Coil

This silver coil was excavated at Tepe Nush-i Jan, an Iron Age hilltop site about 60 km sound of Hamadan in western Iran. Nush-i Jan was occupied in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., and its occupants are generally thought to be the Medes, an Iranian people known from Assyrian, Achaemenid and Biblical sources. Though the textual sources portray them as a powerful empire, archaeological evidence for the Medes has yet to sustain this impression. Rather, they seem to have lived in scattered fortified sites in western and central Iran, without any clear capital. Nush-i Jan, one of the best known of these sites, features two temples, a columned hall, and a fort, where the coil was found.

The coil was discovered in a bronze bowl containing 231 pieces of silver, including jewelry, ingots and scraps. At the time coins were not yet in use in Iran, and silver bullion was the primary form of money. The form of the silver did not matter, only the weight, so any silver object, including jewelry, could potentially be used as money. To make a payment, one would weigh out a certain quantity, and to make an exact amount it was sometimes necessary to cut silver into smaller pieces, which is why the hoard includes scraps of metal. It was found below floor level, suggesting that it was hidden for safekeeping. Whether its owner did this as a long-term storage strategy or in response to an emergency is unknown.

Similar coils are attested in the Near East from the 3rd millennium B.C. onwards. Though sometimes interpreted as items of jewelry worn in the hair, such as those found in the Royal Tombs of Ur, they may in fact have been made specifically as money. Sumerian documents from the Ur III period refer to the use of silver rings as a medium of exchange. The occurrence of similar such rings in the Nush-i Jan hoard may well illustrate the continuity of this practice into the Iron Age.