When was the date added to the coins?
Those who collect modern world coins might smile if you asked them about the minting date of any piece. What you consider to be the 2020 issue, the Ethiopians consider to be 2013, the Israelis consider it to be 5781, while the Saudis see it as 1442!
The first to add the date to ancient coins were the Seleucids in 312 BC, when they began to put marks on their coins to indicate when the coin was minted from the date of their recapture of the city of Babylon.
Then other kingdoms began to put dates on their coins related to the ascension of a king or sultan to the throne or the date of the founding of a city, etc. Each of these kingdoms had a method of calculating time that differed from the other kingdoms.
In 525, a monk from Central Asia decided to calculate time from the date of the birth of Jesus Christ, and his proposal was well received, but its use was limited to official papers and correspondence of the kingdom.
The idea of adding the date to circulating currencies was not used by humans until hundreds of years later when the Western world settled on the Gregorian calendar.
The first coin to feature a Gregorian date of minting was a Danish dinar from 1234 AD. Its obverse bears an inscription that reads: M:CC:XXX:IIII (Roman numerals, interpreted as follows: M for one thousand, C for one hundred, X for ten, and I for one – summing them to one thousand two hundred and thirty-four). The reverse features an image of a church and the Latin words Anno Domini, meaning "In the year of the Lord." This particular coin is extremely rare; only about six are known to exist, most of which are in museums.
It took about 138 years before other coins began to follow the example of this dinar, and even when the dates were reinstated on the coins, this was for a very short period between 1372 and 1375 when the Aachen district in Germany issued several pieces with the Gregorian date of the Gruchen category (which the Turks called Gruchen, then Gruş, and it reached Mediterranean countries such as Egypt, Palestine, and Cyprus and was called Quruş).
In 1484, several European countries began issuing coins bearing the Gregorian date in Roman numerals. However, a few years later, these were replaced by Arabic numerals (which are currently used in the West, while the numerals used in Arab countries are Indian numerals). Over time, European countries began including the minting date as a fundamental part of the design of all their coins, and trading partners began using the date to determine the purity of the metal. For example, it is known that a certain king's reign was initially prosperous, resulting in high-grade silver. However, after engaging in numerous wars and suffering economic collapse, precious metals became scarce, and the purity of silver decreased.
Over time, the idea of highlighting the minting year spread in most currency issues for all countries of the world, to the point that today we cannot imagine a coin without a date!
Moheb Rizkalla
