TEHRAN -- Two early examples of coins, which were minted during the reign of King Croesus of Lydia (c. 560–546 BC), have been donated to the Astan-e Qods Razavi Library and Museum in Mashhad.

“The coins bear an image of a lion hunting a bull on one side and two square-shaped cavities on the other side,” the museum’s Stamp, Coin and Banknote Section curator, Mohammad-Hossein Yazdinejad, said in a press release on Wednesday.
He said that the coins, which are showcased beside a collection of Achaemenid coins, have attracted lots of attention by visitors.
Yazdinejad gave no details about the identity of the donor.
According to Britannica, true coinage appeared soon after 650 BC.
The 6th-century Greek poet Xenophanes, quoted by the historian Herodotus, ascribed its invention to the Lydians, “the first to strike and use coins of gold and silver.”
King Croesus of Lydia produced a bimetallic system of pure gold and pure silver coins, but the foundation deposit of the Artemisium (temple to Artemis) at Ephesus shows that coins minted from electrum (a gold-silver alloy) were in production before Croesus, possibly under King Gyges.
Croesus’ earliest coins were of electrum, which the Greeks called “white gold”. They were stamped on one side with facing heads of a lion and a bull. This type was later transferred to his bimetallic series of pure gold and pure silver.
Some recent scholarship, however, suggests that this latter series was struck, in fact, under Croesus’ Persian successors.
Photo: Two Lydian coins are currently on display at the Astan-e Qods Razavi Library and Museum in Mashhad.