Sidonian Coinage

Sidonian coinage is the body of coins struck at Sidon, one of the leading cities of ancient Phoenicia, on the coast of what is now Lebanon. The mint was active for roughly seven centuries, from the mid-fifth century BCE under the Persian Empire, through the Hellenistic kingdoms, to Roman provincial issues of the third century CE.

Sidon's early silver is among the most distinctive of the ancient world, with its war galleys and scenes of the Persian king, and the city later became an important mint for Alexander the Great and his successors. Its output sits alongside that of neighbouring Tyre and Byblos as the core of Phoenician coinage.

Sidon began striking silver around the middle of the fifth century BCE, when Phoenicia was part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Sidon was the base of much of the Persian fleet, and its coins show this. A typical obverse depicts a war galley, sometimes in front of the city's fortified walls; the reverse shows the Persian Great King in a chariot, often followed by a smaller figure, or the king fighting a lion.

The largest coin was a heavy silver double shekel on the Phoenician weight standard, with smaller fractions for lesser payments. Later issues carry Phoenician letters giving the initials of local kings and regnal years, which has allowed scholars to build a rough chronology of Sidon's rulers in the fourth century BCE. These coins circulated widely in the Levant, where the shekel had long been the main unit of weight for silver, and they turn up in hoards together with Greek silver.

Sidon submitted to Alexander the Great in 333 BCE, and its mint was soon producing his silver tetradrachms and gold staters, on the Attic standard rather than the Phoenician one. This change linked Sidon to the wider Greek money system of the Attic drachma and the Macedonian stater. Under the Ptolemies, who ruled Phoenicia for most of the third century BCE, Sidon struck Ptolemaic silver with its own mint marks. After about 200 BCE the region passed to the Seleucid kings, and Sidon issued royal coins for them too.

As Seleucid power declined, Sidon gained autonomy in 111 BCE and began a civic coinage dated by its own era. Silver tetradrachms and didrachms of this period resemble the issues of Tyrian shekels, though Sidon's output was smaller. Bronze coins showed local themes such as Europa riding the bull, the goddess Astarte and the city's ships, reflecting Sidonian myths and its seafaring identity.

Under Roman rule, from 64 BCE, Sidon kept striking bronze coins with Greek legends and, later, the portrait of the reigning emperor, as a Roman provincial mint. It received the rank of a Roman colony in the early third century CE, and its last coins date from that century. By then everyday transactions in the region relied mainly on imperial denarii, provincial silver and bronze fractions, while the empire as a whole was sliding into debasement.

Sidon's coins are valuable evidence for the Persian administration of the Levant, for naval history and for Phoenician religion. Their shift from a local weight standard to the Attic system, and later back to civic issues, mirrors how ancient currency followed political power. Together with the coins of Byblos, they show how Phoenician city-states used money both for trade and to assert their identity.

• British Museum – Collection online