Electrum is a natural alloy of silver and gold. In the ancient world, electrum is a metal of superior value due to its hardness and malleability or ease of working. It's used to make the first coins.
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Electrum (AuAg) is an alloy of elemental gold and silver with at least 20% silver. Most gold specimens also have some silver mixed in and the two occur together in nature. Silver is rare in raw form and more often a byproduct of smelting gold or other metals.
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With metallic luster, high specific gravity (heavy for its size) and no cleavage, electrum forms naturally as an alloy of gold and silver, with traces of metals such as copper or nickel. Depending on silver / gold ratio, color varies from pale to bright golden.
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Because trace copper oxidizes on exposure to air to a greenish tone, the metal is known as green gold. Nickel also oxidizes to green (nickel oxide). Higher silver amounts create white gold. Silver oxidizes over a longer time when exposed to natural air-borne sulfur.
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Color steps of silver oxidation include yellow, red-brown, blue and finally black. While silver is the most common component of white gold, the metal is also made with palladium, nickel and platinum or blends thereof.
By the third millennium BCE electrum is known in the Old Kingdom of Egypt. It's among the imports listed in the expedition sent by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty along with myrrh, a valuable resin, and malachite, a green copper-based stone.
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In Egypt electrum is often used as an exterior coating to the caps of ancient Egyptian structures such as pyramids and obelisks. Coming across the desert a Bronze Age traveler is struck with awe at the great pyramids, bright white in the sunlight, with dazzling crowns.
Electrum is also used for ancient drinking vessels. A source of electrum in antiquity is Lydia, a region founded c. 8-700 BCE, growing to encompass much of today's Turkey. Lydia first appears in the region of the Lukka Lands, Anatolia at the east Mediterranean.
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Lydia comes to power in part because of the valuable resources found in the Pactolus river. The Pactolus, originally named Chrysorrhoas, is a tributary of the ancient Hermus River, now called the Gediz Nehriin. From there it flows into the Aegean Sea.
According to the myth, Chrysorrhoas is a son of Apollo who flings himself into the river, perhaps in pursuit of a water nymph. Chrysorrhoas means "streaming with gold".
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Later it's called Pactolus, after the son of Leucothea, a sea goddess who harbors Dionysus when Hera seeks to kill him. During a festival of Aphrodite, Pactolus gets so drunk he doesn't recognize his own sister, Demodice, and ravishes her.
Realizing his fatal error, Pactolus is stricken with grief and throws himself into the river; thus the name of the river changes from Chrysorrhoas to Pactolus. In Greek mythology, King Midas rids himself of the cursed golden touch by bathing in the Pactolus river.
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The historian Herodotus in the 5th century BCE claims the the gold in the river sediments carried by the river is the source of the wealth of Croesus, son of King Alyattes (635 - 585 BCE).
Under Alyattes the civilization prospers. The first coins in the world are struck, made of electrum. His son Croesus, king of Lydia, makes the first coins of gold. He rules until his defeat by Persian Cyrus the Great in 547 BCE.
The original Hebrew word for electrum, as used in Ezekiel, is chashmal, meaning 'gleam of amber'. The Septuagint or Greek Old Testament translates chashmal into Greek as 'elektron',
In Sophocles' 5th century BCE play Philoctetes, about the Greek hero, the chorus recognizes Gaia as ruler of the "golden stream Pactolus." Gaia herself first appears in myth c. 700 BCE.
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Electrum is most famous as the material of the first known metal coins, minted in Lydia under King Alyattes. Prior to the evolution of money the first currencies are silver, produced to specific sizes and weights. Merchants carry their own measuring equipment.
Ancient Egyptians invent the first commercial scale c. 3100 BCE. At the time, Egypt uses a pre-coin monetary system for trade. They assign values to different types of metals, including gold, silver and copper.
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Silver is a preferred metal of commerce for tradespeople. Copper is also highly valued due to its importance in creating bronze and is often exchanged as ingots. Copper ox-hide ingots are popular items of trade.
Gold is currency by 3rd millennium BCE Egypt, when Egyptians discover Nubia has quite a lot of it. Nubia means "gold" (Egyptian: nbw). Egypt also mines the Eastern Desert, sometimes called the Arabian Desert.
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Early Egyptian money is pure gold of standard weight and value. Smaller quantities or deben are shaped as gold rings. The unit of currency measurement, the shat, equates to 7.5 g (c. 0.25 oz) of gold.
The name electrum is Latinized from the Greek word ḗlektron. It's mentioned in the Odyssey (c. 750 - 650 BCE) as a metallic substance of gold alloyed with silver. The same word is also used for the resinous gemstone amber.
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Amber is known to produce static electricity when rubbed, attracting straw and light objects such as feathers, lint or hair. This ability leads to the modern term 'electricity'. Due to its quantity of silver, electrum is an excellent energy conductor.
Today, electrum has applications in medical science and technology. It's used in nanotechnology, or manipulation of atoms and molecules. Ancient bimetallic alloys such as electrum have different physical and chemical properties than their individual elements.