Subsequent Hellenistic kings and civic producers saw no need to revitalize electrum coinage despite its centuries-long tradition of production and use, a sudden break that suggests that coining in white gold, whatever its advantages might have been, was more trouble than it was worth. Bibliography Balmuth, M. S. (ed.). 2001. Hacksilber to Coinage: New Insights into the Monetary History of the Near East and Greece. Numismatic Studies 24. New York: American Numismatic Society. Blet-Lemarquand, M. and F. Duyrat. 2020. “Elemental Analysis of the Lydo-Milesian Electrum Coins of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Using LA-ICP-MS.” This volume. Bodenstedt, F. 1981. Die Elektronmünzen von Phokaia und Mytilene. Tübingen. Bresson, A. 2020. “The Choice of Electrum Monometallism: When and Why?” This volume. Buxton, A. H. 2002. 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