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| a public center for economics education |
| 720 19th Street, N.W. - Washington, DC 20431 |
Permanent
Exhibit |
Ancient
Trade Route Collection
"...and Allah created the two precious metals, gold and silver,
to serve as a measure of the value of all commodities..."
Ibn Khaldun
This collection of ancient coins is a historical representation
of trade between ancient civilizations. Coins serve historians
as markers of time. They confirm the powers in place in any
given region and define the "money trails" that connected the
ancient world. Trade played a key role in transforming attitudes
toward precious metal - from it being valued chiefly as weighed
bullion to it becoming equally acceptable in the form of coins.
In the Near East, the monetary use of precious metals dates
back to the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Small pieces of electrum, a naturally occurring amalgam of silver
and gold, were stamped with the king's seal to officially designate
them as "money." As the first "world currency," staters circulated
widely in a flourishing, sea-going trade linking Greek ports
with those in Carthage, Egypt, Syria, Italy, and other remarkably
distant realms. The sheer extent of this ancient intercontinental
trade-based on a civilization shaped by mercantile, not military
imperatives-seems all the more amazing given the absence of
roads connecting the port cities with the inland kingdoms. By
100 AD, camel caravans were routinely plying the Persian and
Kushan Empires exchanging war horses for silk, bronze tools,
carved jade, and medicinal herbs. The "Silk Road" was one of
the most important economic and cultural connections ever established.
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