Coins and Tumuli: Sardis and Bin Tepe

At Sardis, a coin’s image outlasted the power that first issued it. Under Croesus, electrum issues gave way to separate coinage in pure gold and pure silver. After Persian forces captured the city, the lion-and-bull type continued for about thirty years, now serving Persian rule. Its familiar face carried a changed political order.

Near the Paktolos stream, workshops outside the city walls separated gold from silver through cementation and cupellation in the first half of the sixth century BCE. The stream belongs to the setting; the refining installations show the work itself. The refining sites put metalwork into the same story as Sardis’s changing coinage.

North of the acropolis, Bin Tepe spreads across a different scale: more than 119 tumuli lie about 7–17 kilometres away. In 2025, UNESCO inscribed Sardis and the Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe together as one World Heritage property with two components, noting their visual relationship. A coin’s image could pass into a new political order; the tumuli hold another trace of power across the plain.