Numismatics and Coins

Ancient Greece

The ancient Greeks did not generally have trouble viewing the naked human bodies. Nudity in the ancient world was regarded as a natural aspect of life. Evidenced by the number of preserved art and craft artifacts - sculptures, ceramics, as well as coins. Rare, however, are clearly a representation of characters in sexual positions, such as a satyr and nymph on archaic Greek coins from Macedonia and from the island of Thassos.

Ancient Rome

In Roman times it is not known direct representation of sexual themes on coins (currency), although the nude figures on the coins were displayed normally. Besides the standard coin minted by the Romans as well as special orders - metal tokens called tesserae, which were distributed on different occasions and served as a ticket to such performances in the circus.

Specific tessera of 1 century. chips are rare erotic called spintriae that were originally minted in bronze. One side shows the token act of love - every man and woman, the other side bears a Roman numeral in the wreath. Known as the numbers I to XVI, with numbers higher than 13 are very rare.

Today only guess for what purpose were these chips manufactured. Some experts say that their main function was to enter a public house and pumping services displayed on the token. Representation services allegedly to overcome language barriers between nations throughout the Roman Empire, for example, Syrian sailor who had just arrived in Rome and did not know a word of Latin, as shown in Figure knew exactly what he will. According to others, however, was a special gambling chips, similar to today's erotic cards, or chips used in the numerical one of board games.

Parallel to those of Roman erotic tokens are tokens used as circus tickets or vouchers for food scoops. These usually carried on one side a portrait of the emperor. But see the emperor on a chip with erotic themes were nemyslitelé so rubní spintrií party bears the numeric designation, perhaps the value of the chip. According to the currently most widespread opinion, really was a voucher for sexual services, which were distributed free of charge, but not as much as bread and chips in the game.

Renaissance

The Renaissance was trying to build on ancient Greek and Roman art, and drew from it. The form of the male penis was a symbol for the ancient Greeks and the generative forces of nature itself was a sign fallos satyr wine god Dionysus guides. These satyrs depicted in the Renaissance, then lust, like Pan, the god of herds and hunting, which coincide. They are demons wild, untamed PRE-families. The Greek word pan means all - permeates all things. Head composed of penises shows that its owner does not think of anything else, medals depicts natural, uncultivated controlling male sexuality. Motive was 16th in Italy century unusual, such as Francesco Urbino decked head composed of penises playful majolica plate from between 1530 - the 1537th

Roman and Etruscan coins. In this region the legal tender that preceded the use of coins were castings or pieces of copper, followed by stamped bronze bricks (“aes signatum”) that bore depictions of various religious symbols. Dry branches and eagles were among the motifs used, but bulls were the most popular, and they recalled one of the earlier means of payment: in Latin, cattle was “pecus”  – which is where the term “pecunia” (Latin for money) is derived, and which eventually lent us the modern English term “pecuniary” (financial, monetary). The first Roman coins were made from copper, and they were still cast. Later, when coins were beginning to be minted, other more precious materials were used. Among the specific, most common types of money issued are the denarius (silver, from the 1st half of the 3rd century BCE), the sestertius (first evidenced 211 BCE, originally minted in silver, then gradually in baser metals), the copper aes (10 asses = 1 denarius). Starting in the 2nd century BCE the names of rulers and officials began to appear on coins, which makes it easier to date them. The motif on the obverse would be the ruler’s profile. The first Roman mint was established as early as 290 BCE on the Capitoline Hill “ad monetam” - near the Temple of Juno Moneta, which gave us some of our English root words for money. After the fall of the Roman Empire the system of coinage practically ceased to function and there was a return to barter and the use of commodities for commercial exchange. In Byzantium the system continued to develop, though there was a gradual devaluation of the money and toward the end of the empire only copper coins were in circulation.

Replicas of Celtic coins. In the period of their greatest expansion the Celts became the first people in Central Europe who began to mint their own coins. The Gauls met with money during their campaigns in the 4th century BCE as mercenaries and beginning in the 3rd century BCE, when their production began to be higher than their domestic consumption, the first minted coins appeared. The principal materials used for coinage were silver and gold. The oldest documented coins are from the 2nd century BCE, and Gauls’ models copied earlier Madeconian-Greek denominations such as staters, drachmas, and tetradrachms. These simulacra were rude in form and were evenutally replaced with coins minted in the Celts’ native artistic style using motifs that were sacred to them, such as the horse. The names of individuals (probably local chieftains) could be seen primarily on older coinage. In the Bohemian territories depictions of wild boars were frequently to be found, as well as a coiled dragon and solar symbols. An extraordinary cup-shaped gold coin now known as the rainbow cup  appeared in the first half of the last century BCE. Some 5000 or so very curious old coins - a haul totalling over 40 kg - were discovered in the Podmokly coin hoard that was uncovered in 1771. Besides rainbow cups, there was also another type of cup-shaped coin found, which has been called the mussel or shell stater, or golden mussel. Its purity was as high as 97% and each coin had a weight averaging 6.5 grams. The most recent type of Celtic coin was the large (about 17 grams) silver Biatec type, which was minted in the southwest of what is now Slovakia ca 75 – 50 BCE.

Coins appeared in the Greek-speaking world approximately in the 7th century BCE in Asia Minor Turkey’s Aegean coast). Coins were originally struck from silver or electrum, and later gold and copper coins were also produced. The masters who worked at the mints were highly respected, and there were important officials charged with the responsibility of overseeing the minting system. One of the most significant types of coins produced was the stater, the oldest type of coin, which had various weights according to the different geographical areas where they were produced. So, for example, a Greek stater inspired by Persia was made with 12 parts of gold to 1 part silver, a value that corresponded to 20 drachmae). Other types included the lepton (silver, 5 mm, and worth 1/10 of a drachma) and the silver drachma (40 mm, 40 g of silver), and finally the didrachm and tetradrachm. For many years datable information was missing on these coins, but later coins (in the Hellenistic era) provide not only the names of rulers but also of officials. The motifs borne on the coinage were most often deities (such as Athena), then rulers, and on the obverse there might have been animals, inscriptions, a symbol, or maybe another deity. Even Aristotle expressed an interest in the study of coins in his writings.

Medieval coins, Prague groschens and tolars/thalers. After the demise of the Western Roman Empire barbarian coins were only exceptionally to be found; for the most part they were not used at all. On the British Isles coins were again minted in the 8th century by the archbishops of York and Canterbury. The Franks, however, were minting gold and silver denarii starting during the reign of Clovis I (reigned 481 – 511), the founder of the Carolingian dynasty. Charlemagne then abolished the gold sou and introduced a new silver livre carolinienne (Carolingian pound) equal to 240 deniers. The great ruler reserved a monopoly on the minting of coinage, and passed strict laws against counterfeiting. Those who dared disobey were subjected to some of the worst punishments devised by the medieval mind, such as being boiled alive in oil. The images on both obverse and reverse sides of these coins depict either specific rulers or Christian motifs. Coins made from gold were usually various types of ducats or sometinmes florins. Machines for manufacturing coins were introduced in the 16th century. In the period of the Italian Renaissance promissory notes developed into the first European bank notes (which, of course, had already been in use in China and were reported upon by Marco Polo and other travellers). In the Czech lands the original form of payment was a kind of scarf – 10 of them was equal to one denarius. The first minting of coins is documented in 960 (during the reign of Boleslav I.), when the “large” denarii were introduced first (10th century – 1st half of the 11th century), then later “small” denarii (2nd half of the 11th century – 1st half of the 13th century) and bracteates starting in the 13th century (these were thin coins about 40 mm in diameter with approximately 1 g of silver) appeared. These coins were the first to display the Bohemian emblem of the two-tailed lion. The development of minting was coeval with the rise of new cities and the opening up of new silver mines. In the 13th century there were 21 official mints operating in these territories. From the 14th century to the beginning of the 16th the quality of the groschens (denarius grossus) improved and the Prague groschen (grossus pragenses) that was later to be minted in Kutná Hora was the highest quality currency in Europe in its day. To give you an idea of what these coins were worth in the context of 14th century wages, a day labourer might have earned 4 - 6 groschens per week, while a carpenter brought in 16 – 20. It was possible to buy a cow for 22 – 55, and a block of butter or cheese or a knife cost one groschen. In the 15th century an average tradesman earned 2.5 groschen daily. A stone house standing on Prague’s Old Town Square would have cost as much as 12,000 groschen, but “only” 1200 on a side street, and a wooden home was a bargain at 360. If you were out shopping you’d spend ½ a groschen on a chicken and 4 for a new pair of shoes. At the beginning of the 16th century silver was discovered in the Joachimsthal valley. The silver mined there was minted into coins which were called Thaler in German or tolar in Czech (which, of course is the etymology of today’s dollar). 30 g of silver was worth 24 Prague groschen. 

The first Judean coins were first officially issued in the 4th century BCE in the Yehud Medinata, the “province of Judah” which was an autonomous province of the Persian Empire with the permission of the imperial government, and they continued in some form through the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Unlike later Jewish coinage, they depicted plants, animals and even human beings. They bore an owl motif (inspired by the Greek goddess Athena) and the inscription Yehud (YHD) indicating their provenance. During the rule of Antioch VII (Seleucid Empire) half-Syrian and half-Israeli coins were issued with an image of a lily that symbolized Jerusalem. The first purely Jewish coins were issued in 135 BCE   in the Hasmonean Kingdom, which was founded after the successful rebellion led by Simon Maccabaeus. The Romans, of course, minted their own coins during the period of their hegemony, but these coins differed greatly under different suzerains. Herod, for instance, issued coins with a wide range of motifs including the first living being - an eagle - to be depicted since the Persian era. The Jews themselves issued coins during the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans (in Israel Roman coins are often found dating back to this period with images that were struck on top of the Roman ones).  The Crusaders also had some very interesting coins, and another curiosity is European-made counterfeits of ancient Hebrew coins that were made sometime around the 16th century and were supposedly those that Judas Iscariot received for betraying his master.