Between the Near East and Greece – currency in the Archaic period

Abstract

As early as the third millennium BC, silver began to play the role of a privileged commodity and as
reserve of value in Egypt and in the kingdoms of the Near East. In the second millennium and increasingly in the first
millennium, silver was used not only as a reserve and measure of value but, what is more significant as an instrument
of payment. Whether archaeological or textual, the evidence from the Mesopotamian states and from the Levant shows
that silver was increasingly used as a monetary instrument at that time. The so-called Hacksilber is found in more than
thirty hoards in the Levant in the Iron Age Period. This can partly demonstrate that the fundamental concepts of money
were established in the Near East long before the Greeks and the Lydians adapted them and, above all, transformed
these into the form of coin, in the 6th century. This great transformation, as well as the vast historical question of the
emergence of coinage was directly related to the evolution of institutions bound up with the emergence of the polis.