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Milne - Currency Ptolemaic Egypt PDF
Milne - Currency Ptolemaic Egypt PDF
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1 The hoards of Greekcoins have been collected and indexed by S. P. Noe, Bibliographyof GreekCoin2 E.g. Noe, 143 (Benha el-'Asl) and 144 (Beni Iasan).
hoards(2nd edn., New York, 1937).
4 Noe, 888.
3 Noe, 322 and 420.
6 Herodotus iv, 166.
5 JEA
7 P.
15, 150.
Eleph., 1.
202
J. G. MILNE
203
with a reduced silver unit. But it is noticeable that a substantial proportion of the silver
tetradrachms of this period are punch-marked or scratched with signs, which is evidence
that they were not accepted in trade at the value put on them by the issuing authority. Suoh
marking is found on several series of Greek coins, and in every case it can be shown to
be due to the original guarantee of value having ceased to be effective; for instance, the coins
of Aegina were freely punch-marked after the reduction of Aegina by Athens, and so were
the Persian sigloi after the fall of the Persian Empire.1 It would appear that the Egyptian
merchants took the Ptolemaic silver, not at its nominal value, but as bullion, which at
Egyptian rates would be much higher, and marked the coins to signify the fact: it was
probably illegal, but the government could not have enforced the acceptance of their coins
at an artificial rate without causing a considerable dislocation of trade, and so acquiesced in
the practice.
The situation was however obviously unsatisfactory, especially in view of the possession
of the greater part of Phoenicia by the Ptolemies: the coinage which was not suited to
Egyptian requirements was quite suitable for the Phoenicians; and, so far as silver was concerned, the Phoenician merchants were more important than the Egyptian, for the reasons
already stated. About 270 the whole system seems to have been revised, and separate treatment accorded to Phoenicia and to Egypt. There is a plentiful coinage of silver, which
belongs to the reigns of Philadelphus, Euergetes, and Philopator, and consists almost entirely of tetradrachms: it is on the Phoenician standard, and the majority of the coins can
be assigned by their mint-marks to the mints of Tyre, Sidon, Ptolemais Ake, Joppa, and
Gaza; these are normally dated by regnal years.2 Coins generally similar to these, but without mint-marks, are also found, and these have been regarded as the issues of the mint of
Alexandria.3 But it should be observed that the coins of the mints of Phoenicia have on the
reverse the legend PTOAEMAIOY flTHPOX, not PTOAEMAIOYBAVIAEfl as on the
earlier coins of Soter and Philadelphus and the later ones of the second and first centuries:
this distinctive formula may have been adopted for use in these mints from a desire to consult
the feelings of the Phoenicians: the omission of the title BASAlEnY would avoid emphasis
on the foreign overlordship. In the next century a somewhat similar idea may be traced in
the coinage of the Seleucid kings at their Phoenician mints: this was on the Phoenician
standard, instead of the Alexandrine which was used at Antioch and other Seleucid mints,
and so clearly intended for Phoenician trade; and on it the laudatory titles, which were
inscribed on the Antiochene issues, do not appear. As the coins of the series under consideration which have no mint-marks bear the same legend as those with the mint-marks of
Phoenicia, it is fair to assume that, even if they were struck at Alexandria, they were designed primarily for circulation in Phoenicia. So far as Egypt was concerned, they were on
much the same economic footing as foreign coins, and this renders their treatment, or
maltreatment, by punching more understandable.
The most important item in the revision of the system for the purposes of Egyptian local
circulation was the introduction of an entirely new series of bronze coins,4 which were evidently intended to contain an amount of metal bearing some relation to their face values,
so as to remove them out of the category of mere tokens. The largest of them are of a size
and weight for which there is no parallel to be found in the issues of Greece or Asia Minor:
they average about six times the weight of the chief bronze coin of Soter, and if, as is not
improbable, they were issued as drachmas, while the earlier coin may have been a half1 Num. Chron., 1931, 177.
Svoronos, pp. 78 ff., group 8, 1, series ii; 2, ii; 3, ii; 4, i; 5, i: p. 150, group 7: pp. 197 ff.
4
3
Svoronos, pp. 64 ff., group 3.
Svoronos, p. 61, group 2: p. 156, group 4: p. 178, group 2.
2
J. G. MILNE
204
205
likely to be involved, regulations were issued for taking bronze at a discount, to compensate
for the trouble involved in handling it, in others it was taken at par. But as the bronze was
exported at a metal value, and the silver was mainly used for foreign trade, the ratio of
metals had to be related to external values as well as internal; and, though there are no
definite equations recorded in the third century, the terms of certain documents suggest that
the conversion of silver drachmas into bronze and vice versa was becoming a recognized
practice.'
The situation was altered by the loss of the Phoenician possessions of Egypt at the turn
of the century: there was no longer the need to supply the merchants of Tyre and Sidon
with silver coinage, but Cyprus still remained in the hands of the Ptolemies, and did not use
the heavy Egyptian bronze as its normal currency. So almost simultaneously with the last
issues of Ptolemaic coins from a Phoenician mint, there appeared a new series of tetradrachms
at the Cypriote mints of Paphos, Salamis, and Citium.2 These continue the same types, but
go back to theold legend of P TOAEMAIOY BA IAEf , which suggests that they were struck
with a view to circulation in Egypt rather than in the outlying possessions; and they actually
did circulate in Egypt much more freely than the Phoenician issues, occurring in considerable
numbers in hoards as well as sporadically. It is noticeable that they are not punch-marked
like their predecessors, which shows that they were taken at their face value in Egyptian
trade: also, while the weight of the coins was approximately the same as before, they were of
inferior metal: analysis shows a debasement which steadily increased, till at the end there
was only about 25 per cent. of silver in them. This can clearly be connected with the local
valuation of silver at the end of the third century mentioned above: if silver was worth four
times as much in Egypt as in Greece, the Egyptian drachma should only contain one quarter
of the silver in the Greek. Of course this meant that the currency of the debased Ptolemaic
silver was practically confined to Egypt; no one outside would look at it at its face value,
nor was it attractive as metal. So, while the third-century coins are found in Greece and Asia
Minor, the second and first-century tetradrachms hardly ever occur there.
But the debasement of the silver involved a revisiqn of the rates of exchange for the
bronze; the two had been related to suit the foreign market, and when outside support
forsook the debased silver tetradrachm, the bronze drachma lost ground in sympathy; and
its collapse was the more rapid because it had no recognized equivalent in the ordinary
Greek schemes of currency. Early in the second century the bronze drachma and its fractions ceased to be struck on the standard introduced under Philadelphus, and a fresh set of
bronze coins was issued, which must have been regarded as unrelated to the earlier series,
since they are not found associated with them in hoards to any extent: large hoards of the
third-century bronze are common, and likewise of the later, but it is rare to come upon even
one or two stray examples of the third-century coins in a hoard of the second century. The
new model of bronze continued to be struck with little variation in standard till the end of
the Ptolemaic dynasty; and the valuation put upon the coins can be deduced from the
denominations which appear on the last issues of the series in the reign of CleopatraVII. The
two common bronze coins of this reign are marked respectively P and M,3which Regling has
shown to represent 80 and 40 bronze drachmas,4and it is the more probable that this valuation can be carried back to the beginning of the series, as the sums recorded as paid at this
period in papyri postulate the existence of some currency in which the drachma was of very
light weight: it is common to find statements of the payment of many talents in bronze
money, which would have been an impossible burden in the third-century bronze with its
1
3
J. G. MILNE
206
drachma weighing about a quarter of a pound, but was comparatively easy when the bronze
talent was represented by seventy-five pieces of eighty drachmas weighing perhaps five
pounds in all.
The exact date of the official change-over cannot be settled at present. The new silver
coinage began in the second year of Epiphanes, so far as known coins show, but it does not
follow that the alteration in the bronze issues was contemporaneous with this: it is quite
probable that it was effected somewhat later, when the results of the depreciation of the
silver were felt in trade. But it seems to be clear from the evidence of P. Mich. 182 that the
change was operating before 182 B.C.; in this papyrus there is a record of a loan of 44T.
4800dr. in bronze, though the penalty for non-fulfilment of the contract is expressed in
silver of the old coinage. Whether the payment of the fine would have been made in this old
coinage, if a default had occurred, may be doubted: but as the depreciated silver was legally
of the same value as the good silver, the terms of the contract would have been satisfied by
payment in the new tetradrachms. As a matter of fact, the old third-century tetradrachms
lingered on in circulation, and are found mixed up with their debased successors in hoards of
the second century and even later: there is no complete break at this point in the silver
currency, as there is in the bronze. As the Ptolemaic coinage was from first to last on a
nominally silver standard, even when it was expressed in bronze, the purchasing power of
the standard coin, the tetradrachm, was not affected by its debasement, any more than the
purchasing power of the English silver coinage has been affected by its debasement in 1920.
But after the bronze drachma lost its intrinsic relation to the silver and became a mere token,
it collapsed at the first crisis and was no more than a term of account.
The natural result of this was that for business purposes a ratio had to be fixed as between
the silver and the bronze coins; and from about 160 B.C.it is the normal feature in accounts
to convert silver drachmas into bronze or vice versa. The rates vary considerably, but are
seldom above 500:1 or below 400:1, and the average works out at nearly 440:1. This indicates that the rate of conversion, like exchange rates to-day, was a matter for settlement
in the money market: it is not clear whether the government made any attempt in the second
century to control the movements, but if they did it seems to have had as little effect as
similar attempts by governments have now. Thirty years ago the rate of the piastre to the
pound Turkish at Smyrna, nominally 100:1, varied in commercial quotations from 108:1
to 182:1. In the last years of the dynasty Cleopatra, as we have seen, appears to have tried
to stabilize the ratio by marking her coins as of eighty and forty bronze drachmas, which
suggests a ratio of 480 :; at this figure the coin of eighty bronze drachmas would be an obol
of the silver standard. This agrees approximately with the statement of Festus' that the
Alexandrian talent was of twelve denarii; as the silver content of the denarius was about the
same as that of the Alexandrian tetradrachm, this gives a ratio of 500:1. It is possible that
in the second century the government intended the bronze to be taken at a similar rate, but
as the coins have no marks of value nothing certain can be said: the commonest pieces,
which form the bulk of the hoards of the second and first centuries,2 are of a size comparable
with that of the eighty drachma coins of Cleopatra.
The evidence of coins found in Egypt shows that there was more joint circulation of silver
and bronze in the second and first centuries than in the latter part of the third, and this
accords with the evidence of papyri-not so much the official records as the stray entries in
private papers. Thus in the middle of the second century we find a man at Tebtunis collecting four drachmas silver-i.e. a tetradrachm-and five hundred drachmas bronze on every
1 Festus, p. 359 (Miiller).
2
207
thirty arourae;and at the same place a complaintof the theft of six hundreddrachmasof
coinedsilverand seven talentsof bronze.1Fortunatelythe differencebetweenthe silverand
the bronzedrachmais so great that thereis little risk of confusionwhenwe have to decide
whichis meantin a statementof pricesor payments:but the variationsin the exchangerates
must be taken into consideration.
1 P. Tebt. 739 and 743.