Daric

A gold coin from ancient Persia, dated back to the 5th century BC. Its name comes from the name of the famous Persian king Darius I the Great from the Achaemenid dynasty, who was the first to mint such gold staters (coin denominations). Some, however, derive it from the Old Persian dari – meaning gold. The obverse shows the figure of an archer running to the right in ceremonial Persian robes and a traditional headdress, sometimes called a crenellated crown. It is a symbolic, conventional and stylized image of the Great King or King of Kings – both of these titles traditionally belonged to the Persian ruler. In this case, however, it cannot be certain that it was Darius, because numismatists date this type of daric, on which the ruler is equipped with a bow and a spear (so-called type III), to around 485 BC, i.e. the end of the reign of Darius the Great and the beginning of the reign of his son and successor – Xerxes I.

The reverse of the coin is a so-called quadratum incusum (recessed square) in its simplest and oldest form. The irregular shape reflects the lower punch on which the lump was placed before being struck by the upper punch. The surface of the lower punch was intentionally uneven to prevent the lump from shifting in a way that made it impossible to nail the obverse punch. Despite the fact that at that time, on the coins of the Anatolian Greeks neighboring Persia, the recessed square already had the regular form of a windmill wing, a swastika or even a specific image, the Persians retained its archaic irregular shape until the end of the issuance of darics.