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KOSTAS17
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« Απάντηση #5 στις: Σήμερα στις 12:24:14 μμ » |
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Η περιγραφη απο την δημοπρασια
On 18 November 2019, auction house Numismatica Genevensis SA in Geneva will offer an object – No. 101 – that will dispute our version of monetary history. The object in question is a silver bar with a cartouche bearing the name of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. This bar has the weight of half a deben which means it was issued in a weight unit corresponding to the currency of account in ancient Egypt. So, do we have to predate the beginning of coinage by more than half a millennium? Were ancient pharaohs already familiar with the concept of “coins”?
Tutankhamun, around 1345–1327 BC. Silver bar weighing about half a deben. Produced in a Phoenician trading house or in Lebanon. Drop-shaped flan with a cartouche in the form of a jug, in it the legend “Tutankhamun, ruler of Heliopolis in Upper Egypt” written in hieroglyphs. 41.55 g. Valloggia, bar A (this specimen).
The Object
The object on offer is a drop-shaped bar made of high-quality silver. The silver content of 98.54% indicates that the material is artificially refined silver and presents the highest grade of fineness a goldsmith was able to achieve back then.
Its weight of 41.55 g differs by 8.7% from 45.5 g – which would be the weight of half a deben or 5 kites. Such a deviation is quite acceptable, as we know from other numismatic epochs.
The cartouche in the form of a jug bears the name of Pharaoh Tutankhamun and calls him ruler of Heliopolis in Upper Egypt. The inscription supplies us with a date: Tutankhamun reigned between 1345 and 1327 BC.
The bar offered at Numismatica Genevensis SA is one of two pieces from the collection of Roger Pereire, who died already in 1968. His daughter sold her father’s collection at the beginning of the 70s. Since then, the silver bar has been part of a Swiss private collection.
The Egyptian Currency System
Actually, it should not come as a surprise that such silver bars with the function of a coin do exist. We know that standardized bars have existed since the Bronze Age. Bars made of bronze were certainly traded as standard pieces of raw material. Perhaps they were even used as a form of primitive money. If we remember that the Egyptians – just like the inhabitants of Mesopotamia – had a highly differentiated economy and a complex accounting system used constantly in the daily economic life, a silver bar of the same currency system – which might have been used as a means of payment – will perfectly fit into the picture.
Prices of everyday goods, wages and units of account, which were used to calculate the former two, are written on hundreds of ostraka from the workers’ village on the West Bank of Thebes. Craftsmen and merchants of the New Kingdom calculated in silver, copper and grains – depending on the value of the good. Larger sums were expressed in silver, everyday sums in copper and small amounts in grains. In very rare cases, the price was even indicated in debens of gold. In addition to debens of silver, also shenati of silver were used on the West Bank of Thebes – these units were worth at first 5 and later 4 debens of copper.
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