A team of researchers led by a University of Michigan archaeologist has uncovered a hoard of gold coins, likely used to pay mercenary troops, buried in a small pot in the ancient Greek city of Notion in western Turkey.Everyone else is reporting this story, so I may as well find an excuse to as well.The coins show a figure of a kneeling archer, the characteristic design of the Persian daric, a type of gold coin issued by the Persian Empire and probably minted at Sardis, 60 miles northeast of Notion, according to U-M archaeologist Christopher Ratté, professor of ancient Mediterranean art and archaeology and director of the Notion Archaeological Project, the project that discovered the coins.
The hoard, which the U-M team dated to the fifth century B.C., will provide another datapoint that can tell historians about the Persian daric’s timeline and history.
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Gold darics appear several times in the Hebrew Bible: anachronistically in the time of King David in 1 Chronicles 29:7 and in a more plausible sixth-to-fifth-century BCE context in Ezra 2:69, 8:27; Nehemiah 7:70-72. It is the first coin mentioned in the Bible.
For more the daric, see here.
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