pieces in existence, those various claims may be better understood, though possibly never finally adjusted.

By a very high authority, an Ionian coin of the city of Miletus, now in the British Museum (Plate I, No. 1), has been considered to exhibit marks of more ancient fabric than any coin hitherto discovered; it will, therefore, be well to examine it first.

The Ionian colonies in Asia Minor were founded by Greeks from the Peloponnesus, about the eleventh century before the Christian era; and the city of Miletus was taken from the Carians, who were, like the Greeks themselves, of Pelasgic origin, and spoke a language derived from the same source, but which was much ridiculed by the hellenic Greeks on account of its corruptness. Some considerable period evidently elapsed after these Ionian Greeks established themselves in Asia before they coined money; the date of that invention being conjectured, with some certainty, to lie in the seventh and eighth century before the Christian era. Homer's silence on the subject, as before alluded to, making it more than probable that it did not exist before the last mentioned period, while frequent mention of it, and even laws upon the subject,* soon after the first mentioned date, prove that, at that time, it must have been widely established, so that the earliest of the gold coins about to be described may have possibly been struck as early as 800 B.C.

No. 1, Plate I.-The Primitive Coin of Miletus in Ionia. This coin undoubtedly belongs to the first period of coinage, as it has all the characters of the earliest of those curious monuments that have come down to us-namely, a very rude impression on one side, and on the other merely the indent formed by the punch used to drive the metal into the die or mould containing the engraved design. The piece of metal destined to be thus coined by these primi tive moneyers was nearly globular, a tendency to which form the coins of this first period of the art still retained, even after the flattening process of hammering them into the die. The type of this Ionian coin is a lion's head, a symbol sacred also among the Persians and Assyrians, as an emblem

* Those of Solon, issued probably about 583 B.C., coutaining severe edicts against forgers of public money.

much no doubt was actual money, for it is shown by the painted sculptures of Egypt still, in some cases, as fresh as when they were executed, that silver and gold were known to the Egyptians and in common use as circulating media. This money was evidently in the form of rings,* as shown in the sculpture-paintings, where figures are seen weighing it, while others note down on a tablet the exact amount. This sort of money, passing by weight, and not by tale, is thus of a totally distinct character from coins. We have a more positive notice of this kind of money, where Abraham is stated to have given to Abimelech, King of Gera, one thousand pieces of silver, evidently referring to money of this description; and also in the purchase of the field of Machpelah, when "Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver which he had named," four hundred shekels of silver current money with the merchant. Thus we find that a metallic currency was positively in existence at this early period, and that the shekel was already established as a Lational Jewish weight, though it was as yet unknown as a coin. This shekel is, in the book of Job, called kesitah (a lamb), the weight being possibly made in that form; as we see them in that of sheep and other animals in the Egyptian paintings, and they have been discovered in similar forms

* These rings in the Egyptian paintings are merely painted as simple circlets of metal, but apparently capable of being opened at one side, so that they might be strung together in the form of a chain. A modern ring-money is still in circulation in some parts of Northern Africa; as described by Mr. Bonomi, it resembles the Celtic and Scandinavian ring-money of the middle ages, Egyptian the idea of which was no doubt originally imported from the Ring Money. East. Of such ring-money as was in circulation in the north and west of Europe, about the time of the invasion of Cæsar, and later, the annexed woodcut will afford a good idea. It was usually made with the ends flattened, where they were pressed together when used to form a chain. Such rings are frequently found both in England and Ireland, and of various sizes, both in gold and silver, from the size of a finger-ring to that of a bracelet, and from that of a bracelet to that of a torque, or collar, frequently worn round the neck by northern races. It is not the intention in Celtic a work devoted to the history of the origin and progressive Ring Money. development of true coins, to speak at length of any sort of money which preceded it; but it may not be out of place to state here, en passant, that ancient authors have alluded to leather money-clay money -to shells used as money-to iron money, &c., which will be referred to incidentally as occasion occurs.

among the Assyrian remains recently brought to light. The lamb may have been adopted to signify that that weight of silver represented the value of a lamb, while other weights possibly denoted by their form that they represented the value of an ox. Certain it is that the transition from simple barter to the use of a metallic media of exchange was shown in some instances by figures of that description, most remarkably perhaps, on the libra or pound weight of the Romans, which was impressed with the image of an ox, and other domestic animals, the term pecu (cattle), being the origin of the Latin word pecunia (money), from which many modern monetary terms are derived. The step from simple barter to that of an inconvenient metallic currency passing by weight, was an enormous one in the march of civilisation, but that from a weighed currency to one formed of positive coins which were received at once as of a certain value, guaranteed, not by an individual, but by a state, with the national signet stamped upon it to establish and denote that value, was a yet greater step, and formed the basis of the entire after-development of the commercial system.

When this great advance in monetary science was first achieved is, as I have stated, a matter of some uncertainty; however data exist which bring its beginning within a very moderate chronological circle, which I will refer to as briefly as possible.

Coined money is not mentioned by Homer, which he most certainly would not have omitted to notice had it then existed, for his great poem is a sort of encyclopædia of the state of civilisation in his time; and we find him, instead of coined money, alluding to the circulating medium then in use in Greece as of a much more primitive character; as, when he says that an ox was exchanged for a bar of brass three feet long, and that a woman who understood several useful arts was considered worth four oxen. Thus it appears that although metal was very early used as a medium of exchange, it merely represented in a very direct manner actual barter, till coin was invented.

Bars, or spikes, like the above-mentioned, form a sort of transition stage, between the weighed money before referred to and true coins, as such bars passed by tale rather than by weight; and I dwell upon them in this place more than

I otherwise should do, as from similar spikes or bars to those mentioned by Homer originated the names of the two principal Greek coins, the drachma and the obolus, the latter name being formed of a Greek term signifying a spike or small obelisk, and the former, a handful-six being the number of those spikes that could be grasped by an ordinary hand (6 oboli going to the drachm)-such was the origin of the drachma and obolus which afterwards became coins, which are known by the same names in Greece even at the present day. They may be compared to our shillings and pennies, though the drachma, according to the present value of silver only represents 9 d., and the obolus 1}d. and onefifth of a farthing.

the

Herodotus tells us that the Lydians first coined gold, and "Parian Chronicle"* records that Phidon of Argos first caused silver to be coined in the island of Ægina; and as the gold coinage of Asia Minor is generally believed to have preceded the silver coinage of Egina, or that of any other part of Greece, I shall first treat of the earliest known gold coins. These were doubtless adjusted to some well known and generally acknowledged weight or standard, and so received the name of stater, a Greek word signifying standard. This standard appears to have been a weight corresponding to two drachmæ of silver, and of the value of twenty. Thus, the Greeks when they first established coins as a circulating medium, perhaps two thousand five hundred years ago, laid the foundation of the very forms, sizes, and divisions, still found in all the various currencies of Europe even to the present day, most strikingly perhaps in our ownthe stater, drachma, and obolus, corresponding very nearly to our sovereign, shilling, and penny.

It is a point in dispute, notwithstanding the assertion of Herodotus, whether the Lydians or the new-y formed Greek colonies of Asia Minor, are best entitled to the merit of the important invention of coined money; or, indeed, whether even the Persians may not rather be entitled to that honour; but by comparing the fabric of some of the earliest gold

* A series of ancient inscriptions on marble, now at Oxford, probably inscribed in the second century, B.C.

The Lydians were of the same race as the Greeks, both being of Pelasgic descent.