{"id":468169,"date":"2026-03-10T17:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T17:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/468169\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T17:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T17:57:09","slug":"coin-used-to-pay-for-bus-ticket-in-leeds-found-to-be-2000-years-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/468169\/","title":{"rendered":"Coin used to pay for bus ticket in Leeds found to be 2,000 years old"},"content":{"rendered":"

An odd-looking coin used to pay for a bus fare in Leeds in the 1950s has been found to belong to an ancient civilisation<\/a> from more than 2,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

The coin, handed to a local bus driver decades ago, came into the hands of James Edwards, former chief cashier with Leeds City Transport<\/a>, who gathered fares and counted them at the end of each day.<\/p>\n

Since it couldn\u2019t be spent, Mr Edwards took it home and gifted the ancient coin<\/a> to his young grandson, Peter, who kept it in a small wooden chest for more than 70 years.<\/p>\n

Archaeologists from the University of Leeds have now found that it came from the Carthaginians, part of the Phoenician culture, in the Spanish city of Cadiz during the 1st century BC.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy 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,\u201d the now 77-year-old grandson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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 \u2013 to me, they were treasure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The ancient Phoenician coin has Greek imagery (Leeds City Council)<\/p>\n

Peter attempted to uncover the coin\u2019s origin, focusing on a particular inscription.<\/p>\n

It bears the face of the god Melqart on one side, resembling the Greek hero Herakles and wearing his famed lionskin headdress.<\/p>\n

Experts say it came from what was once a Carthaginian settlement on the Spanish coast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe coin always fascinated me because it was hard to decipher where it came from,\u201d Peter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The coin has been donated to Leeds Museums and Galleries (Leeds City Council)<\/p>\n

The coin has been donated to Leeds Museums and Galleries and is now part of the Leeds Discovery Centre, which includes coins and currency from cultures around the world, spanning thousands of years of history.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s incredible to imagine how this tiny piece of history created by an ancient civilisation thousands of years ago has somehow made its way to Leeds and into our collection,\u201d said Salma Arif, Leeds City Council\u2019s executive member for adult social care, active lifestyles and culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuseums like ours are not just about preserving objects, they\u2019re also about telling stories like this one and inspiring visitors to think about the history that\u2019s all around us, sometimes in the most unlikely of places,\u201d Ms Arif said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An odd-looking coin used to pay for a bus fare in Leeds in the 1950s has been found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[167705,167706,59,57,58,167707,2375,94251,167704,167708,50,56,54,55,73896],"class_list":["post-468169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-ancient-civilisation","tag-coin-collectors","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-james-edwards","tag-leeds","tag-leeds-city-council","tag-leeds-city-transport","tag-mr-edwards","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-university-of-leeds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}