2. The Lesser Alexandrian or Ptolemaïc Talent
This was half of the ordinary or greater talent.
Half the calculated weight of the greater talent gives 46·956 lb. for the lesser. But the actual weight was somewhat less, 46·82 lb.
It was divided into 60 Ptolemaïc miná = 5462 grains, and the miná into 100 drachms. The drachm = 54·62 grains and the tetradrachm = 218·5 grains coincide as coin-weights with the quarter-shekel and shekel of the greater talent.
The miná was divided also on the Roman uncial system:
1/12 = an ounce = 455·28 grs.; of this
1/12 = a double-scruple = 37·94 grs.; of this
1/12 = a carat of 3·1616 grs.
The carat 1/144 ounce, is exactly, to 1/100 grain, the jeweller’s carat of to-day in European countries.
What could be the reason for this talent?
Its miná was half an Alexandrian miná; its drachm was a quarter-shekel.
Don V. V. Queipo[[6]] considered that the half Beládi cubit had been produced from it by involution, taking the side of a cubical vessel containing half an Alexandrian talent of water and then doubling this new foot to make a new cubit. Its water-volume = 1302·5 c.i. gives as cube root 10·9207 inches, almost exactly half the Beládi cubit = 21·888 inches. But the Beládi cubit being 1/7200 of a Parasang is sufficient evidence of its origin. I consider that the close coincidence of the half-cubit with the side of a cubic vessel containing an Alexandrian half-talent of water led the Ptolemies to institute this smaller talent, as if it had been evolved from the Beládi foot in the same way that the Greek-Asiatic talent had been evolved from the Persian foot or half-cubit.