A 2,000-year-old coin used to pay bus fares in the 1950s has been donated to museums and galleries in Leeds. The rare bronze coin was struck in the Carthaginian city of Gadir, modern-day Cadiz, Spain, in the 1st century BC.
The coin was paid to an unknown bus driver and made its way to James Edwards, then chief cashier of Leeds City Transport, whose job it was to go through and count all the fares collected by buses and trams during the day. When he found a foreign coin or a counterfeit or a coin that for whatever reason was not acceptable legal tender, he set them aside. Some of them he gave to his grandson Peter.
Peter Edwards, now 77, said: “My grandfather used to come in with coins that weren’t British and put them away, and when I’d go over to his house, he’d give me some.
“It wasn’t long after the war, so I imagine soldiers came back with coins from the countries they were sent to. None of us were coin collectors but we were fascinated by their originality and imagery – to me they were treasures.”
Peter has kept his public transport treasure in a wooden chest all this time. One of them was different and difficult to make, so for decades it was not known where and when it came from. His research recently bore fruit, and he was able to identify it as a Carthaginian coin. The top depicts a portrait of Melkhart, the patron god of the Phoenician city of Tyre, wearing the Nemean lion skin head of Heracles. The reverse features two tuna fish with the inscription “Mint at Agadir”.
“My first thought when I discovered its provenance was that I would like to return it to an institute where everyone could study it, and Leeds Museums and Galleries offered to give it a good home.
“My grandfather would be proud, as I am, to know that the coin is coming back to Leeds. However, how it got there will always remain a mystery.”
The coin will now form part of a collection at the Leeds Discovery Centre, which includes coins and currency from cultures around the world spanning thousands of years.
