Ancient Archaic Period - 500-400 BCE Achaemenid Persian Empire AV Daric, NGC Choice XF

This is a Persian Daric, a gold coin which, along with the silver Siglos, represents the bimetallic coinage of its time in the ancient world. Cyrus the Great pioneered coins in the Persian Empire after 546 BC. However, it was Darius I (521-486 BC) who introduced a thick gold coin with a standard weight of 8.4 grams that equaled the value of 20 silver coins. The Daric displays an image of a Persian king holding a bow in his left hand and a spear in his right. He appears to be wearing a crown atop his head. The gold employed for striking these coins had a purity of 95.83 percent.

The four-winged guardian figure represents Cyrus the Great, or a four-winged Cherub tutelary deity. This is a bas-relief found on a doorway pillar at Pasargadae, on top of which was once inscribed in three languages, "I am Cyrus the King, an Achaemenian."

This issue figures in the Jewish Bible, for the Israelites came to use it when their Babylonian subjugators were conquered themselves by the Persians. The Israelites called it the "adarkonim." In the First Book of Chronicles King David asked a large groups of people for donations in order to construct the Temple. Those people gave generously "for the service of the house of God five thousands talents and ten thousand darics of gold, ten thousand talents of silver, eighteen thousand talents of bronze, and one hundred thousand talents of iron." The other instance is Ezra 8:27; also a derivative Greek term "darkemonium" is recorded in Ezra 2:69 and three times in Nehemiah 7:70-72.