La monnaie, invention des Lydiens. Son origine et les réformes de Crésus

This paper explores the origin of the wealth of the Mermnad dynasty that made the Kingdom of Lydia the richest of its time. It deals also with the invention of coinage during the 7th century BC, and it explains the rea- sons that forced Croesus to set up the bimetallism around 550 BC. Finally, it demonstrates that thanks to the onomastics of the Lydian kings, there is no reason for ante-dating Croesus’ reign and the entire chronology of the Mermnads by twenty years, as it was recently suggested by scholars who relied on the earliest WALWET and KUKALIM electrum coinage.