ELECTRUM
For about 300 years, most "gold" coins were struck in this sometimes natural alloy of gold and silver. Electrum continues to be a modern coinage metal.
by Michael E. Marotta
All of the 93 oldest known coins uncovered at the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos are electrum. Electrum is an alloy of gold with silver and traces of other metals. Natural and artificial electrum served as the most common form of “gold” coinage until about 330 BC when nominally pure gold coins from Philip II of Macedon, and his son Alexander, flooded the Greek world.
Even after Alexander, electrum money continued. Carthage issued electrum coins. So did the Roman emperor Severus Alexander as did the Romaion (“Byzantine”) emperors of Constantinople. A thousand years later, in America, the United States Mint considered a “goloid” electrum coinage. New electrum coins still appear on the market today.
The definition of what is electrum is somewhat arbitrary. All geologists agree that electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, usually with measurable copper and trace residues of other metals. Some geologists define electrum narrowly as being 35% silver to 45% silver. For others electrum ranges in composition from 1% to 99% silver.
Gold-rich electrum occurs in sulfide-poor deposits. In such cases, the range of gold is narrow. Copper (along with bismuth and tellurium) occurs generally in gold-rich electrum. Silver-rich electrum occurs in sulfide-rich deposits. The range of silver varies widely. Lead (along with tin, zinc, and selenium) occurs in silver-rich electrum.
Numismatists generally associate the first coins with the Lydian kingdom of Sardis. In ancient times, it was known that the Pactolus flowed down from Mt. Tmolus to meet the Hermus River. Today, these features are known by their Turkish names: Sartcay, Boz Dag, and Gediz. It was in the Pactolus (Sartcay) that Midas bathed to rid himself of his golden touch. Modern Turkish geological and mineralogical surveys of the area still identify it as being rich in metals: gold, silver, arsenic, lead, zinc, aluminum and iron.
The Artemisian Hoard – actually eight discrete finds considered as a composite – strongly suggests that the development of true coinage unfolded over one lifetime. In addition to the 83 "true" coins with an identifiable type on one side, are so-called “dumps” or coin-like objects also of electrum. They seem to be planchets or flans, generally the same sizes and shapes as the coins. Some of these cruder objects share punches with true coins. (The coin-like silver objects also known from the same excavations have been ignored by numismatists.) No less rapid was the evolution from natural nuggets of varying composition to manufactured planchets of uniform alloy
The poet-soldier Archilochos of Paron left the earliest written evidence of monetary payment to mercenaries. That was during the reign of Gyges (716 to 678). In the next century (617-560) the name of Alyattes (“Walwe”) became the oldest inscription on a coin. A hundred years later, Kroisos (“Croesus”) issued coins of gold and coins of silver in his short reign (560-546). The rapid evolution of coins as a medium of commerce was the most likely impetus for the development of precious metals processes that demonstrated quality of a modern mindset.
The refining of gold might be placed earlier than 3000 BC. Passages in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and chisels found at Ur demonstrate that the oldest civilizations knew the difference between gold and electrum. However, researcher Paul Craddock notes: "Our idea of pure gold as a single and precisely defined element is based on the relatively modern scientific concepts of the nature of elements... The ancients did not have such a concept of an ultimate, pure elemental material. Thus metals such as gold, coming from various sources, could have widely differing properties but still be gold." This apparent contradiction is the focus of new research into the industrial districts of archaic Lydia.
The need for efficient monetary media was the impetus for Lydia’s intense development of refining and alloying in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. Natural electrum from the Pactolus (Sartcay) river varied from 17% to 30% silver. However, the electrum coins of Sardis consistently test at about 55% gold and 45% silver. The trace amounts of copper were not accidental: the goal was to achieve an alloy with a lower melting point and greater hardness as compared to pure gold.
Both before and after the rise and fall of Croesus, the Ionians maintained a tradition of electrum coinage. Like Sardis, they also mixed their electrum from pure gold and silver.
For example, the electrum of Phokaia and Mytilene is very steady. It was about 55.5% gold in Phokaia, from 600 to 522 BC. Then in the early classical period (521-478), it fell to about 46% in Phokaia and about 43% in Mytilene. From 477 to 326 BC it remained at about 40% to 41% gold.
Herodotus called electrum “white gold” (Histories I 50-1). Writing about the ingots sent to Delphi by Kroisos he says: “There were a hundred and seventeen in number, four of them refined gold, each weighing two and half talents, while the remaining ingots were of white gold, weighing two talents.” In this, Herodotus was a bit unusual. Most of the ancient Greek sources refer only to “gold.”
The so-called “Treaty of Mytilene” was a long-standing agreement between the towns of Mytilene and Phokaia. While the inscription we have is dated about 400 BCE, the entire series of electrum hektai (sixth staters) runs from at least 480 to 350, if not from 521 to 326. The treaty does not use the word "electrum" but specifies the mixing of "gold." The treaty says:
TON DE KERNANTA TO CRUSIOS UPODIKON EMMENAI AMFOTERA ISI TAIS POLIESSI :
“Whoever mixes the gold will be accountable to both cities.”
The inventories of temples, lists of payments to Athens, and other Greek sources also call “gold”coins that we identify as electrum. This is not so unusual. Writing about Carthaginian issues, Jenkins and Lewis state: “The dividing line between gold and electrum is a matter of definition, on which opinions differ. The coins listed here range from pure gold, down to 7 carats. All of them would be described as gold by English jewelers.”
The word “electrum” is a Roman invention. Pliny (Caius Plinius Secundus. 23-79 CE) wrote in his Natural History (XXXIII xxiii 80): “All gold contains silver in varying proportions, sometimes a tenth, and sometimes an eighth. In one mine only, that of Callaecia called the Albucrarian, a proportion of a thirty-sixth is found, so it is superior to the rest. Where the proportion of silver is one-fifth, it is called electrum; grains of this are found in gold mined by channeling. Electrum is also made artificially by the addition of silver; if more than one-fifth is added, it makes no resistance on the anvil.
Isidore of Seville (560-636 CE) said in his Etymologies: “Electrum is so called because in the rays of the sun it shines with a brighter reflection than gold or silver, for the sun is called Elector by the poets. For this metal is more purified than all other metals. There are three forms of it: one which flows from pine trees, called amber, another a metal which is found in nature and is prized, and a third, which is made from three parts of gold and one of silver, a proportion which you will also find if you analyze the natural form. So, it does not matter whether it is natural or manufactured; each kind is of the same nature.”
The ancient world never experienced what we call “bimetallism.” In other words, in America in the 1800s, you could exchange a silver dollar coin for a gold dollar coin. In Athens, no such exchange was possible. There was no abstract unit of account similar to a “dollar.” A gold stater was worth some number and fractions of silver staters. What that ratio was fluctuated over time and across geographies. This agoric data demonstrates that regardless of the status of the atomic theory of matter, people bought and sold electrum as if it were impure gold.
A Persian daric was a gold stater weighing 8.42 grams. In Persia, of 500 BCE it took 20 silver sigloi (5.6 grams) to buy what could be bought with one gold daric, for a ratio of about 40/3. There and then, electrum was worth three-fourths of its weight in gold
In Athens in 440, the silver-gold ratio was 14:1. In 408/409, at Athens, a daric was down to 24 drachmae 5 oboloi or 12 17/24. By 400 it was 12 to 1. In Athens, when gold was at 15, electrum was tariffed at 10-times the weight in silver. In the speech, Against Phornia, Demosthenes cites an exchange rate of 28 Athenian drachma for one stater (or didrachma) from the town of Kyzikos (Cyzicus). The electrum coin was 16.2 grams for a ratio of less than 7 ½ to one (929/125). On the other hand, at Olbia 350 BCE, a decree sets the value of a Kyzikene electrum stater as 10 ½ silver staters. As Philip II issued more gold coins, the ratio in value of silver to gold fell to 10 to 1. In the West the same pattern repeated. In Cyrene in the fifth century, the ratio seems to have been 15 5/8 to 1 and then by 310, after the campaigns of Alexander, it was 10 to 1.
The coins of Kyzikos fluctuate in alloy. Greenwell did not attempt to assign a chronology. Neither did he accumulate statistical data. However, in one short chart, he cites specific gravity measurements that show a variation from 52% gold 47% silver to 27% Au 73% Ag. One reason for the changing proportions could be the changing values of gold relative to silver. The coins were of a certain size and intended to buy a certain service. Those were the constants that defined the range of alloys.
Athens became the custodian of the treasury from the temple of Apollo at Delos in 453 BC. About 450 the Athenians passed a law that effectively forbade the minting of silver coins by the cities of the Athenian hegemony. However, there was no ban on electrum. . Athens accepted and tallied electrum, as did the temples and merchants of the time. According to Thomas Figuireia: “In the fifth century, electrum was a monetary medium for business conducted between Greeks and non-Greeks, between Mediterranean Greeks and colonial Greeks in the Black Sea region or in Hellespontine Asia Minor.” The significant electrum mints were Kyzikos, Phokaia (with Mytilene), and Lampsakos. Other towns, such as Chios, also issued electrum in archaic and classical times.
Barclay V. Head's Historia Numorum cites Xenophon's Anabasis (Book V Part VI). According to Head: "These coins of Cyzicus, together with the Persian darics, constituted the staple supply of the gold currency of the whole ancient world until such time as they were both superseded by the gold staters of Philip and Alexander the Great. A Cyzicene a month was promised to the soldiers as an advance upon their ordinary pay, which seems to have been a daric a month." In Archaic and Classical Greek Coins, Kraay asserts: "Both Darics and Cyzicenes were regarded as gold coins and were evidently treated as pieces of very similar value... Indeed it has been cogently pointed out that the two denominations originated in different times and different places... [T]he reason that both were roughly comparable in value may have been that both were intended to serve the same original purpose, namely to hire a mercenary soldier for one month."
From 600 to 350 BCE, Kyzikos issued over 200 types of staters. Summarizing the long series, Greenwell writes: “There are coins, no doubt among the large range of money of the various states of Hellas, that surpass any that proceeded out of the mint of Cyzicus, but no state can pretend to equal it in the number and variety of works of such high artistic merit as the staters of Cyzicus present.” The reason for the broad variety is that the staters were an export commodity, sold to those who paid mercenaries. Those buyers responded better to symbols of their own. Among the myriad gods and animals are even the owl of Athens, the bee of Ephesos and perhaps Philip of Macedon.
No matter what else appeared on the obverse, the town’s tuna fish usually swam in the exergue. That these issues enjoyed long lifetimes of service of is reflected in the fact that they have been found intermixed with the gold of Philip II and Alexander III.
The hektai of Mytilene and Phokaia are another long-lived, large volume series. Bodenstedt cataloged over 200 types, placing them in five distinct series, from 625 to 326 BCE. Portraits of the satraps Tissaphernes, Pharnabazus, and Orontes join gods, goddesses, and animals. Bodenstedt also developed extensive tables and histograms of weights and specific gravities. These show an impressive attempt by the mints to maintain their standards. Like Kyzikos and unlike Athens, these towns, however beautiful they might have been in their glory, were never the centers of empires or magnets for intellectuals. This means that like Kyzikos, they mixed their metal and struck their coins for export, enjoying some small but steady profit.
The issues of Lampsakos are considered rare today, though they were a source of electrum for trade. Numismatists identify only two series: about 513 BCE, and then about 450-434 BCE. However, a Boetian inscription dated at 355-351 tallies the contributions to the Sacred War. According to that list, the town of Byzantion contributed 580 Lampsakene staters to the effort.
Chios was a source of electrum, beginning 550 BCE, which is also the date of that city’s earliest silver. Even though it ceased after the collapse of the Ionian Revolt, Chian gold has been found at Naukratis, the Greek entrepot of Egypt. Her coins are easy to identify by the Sphinx, which was always her stamp. The amphora in front of the Sphinx is the key to dating the coins – or at least grouping them.
The shifting politics at Syracuse can be read in its money. Dion (357 – 353) struck electrum. Timoleon preferred pure gold in 345 BCE. Then, electrum appears in reign of Agathocles after 310. The electrum of Syracuse was probably an influence for the issues of Carthage. We can infer this from the total lack of gold and electrum coins from Phoenicia. The earliest coins of Tyre, Byblos, Sidon, and the other towns of the Punic homelands are silver only. On the other hand, silver coins of Carthage appear only after 242, when Hamlicar Barca built Carthago Nova and gained access to the silver mines of Spain.
The electrum of Carthage has been found from the Azores to the Balkans. Jenkins and Lewis identify 18 distinct series. As her fortunes of war rose and fell, the gold content of her coins also changed. Moreover, within each of the production runs, the tolerances are sometimes quite broad. (Jenkins and Lewis assert them to be narrow.) The first gold coins, staters of 7.58 grams, come from 390-370 BCE. The first electrum coins appeared about 320-310 and were about 70-72% gold. Subsequently, the gold was better than 95% pure on the average at 260 BCE. Then, 253-241 BCE, the alloy fell to less than 50% gold on the average. The last electrum of Carthage, 218 to 202, was 26% to 31% gold. This includes the issues of Hannibal about 215 from Capua. With some interesting exceptions, the types are usually Tanit/Horse, the most identifiable for Carthage. (One production run substituted a bold Pegasus for the horse.) Other types include Janus/Quadriga and Tanit/Bull.
Electrum continued in the East – it is known in Koshan coins of the 100s CE – but from this point, pure gold eclipsed electrum in the West. The exception to this rule is the electrum of the Celts who were in contact with the Rhone River trade of the Greeks from Marsala. Like later issues elsewhere, these coins were debased simply for the lack of gold. Julius Caesar looted those tribes to finance his imperial aspirations. Understanding Celtic electrum as debased gold is important for grasping the change in how ancient peoples saw electrum. It was no longer a separate metal, naturally occurring with its own properties. Nonetheless, as debased gold, electrum continued to serve a purpose.
From the time of Mithradates VI forward, Rome allowed the kingdom of the Bosporus to issue its own coins. Like the electrum of Carthage and unlike the earliest issues of the Ionians, the appearance of electrum marked economic difficulties. During the mid-200s CE, the gold of the Bosporus became debased. The biography of Severus Alexander, attributed to Aelius Lampridius says: "He had himself represented on a great number of his coins in the dress of Alexander the Great, some being of electrum, though most were of gold." These were the issues of the Bosporus kings, Sauromates (174-210) and Kotys III (228-235).
The appearance of electrum also marks the rising and setting of the Romaion (“Byzantine”) star, though in an alternate way. When the emperors at Constantinople were able to assert themselves, to rise on the tide of history, they were able to strike electrum coins whose value was below that of gold but above that of silver, thus creating a full range of issues. However, it cannot be said that this represents a “tradition” of such denominations. Romaion electrum includes nomisma of Michael VII Doukas (1078-1081), Manuel I Commenus (1143-1180), and Alexius III Angelus (1195-1203). After the Latin invasion, Theodore I of Nicea (1208-1222) issued electrum. Even so, the last dynasty, the Paleologi (12261-1453), issued none.
Some metallurgists call any alloy of silver and gold “electrum.” By that standard, the British sovereign is electrum. Most United States “gold” coins qualify as electrum issues. In the words of Tom DeLorey, of the Harlan J. Birk firm: “The American Eagles are 3% silver net weight, 5.3333% copper net weight and 91.6667% gold net weight, unlike the Krugerrand which is 8.3333% copper net weight and 91.6667% gold net weight. The U.S. added the silver as a deliberate attempt to lighten the color of the alloy, and thus to make it look more like pure gold than the normal reddish gold color of the Krugerrand. U.S. gold coins made before 1873 were 90% gold by weight, but they could have no less than 1% silver or no more than 5% silver in their alloy, the balance of the alloy being copper. This recognized the fact that most of the gold coming in to the Mint had naturally occurring silver in it.”
In contrast to such accidental electrum, the U.S. Mint actually considered an electrum coin in 1878. Since their birth, the U.S. Treasury and its Mint had chased the chimera of a “bimetallic” monetary system in which one dollar in silver was equivalent to one dollar in gold. Silver coins disappeared from commerce for years and then flooded the tills of shops as the relative values of gold and silver changed. Dr. W.W. Hubbell patented a metal he called goloid, supposedly equal parts by value of silver and gold in a 16:1 ratio. (A similar proposal is known from February 1, 1851, from Sen. R. M. T. Hunter, chairman of the Senate finance committee.) On January 3, 1878, the Mint agreed reluctantly to try the experiment. With only 4% gold content, the “goloid” dollars looked just like silver. Answering a call for a gold coin on par with the Latin Monetary Union, the Mint struck $4 “Stella” patterns in “metric gold” electrum in 1879 and 1880.
While classical electrum may not meet the needs of the modern world, it does have its own historical appeal. In April 2002, the government of Gibraltar commissioned the Pobjoy Mint to create a series of 50/50 electrum coins commemorating the archaic electrum of Sardis, Kyzikos, Lampsakos, and Phokaia. The series includes one ounce, half ounce and fifth ounce coins depicting the Lion and Bull, Herakles, Athena, and a Hippocampus.
Citing Herodotos, numismatists assert that the Lydians were the first to strike coins of gold and coins of silver. The staters of Kroisos and the Persian darics were nominally pure gold. However, most of the “gold” of the ancient world was really electrum. This means that the idea of so-called “bimetallism” did not really take hold. In fact, the monetized economies were always multi-metallic.
First of all, we know of sheets of bronze, the size and shape of a cowhide and weighing one “talent” or the value of a cow. These predated coinage by perhaps 1000 years, but were metal money nonetheless. The bronze litra of Sicily and the as of Rome may both echo that earlier currency. Therefore, coins in gold, electrum, silver, and bronze were all acceptable, at least by weight, when political power did not give them value by count or “tale.”
In the second place, cited at the beginning of this article are the silver “dumps” of Ephesos. The coin-like electrum nuggets get all the attention, but the silver “numismoids” (to coin a word) have been ignored. They present a problem. If Kroisos invented coins of gold and coins of silver, how do we explain the numismoids that predate him by 100 years? In the very same passage in which Herodotos credits the Lydians with the invention of gold and silver coins, he also says they invented retail commerce, a claim that is hilarious.
Perhaps the most intractable problem associated with electrum is the process of selling it. We know that the coins of Kyzikos primarily but also Phokaia, Mytilene, and other towns served as payment for mercenaries.
(1) With what did these generals pay for electrum? How did they acquire sheep or wheat or whatever other commodities they offered?
(2) On the other side of the ledger, how did the towns pay for the silver and gold from which they made electrum?
(3) What form did the profits take?
(4) How were they spent?
It seems easiest to understand that the polis could be, among other functions, a financial enterprise run by the citizens, perhaps more like a co-operative than like a corporation. The electrum mint cities seem to have been most conscious of this. Unfortunately, in this case, history leaves us only with speculation.
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