National Currency Collection

Ethiopia, 1 amoli

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

Categorization

Collection
Proto-currency
Class
Africa
Name
Foodstuffs
Form
Salt block

Locations

Country
Ethiopia

Denominations

1 amoli

Measurements

Object

Horizontal
198.00mm
Vertical
45.00mm
Thickness
58.00mm

Materials

Object
Salt, natural fibre