Definizione

• A name given to the salt money of Abyssinia which was used as a circu- lating medium for smaller monetary trans- actions to the west of Gondar. This currency appears to have been in the form of blocks of rock-salt, about eight inches long by one and one-half inches in breadth, and of a value of from two to three pence each. It is described by Foville, Les Mon- naies de VEthiopie , and is mentioned as early as 1625 in the works of Don Alonzo Mendez, patriarch of Abyssinia, who trav- ersed the country, and says: " The boun- dary between the kingdoms of Daucali and Tygre is a plain, four days' journey in length and one in breadth, which they call the country of salt, for there is found all that they use in Ethiopia, instead of money; being bricks almost a span long and four fingers thick and broad, and won- derfully white, fine and hard, and there is never any miss of it, though they carry a way never so much ; and this quantity is so great that we met a caravan of it, wherein we believed there could be no less than 600 beasts of burden, camels, mules, and asses, of which the camels carry 600 of those bricks, and the asses 140 or 150, and these continually going and coming."

  For the purchasing powers of the Amole, or Emol, as it is sometimes called, see an interesting contribution by A. Thomson D'Abbadie to the Numismatic Chronicle (Vol. II. 1839-1840). See also Wakea and Salt, infra.

Fonte

• Frey's Dictionary (American Journal of Numismatics, Vol. 50, 1916)

Le relazioni