National Currency Collection

Ethiopia, 1 amoli

Object ID: 1981.0050.00001.000

Story

You can’t put gold in your soup

Because of its high value and usefulness, salt was used as a medium of exchange in parts of Asia and Africa. Salt makes curious money. For a start, it readily dissolves in water and it can be very crumbly. But it has great advantages over gold: with salt you can clean wounds, preserve meat and flavour supper. Roman soldiers received a measure of salt with their pay hence the root word for “salary”.

Item Details