It’s one thing to see a photo of a historic coin; It is quite another to hold a 2,000-year-old Roman silver denarius and analyze the portrait of Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. You might think ancient forms of writing look cool, but when you run your finger over the wedge-shaped imprints of an ancient Sumerian cuneiform tablet, you’ll reach a whole new level of understanding.
Material signatures of history abound in the Wesleyan Library’s unique collections. They offer students and researchers alike direct access to objects that illuminate lived lives and connections across geographical and ideological boundaries. Among the most fascinating are those left by trade and commerce.
Three of Wesleyan’s unique collections—the Archeology & Anthropology Collections, the Special Collections & Archives, and the Dietrich American Foundation Collection—feature currency in its various forms, a selection of which are highlighted here. They raise countless questions: How is value measured in a society and in which contexts can it change? How has globalization affected currency, not only in terms of its monetary value but also in its physical properties? How are accounting records both transactional facts and human stories? What cultural ideas are embedded in a particular type of currency, be it a cow, a knife, a nugget of bronze, or a dollar bill? While these questions are ripe for exploration and interpretation, one thing is certain: it’s about money.
Table of Contents
Knife money
Knife money, considered the first form of coinage in China, emerged during the Zhou Dynasty and circulated between 600 and 221 BC. Cast from bronze and modeled after objects that had inherent value – such as knives and spades – they were light, portable and symbolically significant. Real knives and spades were important items of exchange in China, both because of their agricultural utility and because of their metal (bronze) content. Knife money marks the evolution of these tools into stylized, representative versions of themselves. A key difference is that they were marked by an authority (the state) to denote their status as currency. Pictured here is a Ming knife with a straight tip and an inscription that has been interpreted as either “ming” or “yi”. (Yi is the name of an ancient city where knife money was minted.) Round coins were not introduced in China until 221 BC. BC became the standard currency.
Cuneiform tablet
Cuneiform tablets were invented nearly 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and were used to track the receipt and distribution of agricultural goods, livestock, and other goods. Using a writing system designed for precisely this purpose, the ancient accountants of Sumer inscribed wet clay with a wedge-shaped reed pen, documenting the details (location information, people involved, dates) of the countless transactions that guided an empire. This tablet comes from the city of Drehem (Third Dynasty of Ur, ca. 2100-2000 BC) and reads: “Payment of seven fattened oxen”. Drehem was an administrative center of the Sumer Empire, which included the distribution of livestock; Today it is an archaeological site that has yielded thousands of similar tablets.
Cowrie shells
These small mollusks made global trade possible as early as the fourth century. To stimulate its economy, India—and later China and Africa—needed a more practical approach to cross-regional exchange than transporting livestock for trade. The solution lay in the form of the money cowrie (Cypraea coin), a tiny sea snail found in the shallow and strictly controlled waters of the Maldives. Cowrie shells were ideal for currency standardization: they are all the same size and weight; they look valuable (unlike most other types of shells, they retain their porcelain-like shine); and it was impossible to fake them. In the 14th century, cowries were the standard currency in West Africa. They remained the most important medium of exchange between Europe and West Africa until the 19th century.
Colonial Delaware currency
While England banned the American colonies from minting coins, they were allowed to print and circulate paper money. The Delaware banknotes pictured here were printed by the colony’s first printer, James Adams, and issued on May 1, 1777. The currency ranges from one to 20 shillings and features a variety of printing techniques including woodcuts, fonts and ornaments, and handwriting. Despite this work, they remained uncut and therefore never circulated. Indigo blue threads and muscovite crystals (part of the mica family) were incorporated into the paper and are believed to have been developed by Benjamin Franklin to prevent counterfeiting, the latter possibly contributing to its durability. The paper money reads “Counterfeiting is death,” serving as another visual reminder that counterfeiting was forbidden and that the punishment could be as severe as execution.
Marbled promissory notes
Benjamin Franklin attempted to prevent counterfeiting by other means, including marbled documents side by side and irregular cutting, both of which resulted in a unique fit that would be difficult to reproduce. This document, probably printed at his press in Passy, a suburb of Paris, while he was serving as ambassador to France, shows that on February 15, 1787, the French government loaned 750,000 livres to the United States. Franklin was able to originate 21 loans – this was the tenth and one of the six largest – all using the same techniques and processes. He would keep the right side while the French government got the left side. Due to the marbling, this note belonged to the French government.
Engraved credit certificates
While British currency was often used in the American colonies, trade also involved the use of Mexican and Spanish currencies. These two Pennsylvania loan deeds required Joseph Barrell, a Boston-based fishing and shipping merchant, to repay 225 Mexican dollars to the “Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of North America at the Court of Madrid” within six months from June 30, 1780. The documents were then countersigned in Philadelphia by Thomas Smith, “Commissioner of the Continental Loan-Office in the State of Pennsylvania,” and Francis Hopkinson, its treasurer. The loan certificates feature irregularly cut edges, engraved decorative borders and hand-made slots to prevent counterfeiting. This demonstrates the ability of money to transcend utility and become an object of historical significance and beauty.
Innovation, risk, vision, opportunity, even sea snails – the story of money has it all. It tells us not only how economies worked, but also the circumstances that necessitated them, the ideas that built them, the failures that preceded them, and the connections that sustained them.
Wendi Field Murray is Director of Archaeological Collections and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Archaeology
Danica Ramsey-Brimberg is a Fellow of the Dietrich American Foundation Collection
https://www.wesleyan.edu/about/news/2026/07/magazine/money-talks-wesleyan-unique-collections.html
