Lydian Stater

The Lydian stater was one of the earliest coins in the world, struck by the kingdom of Lydia in western Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey, from the late 7th century BCE. The first Lydian coins were made of electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver, and carried the head of a lion. Later, Lydia is credited with striking separate coins of fairly pure gold and silver, a step that shaped the development of bimetallic coinage.

The word stater, meaning a standard or a weight, was used by Greeks for the principal coin of many systems; it was not a Lydian name. The full stater was relatively rare, and most surviving Lydian coins are fractions, above all the third-stater, or trite.

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the Lydians were the first people to strike and use gold and silver coins. Archaeology broadly supports an origin in this region. The key evidence is a deposit of early electrum coins and unmarked lumps found beneath the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, generally dated to the second half of the 7th century BCE or around 600 BCE. Whether Lydia or one of the neighbouring Greek cities of Ionia struck the very first coins is still debated, and coins from places such as Miletus and Phocaea are of similar date.

The lion-head coins are usually attributed to the Mermnad kings of Lydia, often to Alyattes, who reigned in the early 6th century BCE, though some are probably earlier. A few bear a short inscription in Lydian script, usually read as a personal name, whose identification is uncertain.

Electrum occurs naturally in the rivers of Lydia, notably the Pactolus near the capital Sardis. Analysis of the coins shows that their gold content varied and was often lower than that of natural electrum, suggesting that the mint adjusted the alloy, perhaps adding silver. Because the precious-metal content of electrum is hard to judge by eye, a royal stamp gave users confidence in coins of a fixed weight.

The Lydian standard placed the full stater at about 14 g and the trite at about 4.7 g. Fractions ran down to a tiny 1/96 stater weighing well under a gram. Even small electrum fractions represented a considerable value, so these coins were probably used for large payments, wages of mercenaries and state transactions rather than everyday shopping, which still relied largely on weighed metal and barter.

Tradition credits King Croesus, who ruled until the Persian conquest of Sardis in about 547 or 546 BCE, with replacing electrum by separate coins of refined gold and silver. These coins, known as Croeseids, show the forepart of a lion facing the forepart of a bull. Excavations at Sardis have uncovered a gold refinery of the period, confirming that the technique of separating gold from silver was in use there. Some scholars argue that part of the Croeseid coinage was struck after the Persian conquest, so the attribution to Croesus himself is not certain.

After the conquest, the Persian kings eventually replaced Lydian coins with their own gold darics and silver sigloi, described under Achaemenid coinage. Meanwhile the idea of stamped coins spread across the Greek world, where silver became the usual metal and the drachma and its obol fractions the usual units. The stater name was later applied to the coins of Corinth, the Corinthian stater, and to the gold Macedonian stater. Lydian coinage is therefore a starting point for the history of coined money, from which later systems of currency and fiat money eventually developed.

• British Museum collection
• American Numismatic Society