The Lion And The Bull

I turned this up while reading about the ruins of Gordium in Phyrgia. It's a woodcarving of a lion fighting a bull, found in Tumulus P.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gor..._Gordion.jpg

This piece predates the Lydian staters by about a century. The image is almost identical. Lydia and Phyrgia are close by each other in western Asia Minor. The legend of the Phyrgian king Midas has him washing in the Pactolus River in Lydia to get rid of the Golden Touch. The Pactolus placer electrum gold/silver alloy was used to make the Lydian coins after the metals were separated.

Edit:

Here's a description of how the coins were recovered. The story about a Lydian soldier carrying a fractional stater in his mouth is interesting. Many were discovered under paving and in temple hordes. Several were recovered at Gordium, and Greek treasury records list them. Once the electrum was refined into the two pure metals, the coins spread rapidly in a 200-300 mile radius.

http://sardisexpedition.org/en/essa...head-coinage

Under the Persians, the Lydian silver half stater became the shekel.