Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

2 .5
stages when commodities were used as money, followed by the use of metal ingots of
different standard weights, eventually led to the appearance of metal money.
Early coins differed from metal ingots in that they were stamped on one or both
sides to authenticate their weight. Initially these stamps were a combination of
various geometric figures and images of animals, birds and fish, such as a lion, a turtle,
a seal, an owl or a tuna fish. Ancient Indian karshapanas were similar to the stamped
coins, but local features such as astral symbols were more commonly used for these.
Inscriptions and images of deities appeared on the coins only sometime later. Then,
in the middle of the 4th century BC, under Alexander the Great, portraits of rulers
began to appear on coins.
In Lydia, the first coins were minted in electrum and later in silver. Only under
King Croesus (561–546 BC) did a coinage system based on bimetallism (the
simultaneous use of gold and silver) begin to spread, and went on to become
widespread in Ancient Persia.
Even the most ancient monetary systems, such as those of Miletus, Phocaea,
Aegina and Euboea, had coins of different denominations, designed differently for
each weight standard. A single norm for coinage was introduced in the time of the rise
of Macedonia and the establishment of the kingdom of Alexander the Great. Silver
coins came to be based on what is known as the Attic system, with a tetradrachm
weighing 17.44 grams, a drachma 4.36 grams, and an obolus 1.6 grams. For several
centuries after this period, the Attic system prevailed in all the countries that fell under
the influence of the Hellenistic world, including the southern regions of Central Asia,
with some variations in the weight of the main denominations of coins.
Central Asia was not one of the first areas in which metal money appeared,
with the main reason for this being an insufficiently high level of socio-economic
development. For many centuries before the appearance of coins, various forms of
barter and possibly circulation of ingots had been used here, although no concrete
examples of the latter have as yet been found in the region.
Until recently, the question of the origin of independent coinage in Central Asia
was only considered in chronological and territorial terms, that is, where and when
coins first began to be used as a means of payment. Theories and more concrete ideas
concerning the nature and characteristics of the early stages of the formation of coins,
have been documented by E.V. Zeymal in a number of recently published studies
based on extensive numismatic material.
In his view, the emergence of monetary circulation and independent coinage in
Transoxiana began with foreign coins making their way here as ‘treasure’. This was
followed by the minting of local imitations of foreign coins that were most ‘familiar’
within a particular area. These not only constituted an initial form of coinage, but also
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