LIONS ON ANCIENT COINS

Lions appear on coins at the very dawn of coinage, and many rare and spectacular ancient coins portray the king of beasts.

The earliest image to appear on any coin is the head of a roaring lion on the electrum coins of the Lydians, an Indo-European people who may have invented coinage around 650 BCE (perhaps a little earlier, the date is controversial). Lydia’s capital was Sardis, and they traded extensively with their Greek neighbors, who quickly adopted the use of coins and the lion imagery. The prosperous Greek town of Cyzicus, for example, which frequently changed the design of its electrum coins, used a crouching lion (c. 500 – 450 BCE) above its city emblem of a fish[3]. Croesus, the last king of Lydia (reigned 560 – 546 BCE), innovated the production of pure silver and gold coins (at a ratio of about 13:1) in a wide range of denominations, all bearing the image of a lion confronting a bull.

To read the complete article, see:
Lions on Ancient Coins (https://coinweek.com/ancient-coins/lions-ancient-coins/)

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