Carthaginian coin used to pay bus fare donated to Leeds Museum

A 2,000-year-old coin that was used to pay a bus fare in the 1950s has been donated to the Leeds Museums and Galleries. The rare bronze coin was struck in the Carthaginian city of Gadir, modern-day Cadiz, Spain, in the 1st century B.C.

The coin was paid to an unknown bus driver and made its way to James Edwards, then the chief cashier of Leeds City Transport, whose job it was to go through all the fares accumulated by buses and trams during the day and counting them all. When he came across a foreign coin or a fake or one that wasn’t acceptable legal tender for any reason, he set them aside. Some of them he gave to his grandson Peter.

Peter Edwards, now 77, said: “My grandfather would come across coins which were not British and put them to one side, and when I went to his house, he would hand me a few.

“It was not long after the war, so I imagine soldiers returned with coins from countries they had been sent to. Neither of us were coin collectors but we were fascinated by their origin and imagery – to me they were treasure.”

Peter has kept his public transport treasures in a wooden chest this whole time. One of them was unlike the others and hard to make it out so for decades he didn’t known where it come from and when. His research recently bore fruit, and he was able to identify it as a Carthaginian coin. The obverse features a portrait of Melqart, patron deity of the Phoenician city of Tyre, wearing the Nemean lion-skin headdress of Herakles. The reverse features two tuna fish with an inscription reading “minted in Agadir” above them.

“My first thought when I found out its origin was that I would like to return it to an institute where it could be studied by all, and Leeds Museums and Galleries kindly offered to give it a good home.

“My grandfather would be proud to know, as I am, that the coin is coming back to Leeds. However, how it got there will always be a mystery.”

The coin will now be part of the collection based at Leeds Discovery Centre, which includes coins and currency from cultures around the world spanning thousands of years of history.

* This article was originally published here