Les origines de la monnaie considérées au point de vue économique et historique

Babelon surveys premonetary exchange, weighed metal, standards, and the emergence of struck coinage from an economic and historical perspective. The book is useful for tracing nineteenth-century theories about Lydia, Aegina, temple economies, state authority, and the diffusion of money, and for understanding the conceptual background to Babelon’s later Traité. It draws together texts, weights, archaeological objects, and coins rather than offering a mint-by-mint corpus.

Because the work predates much of the modern archaeological, die-study, epigraphic, and provenance evidence, verify dates, mint or ruler assignments, legend readings, authenticity, and current specimen locations against current corpora and databases.