The Meaning(s) of Achaemenid Silver

The Meaning(s) of Achaemenid Silver June 2026 | Vol. 14.6 By Henry Colburn What did silver mean in the Achaemenid Persian Empire? This may seem like a silly question; how is any metal meaningful beyond its intrinsic value or usefulness? Yet there are metallic idioms in many languages — consider “golden opportunity,” “silver lining,” “brassy dame” or “iron fist” in English — that clearly suggest more than just the physical properties of the metals in question. In the ancient world, as in the present day, metals had specific meanings attached to them that both informed and were informed by their use within a given culture. For example, Plato (Republic 415a–c) uses different metals as metaphors for human nature: those who are “competent to govern” are mixed with gold and their “helpers” with silver, while farmers and craftsmen are mixed with bronze and iron. Unfortunately, there are no comparable texts from the Achaemenid world, and we must instead rely on the objects themselves to understand the meaning of silver. But this is complicated by the fact that the Persian capitals were looted by Alexander the Great, who, according to Diodorus Siculus (17.80.3), carried off some 180,000 talents (about 4.7 million kg) of silver, much of which was used by Alexander and his successors to strike coins in the opening decades of the Hellenistic period. As a result, many of the silver objects available for study come from hidden caches or tomb deposits and were discovered by treasure hunters rather than archaeologists. Since they made their way into museums via circuitous routes of the antiquities market and private collections, their original findspots are often unknown. Coinage seems like the obvious place to begin an investigation of Achaemenid silver. The Persians minted a silver coin (fig. 1) called the siglos (plural sigloi) and a gold coin (fig. 2) called the dareikos stater (usually called a “daric” in English) at Sardis in Lydia, in what is today western Türkiye, where coinage was first invented a century before the Persian conquest in 547/6 BCE. The siglos was originally minted at 5.4 g, before being raised to 5.6 g, probably in the reign of Xerxes, while the daric weighed 8.4 g (these weights are significant for understanding other silver objects, as we will see below). Both coins featured images of the king as an archer, sometimes also carrying a spear. This imagery reflects Achaemenid royal ideology: as Darius states in the inscription on the façade of his tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam, “as a bowman I am a good bowman, both on foot and on horseback. As a spearman I am a good spearman, both on foot and on horseback.” Yet despite this royal iconography, it is clear that these coins could not have served as an imperial currency, for several reasons. First, the coins were minted only in Sardis, a provincial center, and not in any of the imperial capitals. Second, unlike earlier Lydian coins, which included fractions down to 1/24, relatively few fractional Achaemenid coins are known. This means it would have been quite difficult to use these coins for everyday transactions, since it would have been nearly impossible to make change without small denominations. Third, very few darics or sigloi have been found in Mesopotamia or further east. This suggests that these regions did not treat coins as such, but considered them bullion instead. Indeed, Herodotus (3.96.2) says that the Persians treated all the silver they received as bullion: “the tribute is stored by the king in this fashion: he melts it down and pours it into earthen vessels; when the vessel is full he breaks the earthenware away, and when he needs money cuts off as much as will serve his purpose.” Although this statement cannot be taken at face value, it is consistent with the archaeological evidence. For example, a hoard discovered by Hormuzd Rassam (an Assyrian archaeologist born in Mosul who also served as a British diplomat in Ethiopia [fig. 3]) at Babylon in 1882 contains not only Persian sigloi but also a range of Greek coins and various other silver objects, including ingots and fragments of drinking vessels (fig. 4). Many of the coins were cut up as well. This suggests that bullion, not coinage, was the standard form of money in the empire. Indeed, given the general lack of small denominations, bullion would have been necessary to make specific sums. This then raises the question of for what purpose sigloi were minted at all. The answer may lie in another category altogether of silver objects, namely drinking vessels. As noted above, Alexander’s looting of the Achaemenid capitals resulted in many silver vessels being melted down, but a number of examples have survived. Many of these vessels have weights that form round numbers when expressed in terms of sigloi. For example, an Achaemenid phiale (a broad, shallow bowl) in the Walters Art Museum (fig. 5) weighs 1070.5 g, which equals 200 sigloi of 5.4 g, and a similar vessel in the Detroit Institute of Arts (fig. 6) weights 168.0 g, which equals 30 sigloi of 5.6 g. This phenomenon might be explained by the use of the siglos weight standard by Persian silversmiths, but there was no reason to use round quantities of silver unless the weights were themselves significant, that is, unless there was some reason to make the vessels fit neatly into the coinage system. Some Achaemenid vessels have inscriptions naming the king. Perhaps the most noteworthy examples are a set of four phialai, whose combined weight totals just over 600 sigloi of 5.4 g. Each vessel has an identical inscription in Old Persian cuneiform reading: “Artaxerxes, the great king, king of kings, king of lands, son of Xerxes the king, Xerxes son of Darius the king, the Achaemenid: in his house this silver bowl was made.” There is some controversy around this inscription, as it contains linguistic peculiarities which have led some scholars to label it a forgery added to the vessels sometime in the 20th century. This is unlikely, however, for two main reasons. First, archival evidence shows that the bowls were already inscribed when they were first seen by Ernst Herzfeld, the suspected forger. Second, the cuneiform signs in the inscription on the bowl in the Metropolitan Museum of Art contain some copper-oxide deposits, which suggest that it was added before the bowl was buried, rather than after it was dug up. The inscriptions identify the bowls as originating at the royal court. Though it is possible they merely denote ownership, such inscriptions make more sense if the bowls were intended to leave the court, probably as gifts given by the king himself. Such gifts doubtless conferred enormous prestige on their recipients, for they implied direct proximity to the king. And because their weights could be expressed in round numbers of sigloi, the gifts were easily commensurate with one another: the Walters phiale conferred more than six times as much prestige as the one in Detroit. These gifts could be scaled down to a single siglos; indeed, because they were mass produced, sigloi were especially useful for making small gifts of equal value to a large number of people. This implies that silver coins and drinking vessels shared a common meaning in the Achaemenid Empire. To understand that meaning, it is helpful to consider an example pertaining to gold. Between 388 and 386 BCE an unknown Athenian delivered a speech during a property trial in which he described how Demus, son of Pyrilampes, approached the speaker’s relative Aristophanes (not to be confused with the comic playwright) for a loan in order to outfit a trireme for a naval expedition to Cyprus: Demus, son of Pyrilampes, who was equipping a warship for Cyprus, requested me to go to Aristophanes; he said he had received a gold cup as a credential from the Great King, and would give it to Aristophanes in pledge for sixteen minae, so as to have means for equipping his warship; when he got to Cyprus, he would redeem it with a payment of twenty minae, since on the strength of that credential he would then obtain plenty of goods and also money all over the continent. Lysias 19.25 Demus had evidently received a gold cup from the Persian king. Possibly he had been an emissary to the Achaemenid court, like his father Pyrilampes (who was also Plato’s stepfather), and received the cup during a diplomatic mission. Finding himself in need of cash for his trireme, he offered it to Aristophanes, who was also bound for Cyprus, as collateral for a loan. This could simply mean that he offered the bowl based on its intrinsic value alone (presumably equal to twenty minae), but his statement that “on the strength of that credential he would then obtain plenty of goods and also money all over the continent” implies that the bowl’s possessor would have access to money and resources in the Achaemenid Empire (since the “continent” must be Asia in this context). Indeed, the term translated as “credential” (sumbolon) can mean both surety for a loan or a token used to solemnize a xenia–relationship (usually translated as “guest-friendship”). The implication of the latter meaning is that the bowl denoted a connection between Demus and the king, thereby conferring prestige upon Demus that could be used in the empire to raise money. What is most interesting about this passage, however, is that Demus seems to be suggesting that Aristophanes could do the same, that is, that the prestige symbolized by the bowl was transferable. Like their silver counterparts, Achaemenid gold vessels were made according to a weight standard based on coinage. For example, a gold bowl in the Metropolitan Museum of Art bearing a trilingual cuneiform inscription (in Akkadian, Elamite and Old Persian) naming Darius weighs 1100 g, which equals 130 darics. It is therefore quite probable that gold and silver objects produced on behalf of the royal court worked in a similar manner as conveyors of prestige. Coins were preferred in Anatolia where coinage was already an established medium, while drinking vessels were more common at imperial capitals such as Persepolis and Susa, where dining with the king was more likely to occur. Achaemenid silver was fungible in meaning as well as substance. Gifts of silver from the king, such coins and drinking vessels, were simultaneously monetary objects and tokens of prestige, and their precise meaning could shift according to their context. As illustrated by the hoard from Babylon, most prestige items eventually became exclusively monetary in nature, but for the Persians these two meanings of silver existed on a spectrum rather than as separate and distinct categories. Furthermore, the prestige attached to these objects was transferable and could itself serve to some extent as a form of currency. All of this points to the complex interrelation between economy and society in the Achaemenid Empire, with silver at its core, such that it can be difficult, if not unwise, to attempt to separate them entirely. Henry Colburn is Visiting Assistant Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College. Further reading: H. P. Colburn, “Achaemenid Silver: An Essay on the Fungibility of Meaning,” in St J. Simpson (ed.), Gold, Silver and Glass: Power Networks, Cultural Identities, Technology Transfer and Agency across the Old World (7th Century BC–1st Century AD) (Archaeopress, 2026), 165–76. How to cite this article: Colburn, H. 2026. “The Meaning(s) of Achaemenid Silver”, The Ancient Near East Today 14.6. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/meaning-achaemenid-silver/. Post a comment