Delineation of Ancient and Modern Numismatics

CHAPTER I.

ON THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE NUMISMATIC SUBJECT.

The origin of coins must be sought from that original: "tempore, quo cum gentium dispersione linguæ diversæ ortæ fuerunt" time when, with the dispersion of nations, diverse languages arose. For when the exchange of goods, the simplest and most ancient mode of commerce, no longer seemed sufficiently convenient as the multitude of people increased, original: "nihil aptius ad commercia visum fuit metallis" nothing seemed more suitable for trade than metals, especially those which, due to their natural qualities, seemed permanent.

original: "Initium factum fuisse videtur argento" It seems the beginning was made with silver, which was weighed in masses or crude particles, as gold-bearing lands were not yet known. Afterward, these crude masses of silver and bronze, marked with certain signs indicating weight and value, were stamped. original: "tandem speciebus singulis pondus certum constitutum, & typus compressus" Finally, a certain weight was established for individual pieces, and a type was impressed. Compare the tract on the origin and inventors of money and coins by Hermannus Ulricus à Lingen Hermann Ulrich von Lingen (Jena, 1715, quarto).

The argument concerning the inventor of the first coin is as uncertain and controversial as that concerning the first inventor of letters. Yet it is highly probable that the coins, which were crude masses, were first in use in Chaldea a region in ancient Mesopotamia, the land first inhabited after the flood, and were carried from there to Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, and finally to the Romans and other peoples. See Genesis, chapters 20:16, 22:15-16, and 33:19. Compare Otto Sperling's a 17th/18th-century numismatist Dissertation on the Unstruck Coins of the Ancients as well as the Moderns (Amsterdam, 1700, quarto), chapters II and III.