Thousand Years Currencies

This type of gold ingot is in a size of a button. It is the earliest evidence from Javanese currency.  While the ingot was not found on the Cirebon shipwreck, it is most likely to be on board and survived together with the people who manage to flee from the sunken ship.

Chinese ‘cash’, small coins with a distinctive square hole in their centres, are common finds on both shipwrecks and terrestrial sites throughout Southeast Asia.

Unlike gold mas or coins, ingots comes in different sizes, shapes and weights.  Ingots are generally made of metal, either pure or alloy, heated past its melting point and cast into a bar or blocks or rods using a mold chill method. Ingots are considered smaller in value.

On Cirebon shipwreck about 19 kilogram of silver ingots were recovered from the site. The silver came in two kinds of bars.  The  first type are fairly thick, quadrangular slabs with concave sides and typical ‘folded corners’, it is likely thin silver sheets wrapping the bar. 

The second type of silver ingots were distinctly lighter, thinner and irregular. The eleven ingots found on Cirebon shipwreck weighed more than 13 kilograms. 

The use of assorted shapes of cast tin ingots as currency of lesser denomination are the so called ‘animal’-, ‘gambar’- or ‘tampang’-money. Such as this tin-led amalgam money in shape of rod. 

This type of ingot is considered small change. The function of the hole in the middle so that it is easy for people to carry and arrange using strings.

Continue and learn more about Indonesia's traditional boat making