By: Lauren Wu

On August 2nd, 2024, archeologists found 2,400 year old coins in Notion, an ancient city in Turkey. It was important because it was the only hoard of coins ever found in Asia Minor.

In the late fifth century B.C., some soldiers from Notion (present day Turkey) would put their savings, scores of gold coins, known as darics, each one equal to a month’s pay, in pots and bury them. Christopher Ratte, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan has found one of these pots with his research team from ruins in notion, an ancient city-state in what is now Turkey.

The Notion darics are stamped on the front with a Persian king kneeling in a long tunic. In his left hand is a bow; in his right, a long spear. The backs of the coins are blank, except for a punch mark.

Notion is the birthplace of the Western world’s first state-issued coin, the stater, which was created by seafaring people called Lydians. King Alyattes, the king of Lydia, standardized the weight and design of the Lydian stater. The king’s son and successor, Croesus, is credited with making the first true gold coin, the Croeseid.

In 546 B.C., the entire area, known as Ionia, was conquered by the Persian Empire. Although Croesus was defeated in battle by Cyrus the Great, his gold-based monetary system lived on. The Persians continued to manufacture Croesids until they introduced their own currency, made up of silver and gold coins. The silver coins were called sigloi, and the gold ones were darics — a name derived from either Darius I, who ruled the Persian Empire from 522 B.C. to 486 B.C., or dari-, the root of the Old Persian word for gold.

The archaeological site at Notion spans 80 acres. It was one of the Greek-speaking communities that emerged in the region during the early first thousand years B.C., perhaps because of migration across the Aegean Sea.

Link- https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/science/archaeology-turkey-daric.html