For decades, historians have questioned where the ore came from that was used to strike ancient Athens’ first series of coins of ancient Athens known as the Wappenmünzen (c. 540-500 B.C.). This period predates democracy in Athens, and the tyrant Peisistratos and his sons ruled during this time. Peisistratos had been exiled from the city several times but eventually gained the power—and the money, in the form of silver—needed to raise an army and take charge of the city. But where did he get the silver? A study recently published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences reveals a surprising answer: it was outsourced.
Researchers analyzed drachms, didrachms, and tetradrachms from collections in the British Museum and the Numismatic Museum of Athens. A chemical analysis indicated that the elements originated from regions spanning from Spain and France to Turkey and Romania. According to the study, “This upends current thinking based on a (mis)interpretation of historical sources which argues that the tyrant Peisistratos and his sons sourced most silver from the districts of Mt Pangaion and Strymon River in northern Greece and that silver did not flow from the western Mediterranean into their coinage. The data suggest that domestic ‘Lavrion’ mines of Athens did not contribute to the ore stock of the Wappenmϋnzen until the subsequent production of the ‘owl’ series when it was also used in some Wappenmϋnzen fractions.”
The study concludes, “The key finding of this study is that the Athenians used a wide variety of ore sources to mint their earliest coin series… This points to undocumented trading relationships and a much more interconnected world than hitherto thought.”