danake

The danake or (Greek: ) was a small silver coin of the Persian Empire (Old Persian ), equivalent to the Greek obol and circulated among the eastern Greeks. Later it was used by the Greeks in other metals. The 2nd-century AD grammarian Julius Pollux gives the name as ''danikê'' or ''danakê'' or ''danikon'' and says that it was a Persian coin, but by Pollux's time this was an anachronism.A.D.H. Bivar, "Achaemenid Coins, Weights and Measures", in ''The Cambridge History of Iran'' (Cambridge University Press, 1985), vol. 2, p. 622.

The term as used by archaeologists is vague in regard to denomination. A single coin buried with the dead and made of silver or gold is often referred to as a and presumed to be a form of Charon's obol. Numismatists have also found the an elusive coin to identify, speculating that the Greeks used the term loosely for a demonetized coin of foreign origin.

In Persia, the was originally a unit of weight for bulk silver, representing one-eighth of a shekel (1.05 gm). This use of the word became obsolete. In the Hellenistic period and later it designated the silver Attic obol, which originally represented the sixth part of a drachma; in New Persian ''dâng'' means "one sixth".

Customary use

The is one of the coins that served as the so-called Charon's obol, which was placed on or in a dead person's mouth to pay the ferryman who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. Charon's obol is sometimes specifically called a ''naulum'' (Greek , "boat fare"). The Christian-era lexicographer Hesychius gives "the obol for the dead" as one of the meanings of , and the Suda defines the as a coin traditionally buried with the dead for paying the ferryman to cross the Acheron. In literary sources, the smallness of the denomination was taken as a reminder that death is an equalizer of rich and poor.

Although Charon's obol is usually regarded as Hellenic, archaeology indicates that the rite of placing of a coin in the mouth of the deceased was practiced also during Parthian and even Sasanian times in the region that is present-day Iran. The coin, however, was customarily a drachma. In his entry on the , Hesychius implies that the coin was mentioned by Heracleides of Cyme in his lost work ''Persica'' around 350 BC, placing its use (perhaps erroneously) in the Achaemenid period.

Funerary context

Gold are frequently found in graves. In a Thessalian burial of the 4th century BC, a gold had been placed on the lips of a woman, presumed from her religious paraphernalia to be an initiate into the Orphic or Dionysiac mysteries. The coin was stamped with a Gorgon's head.

In archaeological investigations of Greece since the mid-1990s, have tended to be found in cemeteries. At a necropolis at Hephaisteia on Lemnos, exploration of which began in 1995, the many finds in unlooted graves included a gold . In the late 1990s, a cemetery in northwest Greece yielded objects dating from the mid-4th to the early 3rd centuries BC, including oinochoai, unguentaria, a wreath with thin gold leaves (sometimes associated with Orphic religion), a gold , and a silver obol with a winged Pegasus. A gold of Geta dating 199–200 A.D. was among objects — including potsherds, animal bones and shells, and bronze coins —retrieved from a well in the center of a cemetery in central Macedonia. The well was surrounded by a paved floor and housed by a stone structure. It is thought that the deposition followed funerary meals and offerings to the dead.

In investigations reported 2004–2005, a single gold was found along with bronze coins and glassware in an Achaian cemetery where both adults and children had been buried in wooden coffins. Graves in Euboia yielded pottery and glassware, small bone tools, iron strigils, and gold jewelry and . In Epiros, graves and funerary chests yielded gold along with kantharoi, lamps, pyxides, figurines, gold rings, gold oak leaves, iron strigils, a bone flute, fragments of funerary stelae and a marble head of a young man. The items dated from the 4th to the 2nd century BC Excavations at a Hellenistic cemetery in the same area uncovered five gold along with seventeen perfume flasks, twenty-six vessels, a bronze strigil, an iron spearhead, terracotta figurines and a funerary pelike with ''gorgoneia'' at the base of the handles.

Later use

The word "" continued in use into the Middle Ages as Arabic , Persian or , and post-classical Sanskrit . The name has been connected to the silver ''tangka'' of India, which had the same weight.A. Cunningham, "Relics from Ancient Persia in Gold, Silver, and Copper", ''Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal'' 50 (1881), p. 168.

See also

* Ancient Greek coinage

References

{{Achaemenid Empire
Coins of ancient Greece
Death customs
Achaemenid Empire