The island of Aegina was the first region of the Greek mainland that minted silver coins, the staters, in ca. 575 BC. The turtle and later the tortoise were chosen as symbols for the first mintings. The silver used for the first coins of Aegina came either from the Laurium mines, or from Sifnos. This initiative is probably associated with the fact that, since the island was the only Greek presence in the foundation of the trade community of Naucratis on the Nile Delta, the Aeginetans had got in touch with the peoples of the East and mainly with the Lydians, who invented coinage.


Aegina's turtles were one of the most widespread coins of the Greek world for about four hundred years and they have been found in regions such as Egypt and Persepolis. The Aeginetan standard, with the didrachm stater weighing 12-13 grams, was widely used by other cities in Greece, in Crete and in Asia Minor.

It is known that before Crete's cities minted their own coinage in the 5th century BC, they used Aegina's coinage as the official coin of their island. Some of the turtles were probably minted in Cydonia, a Cretan region conquered and colonized by the Aeginetans (Herodotus, Historia 3.59). After Aegina, Corinth and Athens were the next to mint silver coins in the Greek mainland.

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