Three Seventh-Century B. C. E. Hoards of Silver Jewelry from Tel Miqne-Ekron

Sealed Silver in Iron Age Cisjordan and the ‘Invention’ of Coinage

“…Examples of another distinctive kind of ingot known as ‘rolled tongues’ or ‘folded ingots’ were found among the hoards from Tel Miqne‐Ekron (Golani and Sass 1998, 58) and possibly Beth Shean (Rowe 1940, pl. 29:29).…”

“…9–10). The 1992 cache from Tel Miqne‐Ekron is an exception; it contained mostly complete jewellery pieces and lacked broken jewellery and silver scrap (Golani and Sass 1998, 58–9, Figs. 9).…”

“…It turns out that material linking Greeks and Hacksilber before coinage comes from seventh century Cisjordan: three sampled objects from Tel Miqne‐Ekron had lead isotope ratios consistent with the mines at Laurion, two with Siphnos and two with Chalkidiki (Stos‐Gale 2001, 62), whose shapes, in turn, associate them with both Phoenicians and Neo‐Assyrians (Golani and Sass 1998). Whereas the lack of material evidence for the use of silver as the primary currency in pre‐coinage Greece has led Kroll to suggest that Greek Hacksilber pre‐dating coinage has either not yet been excavated or has been melted down leaving no trace of its existence (2001a, 78), Schaps prefers to take it as evidence of a more direct transition from spits and cauldrons to coinage (2001, 97).…”

“…The demand helped establish a relationship between Assyria, the centre, and its periphery and extended periphery, in which vassal cities like Ekron and Ashkelon, and the mercantile Phoenician port cities became building blocks of a long‐distance trade system that spanned the Mediterranean (Gitin 1998, 176). While Golani and Sass (1998, 61), Gitin and Golani (2001) and Le Rider (2001) have recognized an increase in the use of silver during the eighth–early sixth centuries in Cisjordan and beyond, the hoards from Arad, Ashkelon, Beth Shean, Ein Hofez, Eshtemoa, Megiddo, Tel Dor, and Tell Keisan indicate that the hoarding and bundling of silver to the near exclusion of other metals began to increase in Cisjordan around the twelfth century and continued into the eighth–sixth centuries. Stern and Dever have noted well that the massive hoard from Dor in particular stands contrary to the concept of a Dark Age in Cisjordan during the twelfth–eleventh centuries and illustrates the sort of trade described in the eleventh century Tale of Wen‐Amon (Stern 2001; Dever 2001).…”

“…Of course, silver had been used as money in many other parts of the Near East for some time, but in Cisjordan its hoarding (sometimes in massive quantities) to the exclusion of other metals was a new development in the Iron Age with only two relatively small Bronze Age antecedents (above). Even jewellery from extra‐hoard contexts appears to have been primarily silver in late Iron Age Cisjordan (Golani and Sass 1998, 61). Bronze Age hoards and assemblages in Cyprus, the Aegean and Cisjordan tend to be much more mixed in terms of metals and materials with greater emphasis on gold and bronze so that they reflect the sort of trade known from the Amarna Letters, as at Late Bronze Age Beth Shemesh.…”