Xerxes I and Artaxerxes I, Persian Empire, Gold Daric

The dating of this coin to ca. 480-420 BCE encompasses the final fifteen years of the reign of King Xerxes I (King Ahasuerus), and the entire forty-one-year reign of his son Artaxerxes I.¹  Within this 60-year time span events in Zechariah, Ezra, Esther, Malachi, and the early chapters of Nehemiah occurred. 

This coin type was also in use during the complete regnal years of Artaxerxes I, who is also named in Scripture. He is referred to five times in Ezra 7 alone, including the citation of his authorship of the highly significant decree (verses 21-26) that authorized Ezra to return to Jerusalem from exile and to assume a leadership position in Jerusalem, ca. 458 BCE.  This Artaxerxes was also the king whom Nehemiah served as cupbearer. Nehemiah 2:1-8 records a conversation between these two men which culminated in the king sending Nehemiah back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city’s walls, ca. 445/444 BCE.

During the reign of Artaxerxes I two significant revolts against his Persian Empire occurred. The first was a revolt by Egypt; the second revolt occurred an approximate dozen years later by Syria. It is held by some that the destruction of Jerusalem that caused Nehemiah’s notable concern happened during the Syria rebellion.² Although both revolts were aided by the Greeks neither succeeded at bringing down the Persian rule of the area. However, within these struggles between Persia and the forces of Egypt, Syria, and Greece lies a glimpse of things to come.

Although this coin’s design of a running king carrying a staff and bow is nearly identical to Persian silver siglos issues from this same era, this type is termed daric as distinguished from a siglos in two ways: (1) The daric is made of gold whereas the siglos is made from silver. Darics maintained an almost pure gold content of 99% over the course of their production span.³ (2) The weight of a daric is greater than a siglos by approximately 50%. In the ancient Persian monetary system, the gold daric was based on the 8.33-gram Babylonian shekel weight, and was equal to 20 silver siglos. [Note that the daric example featured here is extremely near the precise expected weight.]

The overall appearance of this featured coin is somewhat worn. For example, details of the king’s face and beard are missing. Because the daric was produced in large numbers and their striking dies are known to have remained in use for prolonged periods, it is likely that this example’s apparent wear is partially due to having been struck with a worn die. The strike was generally well-centered, although not so well that the king’s crown is visible on the flan due to slightly high strike. However, considering the relative tight flan, this example includes more of the king’s complete form than average for this type. Yet fortunately, sufficient visible detail assuredly remains to attribute it specifically as: Carradice Type IIIb-early.  

Although darics were circulating within the Persian Empire during the time of events in Ezra and Nehemiah, they appear not to have been in regular use by the populace of Jewish exiles. This is evidenced by the facts that darics were not widely used in Babylon, and that only three Persian gold coins have been found in archaeological excavations in Judea and its surrounding regions.⁴

The possibility exists that the writers of these books used the term daric in an anachronistic manner, but there is no need to necessarily suppose this to be certain. Another possibility would be that each gold coin was of such extreme high value that it prohibited pragmatic use by the exiles. To illustrate this, consider that a single daric was an entire month of pay for a professional soldier in the Persian military.⁵ The exiles were part of such an impoverished economy that coins commonly circulating in the region were not only made from silver (always a lesser-valued metal than gold), but were also much smaller – in some cases weighing less than a mere one-tenth of a daric. 

Multiple explanations for the origin of the term daric exist. The popular theory that it was named after King Darius I sounds acceptable at face value. However, another plausible theory is that it stems from an Old Persian word for ‘golden’.⁶  Regardless, what is of more interest from a biblical standpoint is that the term ‘Daric’ appears in the books of 1. Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah.⁷ Each usage is associated with a numeric quantity. It is likely that the intended reference is to a unit of weight measurement rather than to a coin type/denomination – as is true with the Old Testament’s use of ‘shekel’.

An often referenced interesting quote regarding the Daric coin came from the ancient Greek historian Plutarch who quotes Agesilaus (a Spartan king) as saying, “I have been driven out by 10,000 Persian archers.”⁸  The word “archers” was a direct reference to the Daric as a result of its portrayal of a Persian man with a bow (hence: an “archer”). The Persian government used these golden “archers” to pay Sparta’s Greek rivals for serving as soldiers to war against Sparta.

The introduction of the daric coin itself closely coincided with the 480 BCE sacking of Athens by the Persians, during which the war was painfully brought home to the Athenians who watched helplessly as their cultural and sacred shrines, so clearly visible to the city atop the Acropolis, were destroyed. It is likely that these darics were produced for payroll usage for the Persian army and mercenaries during this time (as had been the case with the war against Sparta). 

The Greeks with seeming purposefulness left the Acropolis in shambles for over 30 years as an always visible reminder to the Athenian citizens of Persia’s powerfully destructive victory. In eventual replacement of the war-destroyed temples, the Greeks constructed the Parthenon which stands to this day. During the 447-432 BCE construction process, a period encompassed by this coin type’s usage, portions of the destroyed temples were incorporated to serve as lasting memorials.⁹ Approximately 485 years later, as the Apostle Paul delivered the famous Mars Hill Sermon, he was figuratively in the shadow of the Parthenon, as the Acropolis was less than 500 feet away.

ENDNOTES

¹ For more information about Xerxes I see this collection’s silver siglos Type III-b (early). Artaxerxes I reigned 465-424 BCE.  The final four years of this daric’s cited 480-420 BCE time span includes the brief reigns of two of his sons, both during the year 424 BCE, and the initial four years of another son, Darius II, who reigned from 424-404 BCE.

² ISBE Dictionary, 772, Artaxerxes

³ The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Coinage, “Asia Minor To The Ionian Revolt”, Koray Konuk. page 52. “Darics were struck in extremely pure gold, the recorded percentages falling only very rarely below 98%, with the majority of the specimens analysed reaching 99%; Herodotus (4.166) mentions the exceptional purity of Darius’ gold coins. This level of purity is not however achieved in the silver sigloi, whose metal is normally around 97-98% pure silver, with some specimens going as low as 94-95%.”

⁴  David Hendin’s Guide to Biblical Coins, 5^th ed., page 104

⁵ Xenophon (Anabasis 1.3.21)

⁶ The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Coinage, “The Coinage of the Persian Empire”, Michael Alram, page 64.

⁷ Most modern-day English translations use the word ‘daric’ or the plural ‘darics’ at least once. The specific verses in which ‘daric’/’darics’ appear in an English translation are 1.Chronicles 29:7, Ezra 2:69, Ezra 8:27, and Nehemiah 7:70,71,72. Using 1. Chron. 29:7 as an example, the following translations use the word ‘darics’: ASV, NAS, ESV, NIV, NIB, NKJV, RSV, & NRS. (Related to this, the source word in the Hebrew text is phonetically similar to the word ‘daric’ and may have been a Persian word that had been transliterated into Hebrew.)

⁸ Plut. Art. 15. 6

⁹ Wall Street Journal, “The Athenian Response to Terror”, by Joan Breton Connelly, February 19, 2002. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1014086321226175240