These early electrum coins are simply bullet-shaped lumps of metal, like the so-called _bean_ money formerly employed by the Japanese, having what is termed the obverse plain or rather striated, as a series of lines in relief run across the coin, whilst the reverse has three incuse depressions, that in the centre oblong, the others square. The coin here figured (from the British Museum specimen) is on the Babylonian silver standard (166·8 grs.), but it is on the staters of Phoenician standard that we first find any attempt at types or symbols. The idea of engraving some symbol on the punches used for stamping the incuse depressions was in truth the grand step towards the creation of a real coin. Thus a stater of 219 grs. which bears in the central incuse a running fox, in the upper square a stag’s head, and the lower an X-like device, may be regarded as the first complete coin as yet known. It would seem from this, therefore, that it was on the coast-region, where the Lydians came into contact with the artistic genius of the Greeks, that the real start in the art of striking money took place. Electrum was employed because it was found native in great quantities in the whole district which lay around Sardis, in the valleys of Tmolus, and the sands of Pactolus. The ancients found considerable difficulty in freeing the gold from the associated silver (p. 97). Once known, Miletus and other important Ionian cities were not long in improving on the Lydian invention. The advantages of a metallic currency were so obvious that an intelligent and progressive race hastened to avail themselves of it. “Only those,” says Captain Gill (speaking of the borders of Thibet and China), “who have gone through the weary process of cutting up and weighing out lumps of silver, disputing over the scale, and asserting the quality of the metal, can appreciate our feelings of satisfaction at being once more able to make payments in coin[354].” No sooner had the Ionians commenced coining than they appear to have adorned the face of the ingot with a symbol, probably both as a guarantee of weight and purity, and perhaps as a preventive of fraudulent abrasion. During this period it is not improbable that the arts of Ionia had made their influence felt in Lydia, and hence “it is impossible to distinguish with absolute certainty the Lydian issues from those of the Greek towns, but there is one type which seems to be especially characteristic of Lydia as it occurs in a modified form on the coinage attributed to the Sardian mint and to the reign of Croesus; this is the Lion and the Bull. These coins have on the obverse the forefronts of a lion and a bull turned away from one another and joined by their necks[355],” whilst the reverse shows three incuse depressions. This is Phoenician in weight (215·4 grs.). There are other coins, often attributed to Miletus, which may be assigned to Lydia; some with a recumbent lion on the obverse, and