Value for ‘Money’ in Ancient Egypt

by Christian de Vartavan

Years ago in Paris, as we were having at home an elegant Christmas dinner, I saw my father silent and with an enigmatic smile playing with the very large Ptolemaic stater he had just offered himself. These magnificent coins, which rarely survive in gold and silver but usually in bronze, are truly pleasant to handle because of their large size (42 mm), heavy weight (72gm) and soft patina. As I dared inquire of the reasons of his smile he softly responded, but with a larger grin:  ‘Do you realize that two thousand years ago a soldier could have paid an Alexandrian prostitute with this coin?’. [Silence – laugh!]. Well, considering the Empire wide reputation and skills of Alexandrian ladies of the time, I thought that the legionnaire might have had value for money and at a time when there was parity between the weight of the coin and its metal value?  But did he? I mean… did the value of the coin suffice to match the service provided? Or did it need more coins of the same?

Value for money. The point is that until the Greeks introduced coins in Ancient Egypt around the mid first millennium before Christ and formalized their first mint under Alexander’s reign (320 BC) or Ptolemy I around 290 BC, there was no money - i.e. metal coins even less paper notes – as we understand it today. The Ancient Egyptian economy was based on barter and hence ‘value for money’ meant something completely different. It is hard for us today to imagine an economy without exchangeable currencies, but the fact is the pharaonic civilisation fared extremely well for more than three millennia without them. And not only did it fare extremely well but it developed an extremely sophisticated economic model which time and time again not only proved itself efficient, but allowed pharaohs to build empires. How?