The coinage in the old days in America was 90% silver for coins like the Morgan Dollar and 90% gold for coins like the St. Gaudens Double Eagle But does anyone happen to know what the purity was for Ancient Greek coins like the silver drachma and gold stater were? Did the Ancients alloy the precious metals in coins with metals like copper for durability? Or did they use the purest precious metals they could get? I do know that the Roman aureus was as close to 99% as they could get back in those days but I do not know about Ancient Greek coinage.
Ancient Greece was not a single country but a vast spread of authorities, monarchies, democracies, tyrannies etc. which each did things 'their way'. Some used pure metal, some debased a bit, some struck in poor billon. There were many different weight standards across time and place. Your question can not be answered with one universal response.
I guess I should be specific. Do you know what the purity of the Athenian Owl Tetradrachm is? I’m just curious if it’s 17.8 grams of nearly pure silver or if it is alloyed with a cheaper metal like copper. I know in Ancient Rome the denarius was nearly pure silver under Julius Caesar and then was gradually debased over the centuries until it was basically pure copper with a silver coating.
Owls from this period are usually 96-99 % pure silver. Later issues show debasement & weight reductions.
I doubt that any Ancient coinage was 100 % precious metals though I am sure some states wanted their coinage to be so and probably advertised them as so. Metallurgists simply had no way to eliminate trace elements in their bullion using whatever refining techniques they had available. Modern metallurgy has analyzed Ancient coins once thought to be 100% pure and they are not, though as I suspect they got close enough ( maybe 98 % pure) to think they had achieved coinage that was 100% (if they had that concept) pure precious metal. There are recent studies based on modern analysis of Ancient coins where the coins are actually sectioned so that the coins' interiors can be examined, not just the surfaces. Examining them in this way eliminates the surfaces whose metallic content may have been deliberately or environmentally altered from various processes. None of them are 100% pure bullion, even those prized for their purity so much that they were a kind of "internationally" and universally accepted everywhere coinage like Athenian Owls, Corinthian Colts, Aegina Turtles and Tyrian shekels. However, in the real world of commerce, like in horse shoes and hand grenades, close enough is good enough.
I think you're applying modern standards to the ancients. It's true that the ancients didn't have the means to remove all trace elements, as we do now. But that doesn't mean they intended to debase the coinage. To them, the coins would have been 100% pure.
I never said that they intended to debase their coinage, though some, like Ptolemaic Egypt did intend that. As a matter of fact I said that some of the ancient states wanted and believed their coinage to be 100% pure. Their technology simply would not allow that degree of refining. And of course I am applying modern standards to determine purity of the metals. We have the ability to do what they could not. Please take another look at what I wrote. Thank you.
Well 100% purity is impossible. Even today 99.999% is about the closest to purity we can get. But some ancient coins like the Persian gold Daric & Ancient Roman aureus were 95-99% pure and that was only because they didn’t have the ability to refine it any further. Even when they debased the Roman aureus they simply made it smaller but it kept its original high purity of gold. Unlike other coins which become less pure after debasement.
Thanks! I won an auction on the owl I shared in this thread and I was just curious what the purity of it was. It’s cool to hear that it’s nearly pure silver. ^_^
I know for Cappadocian and Seleukid coins the silver purity is around 99%, with debasement later on to around 96% or so. I am still intending to do EDX analysis on some of my silver coins if I ever get the time.
Oh wow that's pretty impressive. I wish I could test the purity of my coins just for fun. In a non-destructive way.
