| Persian Period |  |
Coinage entered Israel from the fifth century B.C.E. However the coins which circulated at that time were few, and were struck outside Judaea.
The Persian period (circa. 4th century B.C.E.) saw the introduction of Judaea's earliest coinage struck in the country itself.
These coins were minted either by, or for, the Jewish satraps (governors - פחות in Hebrew) appointed by the Persian government. Sometimes they bore the name of the offical but often just the name of the province Judaea herself. In those days Judaea was known as Yehud and the coins bear the letter "YHD" engraved in ancient paleo-hebrew, also known as Ktav Ivrit. This name "Yehud" has now been attached to the Judaean coins of this period. A popular and rare Yehud coin is the coin of "Yechizkiah". This coin also has engraved on it the title "HaPecha" which is the way the Jewish governors of Judaea are referred to in Tanach. The only other Yehud bearing a name is that of "Yochanan". It is excessively rare and his function in Judaea is not known.
The Yehud coins were struck in very small denominatons of an obol (ma'ah) or its fractions. Recent studies show that the earliest versions of these tiny coins are the actual "Gerah" mentioned in the Torah.
The coins are very small usually measuring 8mm or less in diameter and weighing from about .60 of a gram and downward. For a while they were considered very rare, because they were discovered only recently, being of such a tiny nature. However, as of late, although they are still rare compared to other ancient issues, more and more of them have appeared on the market. Still, there are some very rare types of which only one or two specimens are known to exist, and high quality specimens are still always rare. Some of these coins will be the subject of an article I have co-written with J.P. Fontanille and which will be published in the Celator magazine in 2009.
Coinage in Eretz Yisrael was not minted only in Yehud by the Judaeans. There was a much more vast mintage that took place in the Shomron (Samaria) by the Shomronim (Samarians or Samaritans.) Like the Yehud coinage they sometimes named officials or high priests. Their weight standard was slightly different and did not follow the standard of the Judaean shekel. Larger full obols are more common in the Samarian coinage.
There were other coins which are mentioned in the Tanach or Mishnah, directly and indirectly and which were mainly used by the Jewish community of Bavel under the dominion of Persia. The most famous are the Gold Daric (Darkimon in Sefer Nechemia) and the Siglos. The siglos seems to be the denomination of Shekel Nechemia referred to when he asked the Judeans to give 1/3 shekel to the Bet HaMikdash. It happens to be that the Persian Shlish Shekel (siglos) is equivalent to the Machtzit HaShekel - half of a Biblical shekel. That would explain why Nechemia asked his countrymen for 1/3 and not 1/2.
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