It is generally believed that coins were invented in the East (China) sometime around 900 B.C, and in the West (Lydia) sometime around 700 B.C.  However, coins from Egypt’s National Museum seem to be telling a different story. The following comes from The Pastor’s Weekly Briefing:

Egyptian coins minted during the era of biblical Joseph have been discovered in boxes “carelessly” stashed away for years in Egypt’s National Museum. The discovery, originally reported by Egypt’s Al Ahram newspaper and translated into a report by Middle East Media Research Institute, said that coins with Joseph’s name and image were found in a pile of unsorted artifacts that had been stored at the museum.

News of this discovery counters claims by some historians that barter was used for trade in Egypt — not coins — at the time the Bible records that Joseph and the Israelites migrated there. But, the report carried an explanation of the discovery by researcher Sa’id Muhammad Thabet: “What most archeologists took for a kind of charm, and others took for an ornament or adornment, is actually a coin. … First, many such coins have been found at various [archeological sites], and also they are round or oval in shape, and have two faces: one with an inscription, called the inscribed face, and one with an image, called the engraved face — just like the coins we use today,” said the report.

The newspaper called the find “unprecedented” and noted that the Quran indicates clearly “that coins were used in Egypt in the time of Joseph.”

The MIMRI report explained, as well, that other texts from the Third, Sixth and Twelfth Dynasties also talk about coins. “The archeological finding is also based on the fact that the inscribed face bore the name of Egypt, a date, and a value, while the engraved face bore the name and image of one of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs or gods, or else a symbol connected with these. Another telling fact is that the coins come in different sizes and are made of different materials, including ivory, precious stones, copper, silver, gold, etc.,” the newspaper reported.

Of the 500 coins discovered, one even had the image of a cow “symbolizing Pharaoh’s dream about the seven fat cows and seven lean cows, and the seven green stalks of grain and seven dry stalks of grain. … Joseph’s name appears twice on this coin, written in hieroglyphs: once the original name, Joseph, and once his Egyptian name, Saba Sabani, which was given to him by Pharaoh when he became treasurer. There is also an image of Joseph, who was part of the Egyptian administration at the time,” the report said. [WorldNetDaily.com, Biblical Archaeology Review, Memri.org]