From Alexander the Great's monetary modesty to the savings of prostitutes, an Athens exhibition links money with its users' inner lives
By S.S. | ATHENS
THE Greek word for money, chrema, carries a significance its English translation cannot fully convey. “It means ‘to need’ and ‘to use’ together,” explains Nicholas Stampolidis, director of the Museum of Cycladic Art (MoCA) during a recent visit to the museum’s latest exhibition, “Money: Tangible Symbols in Ancient Greece.”
Today’s money can seem invisible. Payments are directly deposited into online bank accounts. People can spend weeks without exchanging paper notes or metal coins. Even basic transactions are relegated to plastic cards, wire transfers and perhaps bitcoin. In both senses of chrema, people need and use money more than ever; it’s hard to imagine trading a bushel of wheat or a jug of olive oil for a pair of trainers or mobile-phone service. Yet tangible proof of those transactions are hard to come by. Exploring the tangibility of currency is what makes “Money” such a fascinating exhibit.
The Athenian museum is exhibiting for the first time, in partnership with the Alpha Bank Numismatic Collection, a stunning display of 85 ancient coins from around the Mediterranean basin, Asia Minor and Central Asia. The coins, which date as far back as the 7th century BC, are complemented by 159 artefacts such as vases, jewellery, perfume bottles and statuettes, on loan from 32 different archaeological collections in Europe, including the British Museum and the Louvre.
The curators’ problem is how to ensure public engagement with coins which, though beautiful, are ultimately just small metal discs, with even tinier inscriptions and engravings. Organising the coins by metal type would bore the viewer. Presenting them in a simple timeline would highlight their changes over time but distract from their contribution to both civilisation and culture. Instead, Mr Stampolidis decided to showcase the holistic nature of money by structuring the exhibit around eight units: transactions, trade, art, history, circulation of ideas, propaganda, society and banks. By connecting artefacts with coins, the exhibit allows the visitor to explore the link between money and the people who used it.
These ancient coins, often designed by artists and sculptors, act as small pieces of art carrying messages of the ancient world. The first Greek coin, produced on Aegina Island, is stamped with a sea turtle—chosen because it was the longest-living animal the islanders knew of. A linear inscription of an incuse square divided into five sections, decorates the coin’s backside. The same inscription is now the logo of Alpha Bank, Greece’s largest bank. Oenology, an integral part of ancient Grecian society, is equally represented: an 8th-century-BC black pile of carbonised grapes excavated in Crete sits next to a silver drachm (type of coin) stamped with a grapevine, heavy with fruit. The exact same icon is seen imprinted on the handles of several wine jugs.
Across the centuries, rulers produced their own unique symbols on coinage to propagate a flattering image (agricultural bounty, architectural monuments) or favoured ideas (fortune, victory). What was omitted was just as symbolic. During Alexander the Great’s reign, his profile remained notoriously absent from any coin. A pupil of Aristotle, who warned against hubris, Alexander put the ancient gods on his coins instead. His successors, on the other hand, were eager to draw parallels between their own rule and the great emperor. Alexander’s head was dutifully stamped next to a slew of emperors’ names as far away as Bactria, in what is today’s northern Afghanistan.
The old adage “money can’t buy happiness” seems thrown out the window in the “Society" unit. In the first century BC, the port town of Delos was a tax haven attracting sea-faring merchants. A excavation in 1991 of a local tavern reveals ancient hedonistic secrets: among the display of broken wine jugs sits a pile of coins with markings from dozens of different societies—the savings of prostitutes after servicing clients from around the world.
At the start of “Money”, we are given a short introduction to the precursors of ancient Greek money: barter trade, livestock heads, and metal lumps, which eventually gave way to metre-long spits called obeloi. The average male hand could grab six obeloi; a unit of six was called a drattomai. The word evolved to drachma, the name of Greece’s currency before the euro.
Some viewers might be tempted to draw comparisons with modern Greece's financial woes. But today′s money has changed beyond recognition: the European Central Bank “prints” money—actually creating it without physically printing it—to buy bonds. Millions of dollars are “traded” across financial markets in a hundredth of a second. These and other monetary machinations are so distant and abstract they make “money” seem meaningless. But in the ancient world, money was reassuringly tangible. Gold, even melted down, was still gold—a quality that made many believe it was magical. That certainly didn′t prevent inflation and financial panics, which the ancient Greeks suffered. But these beautiful coins and their human details—flexing athletes and laurels—recall a time when money, at least, was something people felt they understood.
