money and coinage: Egypt side of the coin featured an embossed crocodile, which symbolized Egypt, a land she had the hereditary right to rule Around 270 c.e the kingdom of Axum (in modern Ethiopia), which emerged about the time of the birth of Jesus, began minting its own coins It became the only currency issued by Africans without outside influence The coin facilitated the Red Sea trade and had the tendency to promote the nation’s religion and prestige Human society in Africa in the ancient period adopted several materials that could be exchanged for other articles Both special purpose currencies and general purpose currencies developed in prehistoric Africa The cowrie shell and gold and silver currencies were general purpose currencies They served as a means of exchange, an acceptable tender in making payments or settling debts, a standard of value, and a store of wealth The value of money depended on supply and demand, measured by the goods for which it was exchanged and by other forms of money Highly organized societies often possessed currency that had a greater number of general purposes than simpler societies In other words, the more complex a society, the more likely it was to possess some form of general purpose currency Special purpose currency may be an artifact useful for other things, such as a tool or ornament It may also include rare items, art, and jewelry Such materials can be collected for the sheer pleasure of collecting them They are better prized the rarer and the less forgeable the articles are Special purpose currency is restricted to specific spheres of the economy, such as hunter-gatherer communities and serves only some of the functions of money (This form of money is also referred to as an intermediate commodity.) It is more secure from loss or theft, harder to forge, and its value is more accurately judged by observation and measurements EGYPT BY PANAGIOTIS I M KOUSOULIS The ancient Egyptian economy was based on three principles: barter and market exchange, redistribution, and reciprocity and tributes The underlying connection between these three principles that aided the evolution and wealth of the Egyptian society was that of a centralized state authority (the pharaoh) and the temple institutes Daily economic transactions and storage were based on the exchange of goods and commodities rather than on the use of money That held true at least for the Pharaonic Period (ca 3050–712 b.c.e.) The import and use of money and coinage were inaugurated toward the first millennium b.c.e with the advent of foreign mercenaries in the armies of the pharaoh Even at that time, though, ancient Egyptians did not appraise the value of coined money They regarded them as artistic objects in gold or silver appreciated only by metalworkers The Egyptians used four units of value to price and trade commodities, including the deben, senyu, hen, and kher These units coincided with quantities of certain commodi- 753 ties: weights of silver and copper/bronze and units of capacity of grain and sesame oil More specifically, the deben was a measure of weight used mostly for copper but also for precious materials such as gold and silver One deben of copper weighed about 3.3 ounces Silver and gold deben are not mentioned in ostraca (pottery shards that contain inscriptions) but only in papyri, since the former were used and distributed only among the low-class populace On the contrary, papyri generally recorded greatly valued transactions among the high officials and the palace The senyu was a weight in silver equal to one-half deben or about a quarter ounce Its use was inaugurated during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Dynasties (ca 1307–ca 1155 b.c.e.) The senyu could be used to express a value in the same column of figures with deben One could find in an ostracon the value of certain objects in senyu but the total of the column in deben of copper The hen was a measure of volume equal to about a half quart Its value could vary according to the substance or liquid to be measured, but generally it was regarded as equal to one deben Finally, the kher was a measure of the volume of grain, either emmer or barley, equal to about 20 gallons, and it was valued at two deben The kher was most commonly found as a unit of value for baskets, both because the volume of a basket was equal to its value and because baskets were inexpensive The ratios among the four units as well as their exact values are not fi xed in the sources For example, one document values a basket at one-quarter senyu for a volume of one-half kher As mentioned earlier, one kher is equal to two deben, which means that one senyu equals four copper of deben in value In another document, though, one senyu of garment was equal to five copper of deben Weight and price, both expressed in deben, were hardly distinguishable from each other In the Egyptian mind there was no difference at all, for the deben was not money Cases of inflation and price fluctuation have been recorded Quite often one deben of silver was valued as 100 deben of copper This uncertainty in the value system was a strong indication that the Egyptians were not looking for money profit in their transactions; it was the objects themselves that they tried to obtain The picture changed during the Late Period (712–332 b.c.e.) with the advent of foreign mercenaries from Greece, Syria, Israel, Persia, and other areas in the ancient Near East in the Egyptian army The first reference for the import and use of foreign coins for payment is found in the writing of the ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus He mentions that the king Achoris (r 393–380 b.c.e.) offered to pay Athenian and Spartan mercenaries in coins Later in the fourth century b.c.e two series of coins were introduced The first was based on the Athenian gold unit and struck on the Persian standard with Egyptian motifs The second consisted of tetradrachms, struck by the Persian king Artaxerxes III (r 359 or 358–338 b.c.e.) shortly after his conquest of Egypt in 342 b.c.e Alexander the Great and his successors, the Ptolemies, introduced coins that were purely Greek in style and