Etruscan coins

Like the Egyptians, Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the Etruscans were rather slow to adopt the Greek invention of coinage. The brief period of Etruscan coinage, with the predominance of marks of value, seems to be an amalgam that reconciles two very different monetary systems: the ‘primitive’ bronze-weighing and aes grave economy of central Italy with that of struck silver and gold issues of southern Italian Greek type not familiar in Etruria.