Hogarth, David G.; Smith, Cecil Harcourt [Contr.]: Excavations at Ephesus: the archaic Artemisia: Text (London, 1908)

78 The Archaic Artemisia of Ephesus.

The sum total of the weights of these 87 coins amounts to 2257*7 grs.
Troy. This is equivalent to ten pieces of pale gold Lydian electrum
(uncoined bullion) of 225*77 grs. each, a weight which very slightly exceeds
that of the silver staters of the so-called 'Asia Minor' or 'Phoenician'
standard {arc. 224 grs.), which was prevalent at a much later date when silver
money had come into general use.

Uncoined silver had, doubtless, been always exchangeable, and apparently
at a commonly accepted fixed rate, by weight during the earlier period, as against
pure gold, also by weight, and, probably at a more variable rate, as against
pale gold or electrum, both before and after the invention of coining. The
proportionate relation of silver to pure gold, in the East generally, seems to
have remained almost steady, from very early times down to Alexander's
conquests, at about 13'3 to 1, and that of silver to electrum less steadily, no
doubt on account of the variable quality of the latter metal, at between 8 and
10 to i, as I have elsewhere pointed out (B.M.C. Ionia, p. xxv. ff.).

It is therefore highly probable that the total weight, 2257*7 grs. of electrum
may have been equivalent to as much as ten times that weight in silver, i.e.,
to two so-called ' Asia-Minor' or 'Phoenician' silver minae of 11,288 grs.
( = 732*46 grammes), each silver mina consisting of one hundred silver half-
staters (uncoined in the earliest period) of 112*8 grs. each. The equivalent
value in pure gold of two such silver minae, at the old rate, 13*3 to 1, would
be 1697*5 g1"8-- tne present metal value of which at 2d. per grain would amount
to about £\\ sterling. Now 1697*5 grs- °-" &°^ corresponds almost exactly
with 10 of the heavier gold staters of the Lion and Bull type (169 grs.) as
subsequently struck by Croesus (B.M.C. Lyd., PI. i. 14). The auddrjfia (if such
it be) would thus seem to have consisted of a definite round sum of two silver
minae in the equivalent and more convenient form of an indefinite number of
small electrum coins of various denominations and types previously weighed
in the scales and verified as correct.1

This may account for the presence in the deposits of such extremely
minute fractions as ninety-sixths of the stater weighing only 2] grs. each, which
may well have been thrown into the scales to make up tor deficiencies in the
weights of the larger pieces, such as half-st.iters of only about 110 grs., which
are some 21 grs. under their proper normal weight, a deduction no doubt
purposely made in order to cover the cost of mintage and to bring in a
profit as well. Such infinitesimal pieces could, in point of fact, have been of
very little practical use except as make-weights for money-changers, as they are

1 [Sec Addendum, p. 93.]