Achaemenid coinage

[8] Cyrus the Great introduced coins to the Persian Empire after 546 BC, following his conquest of Lydia and the defeat of its king Croesus, whose father Alyattes had put in place the first coinage in history.

[7] With his conquest of Lydia, Cyrus acquired a region in which coinage was invented, developed through advanced metallurgy, and had already been in circulation for about 50 years, making the Lydian Kingdom one of the leading trade powers of the time.

[9][10] Soon after 546, Cyrus also had full control of Asia Minor, including other regions such Lycia, Caria or Ionia, following the conquests of his general Harpagus.

[12] Some of the earliest Lycian coins under the Achaemenids also used an animal design on the obverse and incuse punches on the reverse, which developed into geometrical forms, such as two diagonals between projecting rectangular lugs.

[14][15] As late as the time of the foundation of the Apadana Palace in Persepolis (dated to between 519 and 510 BC), it seems that the Achaemenids had not yet designed the Sigloi and Darics: no coins of these types were found in the Apadana hoard discovered under the palace's foundation stones, whereas the hoard contained several gold Croeseids of the light type from Sardis (probably minted under the rule of Darius I) and several imported Archaic Greek silver staters.

[12] Although the Achaemenids had developed their own currency, they still accepted local monetary production including civic issues, throughout the land under their control, in particular in Western Asia.

[20] According to numismatist Martin Price, there is no doubt that the Darics and Sigloi of Types I and II were minted at Sardis and immediately followed the production of the Croeseids, since they adopted similar weights and were of the same fabric.

[22] Darius introduced the reformed currency system from about 510-500 BC,[12] consisting of gold Darics and silver Sigloi.

[12] Around 395 BC, the Achaemenids, led by Satrap Pharnabazes, bribed Greek states by paying them tens of thousands of Darics in order to attack Sparta, which was then waging a campaign of destruction in Asia Minor under Agesilaus II.

[31][32] Other depictions of the king as an archer (for example shooting from his charriot) are also known from Sumerian art, so this representation would also have been natural to subjects in the Achaemenid realm as well.

[31] In effect, the gold Daric became a currency desired in all the ancient world, since it was the most convenient format to exchange and accumulate wealth.

[23] The Greeks never minted much gold, but their silver Athenian tetradrachms also became a sort of world currency from the 5th century BC.

[23] The first important competition against the prestigious Daric, as a means of storing wealth and making large payments on an international scale, came later from Philip II of Macedon (ruled 359–336 BC), when he issued his own gold coinage, pointedly called Dareikos Philippeios by the Greeks.

An Achaemenid copy of an Athenian coin, this time found in the Kabul hoard, was minted in the vicinity of Babylon circa 380 BC.

Numerous finds of hacksilber hoards in the East also exist from the period, in which various silver objects, including coins, are cut into pieces, in order to facilitate their exchange on the basis of their weight.

[25] Several of these issues follow the "western designs" of the facing bull heads, a stag, or Persian column capitals on the obverse, and incuse punch on the reverse.

[25][49] According to numismatist Joe Cribb, these finds suggest that the idea of coinage and the use of punch-marked techniques was introduced to India from the Achaemenid Empire during the 4th century BC.

Although many of the first coins of Antiquity were illustrated with the images of various gods or symbols, the first ever portraiture of actual rulers appears with these Achaemenid satrapal issues in the 5th century BC, in particular with the coinage of Lycia.

[55][56] The Achaemenids had been the first to illustrate the person of their king or a hero in a stereotypical manner, showing a bust or the full body, but never an actual portrait, on their Sigloi and Daric coinage from circa 500 BC.