The Assyrio-Babylonian System.
Fig. 23. Lion weight.
Fig. 24. Assyrian half-shekel weight of the so-called Duck type[302]. A. Side view showing cuneiform symbol = ½. B. View from above.
Much has been written in the last thirty years concerning what is known as the Assyrio-Babylonian system: in fact so much has been written that it is difficult to find out the data amidst the masses of theory. What then are the facts which we have to go upon? Whence do we get the name Babylonian? Herodotus[303] tells us that when Darius imposed on his subjects a fixed quota of tribute instead of the occasional gifts and contributions which were brought to the king’s treasury under the reigns of his predecessors Cyrus and Cambyses, those “who brought silver got orders to bring a talent of Babylonian weight whilst those who brought gold one of Euboic weight. But the Babylonian talent amounts to seventy Euboic minas.” Properly speaking then according to the ancients, the only specific Babylonian talent was one employed for silver and which was one-sixth heavier than the Euboic talent. It is to be noted carefully that the standard employed for the weighing of gold is not regarded by Herodotus as peculiar to Babylon or Persia, but is treated as identical with the common Euboic standard which was used for silver in many parts of Greece, and the stater of which was the only standard employed for gold in Greece, even in those states where the Aeginetic system was in use for their silver currency. Thus in the system employed for gold in the empire of the Great King the mina contained 50 staters, and the talent 60 minas. But the discovery of the weights known as the Lion and the Duck weights by Sir A. H. Layard at Nineveh whilst from one point of view most fortunate, from another may be regarded as the reverse. The large size of many of the weights caused scholars to fix their attention entirely on the larger units, and ever since then all the various efforts to reconstruct the Assyrio-Babylonian weight system have had if nothing else in common at least this that they have all commenced to build the pyramid from the top downwards. They all took the highest units, the talent or mina, as their starting-point, and proceeded to evolve from thence the small unit or shekel. Yet all the evidence of antiquity pointed in the opposite direction. In the Greek system, which those scholars held to be borrowed from the East, it was the small unit which was called the stater or “weigher,” indicating clearly that it was regarded as the real basis of the standard.
Again the Phoenicians and Hebrews who from the earliest times were in constant contact with Mesopotamia ought certainly to exhibit traces in their earliest extant records of the mina and talent, if it was from these units that the weight-system started. Yet that is not the evidence afforded by the Old Testament. There is no mention of a mina except in Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, and Ezekiel, all books of late date. In the Book of Genesis where sums of money are mentioned, they are reckoned by shekels and nothing else. So when Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah for 600 pieces of silver, what could have been more convenient than to describe the purchase money as consisting of 12 manahs (minas)[304]? Thus, as we shall see later on, the conclusion to be drawn from the ancient Hebrew writings is the same as that which we draw from the Homeric Poems, that it is the shekel (or stater), the small unit, which was the first to be employed, and that it was only in the course of time that the higher units, the mina and the talent, make their appearance. If according to the common theory the weight standards were the actual creations of either Chaldaeans or Egyptians and only borrowed from them by other peoples, why do we not find the higher units appearing from the first amongst those supposed borrowers, if the other part of the theory is true, that they started from a high unit?
Now for the evidence of the monuments themselves.
The weights found by Sir A. H. Layard fall into two classes, (a) those in the shape of Lions, which are made of bronze, and (b) those in the shape of Ducks, which are of stone[305]. “The bronze Lions are for the most part furnished with a handle on the back of the animal, and are generally inscribed with a double legend, one in cuneiform characters, the other in Aramaic.” The Ducks which are inscribed have a legend in cuneiform characters only. These inscriptions contain not only the name of the king of Babylon or Assyria in whose reign they were made, but likewise a statement of the number of the minas or fractions of a mina which each weight originally represented. As these weights were found in the ancient palace some have thought that they were possibly official standards of weight deposited from time to time in the royal palaces[306]. This seems at least to be implied by the inscriptions on some of them, such as those of the largest and most ancient of the Duck weights, which run as follows:
(1) ‘The palace of Irta-Merodach, King of Babylon [circ. B.C. 1050], 30 Manahs[307].’
Wt., 15060·5 grammes, yielding a Mina of 502 gram.
(2) ‘Thirty Manahs of Nabu-suma-libur, King of Assyria,’ [date unknown].
Wt., 14589 gram.
A small portion of this weight is broken off; if this is allowed for it will yield a Mina of about the same weight as No. 1.
(3) ‘Ten Manahs’ (somewhat injured), bears the name of ‘Dungi,’ according to George Smith, King of Babylon circ. B.C. 2000.
Wt., 4986 gram., yielding a Mina of 498·6 gram.
On three of the Lions we read as follows:
(1) ‘The Palace of Shalmaneser [circ. B.C. 850] King of the Country, two manahs of the King,’ in cuneiform characters, and ‘Two Manahs’ weight of the country’ in Aramaic characters.
Wt., 1992 gram., yielding a Mina of 996 gram.
(2) ‘The Palace of Tiglath-Pileser [circ. B.C. 747], King of the Country, two Manehs’ in cuneiform characters.
Wt., 946 gram., yielding a Mina of 473 gram.
(3) ‘Five Manahs of the King’ in cuneiform characters, and ‘Five Manahs’ weight of the country’ in Aramaic characters.
Wt., 5042 gram., yielding a Mina of 1008 gram.
The results which we obtain from these weights are that there were evidently two standards used side by side in the Assyrio-Babylonian empire, the Mina of one being about 1010 gram., that of the other about 505 gram. In other words one standard was simply the double of the other; also the weights on which Aramaic legends appear are those which belong to the double standard. Again, there is no evidence that the Talent was as yet conceived, as all the weights are Minae or fractions (or multiples) of Minae. Might we not equally well expect fractions of the Talent, as for instance to find the weight of 30 Manahs described as half a Talent, if the Talent already at this period formed part of the system[308]?
But there is one most important point to be noticed. The single mina of 505 gram, is plainly different from the mina of gold, (the Euboic mina of Herodotus) which contained 50 shekels, staters (Darics) of 130 grains (8·4 gram.) each. For it would require 50 shekels of 10·5 gram. (164 grains) each to make a mina of 505 gram. On the other hand it will be found that if we take 60 shekels of the Daric or ox-unit weight they will exactly make up the mina of 505 gram. Neither can this mina be the Babylonian silver mina of 50 shekels of 172 grains (11·2 gram.) each. For the Babylonian silver mina consists of 50 shekels of 11·2 gram., whereas the mina of 505 gram, would give 50 shekels of only 10·1 gram. each. The obvious conclusion is that this mina of 505 gram. is neither the gold nor the silver standard. It is a mina composed of 60 shekels of the weight of the gold unit (Daric or ox-unit). And its talent was composed when the system was completed, of 60 minae, as was the case with all other talents. From the weights just described it may reasonably be assumed that both the heavy and light systems were employed contemporaneously in the Assyrio-Babylonian empire. Some have suggested that whilst the light system was employed in Babylon, its double, or the heavy one, was employed in the northern part of the empire. But the fact that it is on the weights of the latter standard that we find the double legends, the second being in Aramaic characters, seems to point irresistibly to the conclusion that the heavy standard (no matter what it may have been employed for) was especially used in Syria.
It is of great significance that it is in this very quarter we find in use as the gold unit not our usual Daric or ox-unit, but its double, which is commonly known as the heavy gold shekel of 260 grains. I have suggested elsewhere that the explanation of this may be due to the fact that among certain peoples, especially those who dwelt after the fashion of the Sidonians, quiet and full of riches, and who had passed from the life pastoral into the settled agricultural stage, the yoke or pair of oxen would readily be regarded as the unit instead of the single ox of primitive days. The fact that a zeugos or yoke of oxen was taken as the unit of assessment by Solon for the third of the Athenian classes lends some support to this view[309]. We have likewise seen how the ancient Irish, after borrowing the Roman ounce, and equating an ounce of silver to the cow, made for their silver a higher unit by taking three ounces, which represented three cows, the ordinary price of a female slave (cumhal).
The Phoenicians employed the double shekel as their unit, but there is evidence to show that the light shekel was the original unit. We have seen that in Egypt, Palestine and Greece, from the remotest time, gold circulated in the form of rings made of a fixed amount of gold, and also that the unit on which they were made was our ox unit, or light shekel (130-5 grains). From the practice of using gold rings in currency as well as for ornament, we may safely conclude that the standard of 130 grains upon which these were probably made was far anterior to the use of the double shekel in Syria and Phoenicia.
The standards which we have learned from the weights found at Nineveh and Khorsabad are now generally known as the light royal talent, and the heavy royal talent, because on specimens of both standards the inscriptions describe them as weights “of the king.”
It is evident that as gold and silver had each a separate standard, the “royal” standards were not employed for the precious metals. It is then most probable that they were employed for the weighing of the inferior metals such as copper, which of course played a most important part in the daily life of both Babylonians and Assyrians. We may rest assured that corn was not weighed but continued to be bought and sold by dry measure, as it was with the Hebrews in the days of the Prophets, when the Homer and the Ephah were employed to measure it.
I shall now give a tabular view of the three standards used by the peoples of Mesopotamia and their neighbours, treating the heavy royal talent as merely the double of the light one.
Gold.
| 1 | Stater | = | 130 grs. Troy (8·4 gram.). |
| 50 | Staters | = | 1 Mina = 6500 grs. (420·0 gram.). |
| 60 | Minae | = | 1 Talent = 390000 grs. |
Silver.
| 1 | Shekel | = | 172 grs. |
| 50 | Shekels | = | 1 Manah = 8600 grs. |
| 60 | Manahs | = | 1 Talent = 516000 grs. |
Royal Standard.
| 1 | Shekel | = | 130 grs. (8·4 gram.). |
| 60 | Shekels | = | 1 Manah = 7800 grs. |
| 60 | Manahs | = | 1 Talent = 468000 grs. |
Let us now examine for a moment the current explanation of the origin and inter-relations of these standards and we shall find that they all start at the wrong end, assuming as earliest that which can be proved to be later, and deducing what are really the earliest stages from those which were in fact the historical outcome of the others.
“The proficiency of the Chaldaeans in the cognate sciences of Arithmetic and Astronomy is well known[310],[311]. The broad and monotonous plains of lower Mesopotamia had nothing to attract the eye, and impelled their inhabitants to fix their attention upon the overarching skies studded with stars that shone with exceptional clearness and lustre in the dry pellucid atmosphere of that region. There were no dark mountains looming in the distance to hinder the eye from watching down to the very horizon the heavenly bodies in their periodic movements. Thus as Geometry may be regarded as the special offspring of the Egyptian mind, so Astronomy and Astrology were the children of Babylonia. The results of their astronomical observations were duly recorded on clay tablets in the cuneiform characters, and these tablets were then baked hard, and stored up in the great libraries in their chief cities. It is recorded that when Alexander the Great captured Babylon, he obtained and forwarded to his tutor Aristotle a series of astronomical records extending back as far as the year B.C. 2234, according to our reckoning.”
Certain investigations into these tablets, primarily suggested by a fragment of Berosus which described the method of dividing time employed by the Babylonians, have led scholars to conclude that upon these observations “rests the entire structure of the metric system of the Babylonians[312].”
Thus was obtained the famous Babylonian Sexagesimal system. Although the French metric system of modern days has returned to the decimal system, which was the first employed by primitive men, being probably suggested to them by those natural counters, the fingers, the sexagesimal had a considerable superiority over the older decimal system (which the Egyptians had clung to) for certain practical purposes, as the number on which it was based could be resolved into fractions far more conveniently than the number 10. Dr Hultsch (Metrologie², p. 393) arrives at the Babylonian weight-unit thus: the Babylonian maris is equal to one-fifth of the cube of the Royal Babylonian Ell, which is itself obtained from the sun’s apparent diameter. The weight in water corresponding to this measure of capacity gave the light Royal Babylonian Talent; this Talent was divided into 60 Minae, and each Mina into sixty parts or Shekels. Their gold Talent was derived from the sixtieth of this Royal Mina, with the modification that now fifty sixtieths of the Royal Mina made a Mina of gold and sixty Minae made a Talent[313].
It seems strange that the framers of this theory did not consider that just as undoubtedly the Chaldaeans must have reckoned their time by the primitive methods of sunrise, noon and sunset, “full market,” or ox-loosing time for centuries before they arrived at their scientific division of time, and just as the Chaldaean artificer employed his fingers or palm, or span or foot, as a measure of length ages before the Royal Cubit was equated to the sun’s apparent diameter, so in all probability they employed as measures of capacity, gourds or eggshells (as did the Hebrews) and for weights the seeds of plants.
But since, after what we have already seen, it is perfectly clear that the first of articles to be weighed is gold, and that the unit of weight is consequently small, we at once join issue with several points in the theory of Brandis and his school. First they start with the Talent as the unit, and only arrive at the shekel (the weight par excellence) by a twofold process of subdivision; secondly, it is assumed that the Royal Talent which we have had reason to believe was a purely commercial Talent, seeing that it was employed neither for gold or silver, was the first to be invented, and that it was only at a later stage that the mina and talent specially employed for gold were developed, not out of the primal unit obtained originally from the one-fifth of the cube of the maris, but from the sixtieth of the mina of that Royal Talent; thirdly one asks in wonder why did the Chaldaeans, who only achieved their famous Sexagesimal system after gazing at the stars through unnumbered generations, abandon this precious discovery the very moment they set about the construction of a weight-unit for gold, for instead of taking one-sixth of the cube of the maris, they are represented as following their old decimal system with invincible obstinacy by taking one-fifth of the maris as their point of departure; lastly, it is astonishing that the Chaldaeans did not employ their new discovery in the weighing of the precious metals, the thing which above all others ought to have called for the most scientific accuracy.
The fact is, that just as children find some difficulty in realising that their parents were ever children, so when we stand in the presence of the remains of the great cities of Egypt and Babylonia, those ancients of the earth, we are too prone to forget that Thebes, Babylon or Nineveh had ever their day of small things. The familiar tale of Romulus and Remus with their band of outlaws dwelling in their hovels beside the Tiber has kept people in mind that “Rome was not built in a day.” If we can but just approach the question of the first beginnings of Egyptian or Chaldaean civilization with the same idea, it will be far easier to project ourselves into the past of those great races, and thus to realize far better the conditions under which they grew and lived.
There can be little doubt that the unit of the Babylonian system was the light shekel (Daric or ox-unit) of 130-5 grs. Troy. But I have shown that the Chaldaeans were aware of and made use of the method of fixing weight-units by means of grains of corn such as we have found to be the universal practice from Ireland to China, and we have at once removed all need for supposing that it was only when they had discovered a scientific method of metrology that the Chaldaeans constructed their weight-unit.
After what we have shown upon p. 115 concerning the methods employed in the buying and selling of corn, where it has been made clear that of all commodities corn is one of the very last to be weighed because of its bulkiness in proportion to its cheapness, I think no one will readily accept M. Aurè’s ingenious hypothesis[314].
Are we not now justified in supposing that, just as the peoples of Mesopotamia had marked their seasons and time by primitive methods, and used their fingers and hands and feet as measures long before they dreamed of scientific methods, so that likewise they had employed for weighing their gold the natural weight-unit which lay ready to their hands in the wheat-ears that crowned their plains.
Let us now start with the light shekel as our unit. According to our argument it was nothing more than the amount of gold which represented the value of the cow, the unit of barter throughout all Europe, Asia and Africa, as it still is over considerable areas of both the latter continents. There is no reason for not believing that as among other people, all articles of property, utensils, weapons, clothes, ornaments and the various kinds of animals stand to one another in well-known relations of value, so the same principle was in full force among the Semites of Mesopotamia. We found that the wild tribes of Laos had a regular scale commencing with a hoe as their lowest unit, leading up through kettles and porcelain jars to the buffalo, their main unit; we also found that the weight of a grain of corn in gold was equated to a hoe, and that thus by a simple process of multiplication it was easy to ascertain the value of a buffalo in gold. The unit thus attained was kept from fluctuating, as it was known to every one how many grains of corn gave the true weight of the unit. The practical accuracy of this method of fixing monetary units has been demonstrated from the case of the Early English and Mediaeval English silver penny ([p. 180]). There is complete evidence to show that the light shekel system was older than the heavy system. Firstly the so-called Duck weights with their cuneiform inscriptions point to the fact that Babylonia was the special home of this system, whilst the Lion weights with their Aramaic inscriptions point to a later period, when the Assyrian Empire was in immediate touch with the merchants of Phoenicia. But, in the next place, a far more powerful argument can be drawn from the Hebrew system. In later times the heavy shekel system prevailed in Palestine, in accordance with which the maneh contained 50 heavy or double shekels of 200 grs. each. But that this maneh was simply imposed on the older light shekel system is demonstrated from the fact that when in two parallel passages articles of a certain weight of gold are mentioned, in the one the weight is given at three manehs, in the other at 300 shekels, the maneh thus being counted at 100 shekels. These 100 shekels are equal to the 50 heavy shekels of the heavy Assyrian or Aramaic maneh. Now it is evident that if the heavy system had been the original one employed by the Hebrews, the maneh would simply have been reckoned at 50 (heavy) shekels. As the matter stands it is evident that on the contrary, the heavy mina was introduced into a system where the unit was simply the light shekel, and the Hebrews therefore clinging to their old unit, described the maneh as consisting of 100 shekels instead of 50. Further evidence to the same effect will be adduced later on. Finding thus the light shekel in Babylonia, in Palestine and in Egypt, and current even under the Assyrian Empire side by side with the heavy system even amongst people who used the Aramaic system of writing, we may without any hesitation regard it as the older.
The process by which the gold Talent was arrived at was somewhat thus:
The ox-unit of 130-135 grs. is the basis.
Next the fivefold of this was taken, whether from five being the simplest multiple, since it was suggested from the primitive method of counting by the fingers of one hand, or far less likely from a slave being estimated at 5 oxen, somewhat as we find among the Homeric Greeks an ordinary slave-woman estimated at four cows, and in ancient Ireland at three cows. This weight is known as the Assyrian five-shekel standard, and from it Mr Petrie derives the 80-grain standard which he detects as the unit of a certain number of weights found at Naucratis (Naukratis, p. 86). Whilst the Egyptians contented themselves with the 5 ket and 10 ket, or uten, as their highest unit, the Chaldaeans advanced to the fifty-fold (5 × 10), and thus obtained that which probably for a long time formed their highest unit.
What was this Maneh? Is it a Semitic word or is it rather an Aryan, as the present writer has argued elsewhere[315]? At all events it is interesting to find the appearance of a similar word in the Rig Veda and that too in connection with gold: this has been regarded by some as a loan word from Babylon[316]. But it is equally possible, that it is a “loan word” from India to Babylon. The maneh evidently belongs to a period anterior to the development of the sexagesimal system, for if it had come into use along with or subsequent to that system, we should certainly find 60 instead of 50 shekels in the mina of gold and the mina of silver: hence it cannot in any wise be regarded as a distinctive feature of the Babylonian scientific system, as it plainly existed at the time when the decimal system was still dominant. As the latter was the system which prevailed among the Indians of the Vedic period there was no reason why they should borrow the Chaldaean term. On the contrary there is rather a reason why the Chaldaeans would have borrowed the term from India. Gold did not pass into India from Babylonia, for as we have already seen there are no auriferous strata in Mesopotamia, but it passed from the rich surface deposit of the valley of the Oxus and Central Asia into Chaldaea. Now if the same term intimately associated with the same commodity is found among two different peoples, and it is known as a matter of certainty that one of these countries supplies the other with this particular article, there is a considerable probability that the peculiar term connected with the commodity has passed along with it from the source of its production into the country which imports it.
We saw above that there was no native gold in Chaldaea and therefore it must have been imported by those Chaldaean merchantmen from India by way of the Persian Gulf. But was there no gold in Chaldaea until the shipmen of Ur were able to construct vessels capable of a voyage, even albeit only a coasting voyage, to the mouths of the Indus? Working in metals must have been far advanced when such ships were built. That gold came from India we can have little doubt. But it probably came overland for ages before anything in the form of a ship larger than a ‘dug-out’ had ever floated on the Indian Seas.
The first voyage undertaken to the ancient El Dorado may have been to search for the region from whence came the gold, somewhat in the fashion that in after-times Pytheas of Massalia sallied forth to investigate the sources of the tin and amber which reached Marseilles overland from Britain and the Baltic. After weighing these considerations we shall be careful to avoid any dogmatic declarations as to the origin of the word mana. One thing however is clear, and that is that the ancient Hindus were employing certain lumps of gold probably of uniform size in Vedic times, as we saw[317]. The Indians of the Vedic times had thus a gold unit of their own (and as we have shown above probably based on the value of a cow) before they as yet knew the use of silver or had as yet reached the sea in their downward advance into the peninsula of Hindustan. Even granting that they borrowed the Manā from Babylonia, it is plain that they had already their own gold unit, for otherwise instead of employing hiranya pinda, a most primitive term meaning only gold-lump, they would certainly have borrowed the term shekel along with the maneh. But the fact of most importance for us at present is that, whether maneh be Semitic or Aryan, in either case it seems to mean not a weight but a measure. It will be remembered that we found the catty or pound of Further Asia was in origin a natural unit of capacity, as was shown by its Cambodian name neal, which simply means a cocoa-nut, and that we found in China the joints of the bamboo of certain sizes serving as their measures of capacity, and both cocoa-nuts and bamboo joints among the Malays of the Indian Isles. This will naturally suggest the question, Is it possible that the maneh had a somewhat similar origin? Was some natural object, such as the gourd, which is at the present moment the ordinary unit of capacity at Zanzibar, taken to serve as a measure of liquids or of corn? It is probable that the Greek cyathus (κύαθος) like its Latin congener cucurbita meant originally some kind of gourd. But there is a certain amount of probability that the Semitic peoples used gourds in primitive times for vessels, not simply from à priori considerations, but from the fact that the most archaic pottery obtained by Mr Petrie from his excavations on the site of the ancient city of Lachish in 1890 show unmistakable signs of being modelled after the shape of a gourd. Although the Chinese never have employed their ching (catty) for the precious metals, yet the Cambodians have advanced to counting silver not only by the catty but also by the picul. Did then the Babylonians make 50 shekels of gold or silver roundly equal to their maneh or measure of capacity? This is of course pure speculation, but it is at least supported by the comparison of what has actually taken place elsewhere; and even from the empire of the Great King himself can we get an insight into the method by which the maneh (and likewise the Talent) may have been brought into the weight system. Herodotus[318] tells us that when the tribute of gold (largely in gold dust) and silver was brought to the King he stored it thus: “he melts it and pours it into earthenware jars, and when he has filled the vessels he strips off the earthenware, and whenever he wants money, he cuts off as much as he needs on each occasion.” We saw above that the Cambodian catty of silver is twice the weight of the catty of rice, the Cambodian catty being simply the cocoanut, the ordinary unit of capacity, which after being filled with rice or silver and then weighed has given two different catties. The Great King no doubt poured his gold into jars of known capacity, and the weight of such a jar when filled with gold was well known. It seems then not unlikely that in this way from either a jar, or from the gourd which preceded the jar, the mina was derived. However the maneh may have been determined, it is fairly certain that the Babylonians fixed upon 50 as a convenient multiple of the gold unit when silver first came into use; as we have seen above it was probably equal if not superior in value to gold and it was naturally weighed by the same unit. But in the course of time as it became more plentiful, and at the same time if likewise the art of weighing began to be employed by merchants in the traffic in the costly spices and balsams of the east, a necessity would be specially felt among traders for a somewhat heavier unit than the original shekel. Possibly then the Aramaean merchants adopted the double shekel (based on the double ox-unit) for the purpose of weighing silver (when that metal had now become much more plentiful than gold), and for trade in precious gums and spices. Such a procedure can be well paralleled by the old English pound of silk, which is simply two pounds Troy weight. Silk was of course of great value, and was accordingly weighed after the same system as the precious metals; but when it became less costly and more abundant the weight unit was simply doubled. We may therefore regard the doubling of the original shekel as an early step towards the development of a commercial standard. It is not difficult to understand how in the course of time a nation of traders like the Phoenicians preferred this double standard even for their gold, and made it perhaps, as we shall shortly see, the basis of their silver standard.
We saw above that there is every reason to believe that when silver first became known to mankind, they esteemed it as highly as gold, if not more so. It would naturally, therefore, be weighed on the same standard as gold. This would continue until, in the course of years, a time came when the relation between gold and silver had become fairly fixed over all Asia Minor. We know that in the beginning of the 5th cent. B.C. gold was to silver as 13:1 (or rather 13·3:1). Herodotus, in the celebrated passage in which he describes the organisation of the Persian empire into satrapies, and details the amount of tribute appointed by Darius for each, tells us that the gold was reckoned at thirteen times the value of silver. Now for ordinary purposes of exchange this relation would be extremely inconvenient, and the more accurate relation of 13·3:1 would be still more so. It became thus desirable to fix some separate standard for silver by which a convenient number, such as 10, of silver ingots would be equal to the gold ingot of the ox-unit standard. Metrologists are wont to speak of the desirability of being able to exchange a round number of talents of silver for a talent of gold. But not even in the palmiest days of the wealthy Orient lands was the ordinary individual so rich that he felt any inconvenience in the way of exchanging talents of gold and silver. The Great King might deal out talents as he pleased, but his subjects were chiefly concerned with the exchange of silver and gold shekels. I have made this remark because it appears to me that many of the misconceptions connected with this whole subject have arisen from scholars concentrating all their attention on the talent, and taking it as their point of departure.
The Babylonians arrived at their silver standard as follows:
1 gold shekel of 130 grs. was worth 1730 grs. of silver (130 × 13·3), since gold was to silver as 13·3:1.
130 grs. gold = 1730 grs. silver.
They divided this amount of silver by 10, and thus:
1 gold shekel of 130 grs. = 10 silver shekels of 173 grs.
As we stated already, Herodotus says that the Babylonian talent was equal to 70 Euboic minas, that is, one-sixth more than the Euboic talent. The latter contained 390,000 grs. Troy, therefore the Babylonian ought to give 455,000 grs. If we multiply our silver shekel by 50 and then by 60, we shall obtain a total amount for the talent of silver of 519,000 grs. Unfortunately several inaccuracies have crept into the text of Herodotus, numerals always being especially liable to corruption in MSS. He seems, however, to have regarded the relation of the Euboic to the Babylonian talent as about that of 5:6, and also to have estimated the current weight of the Persian silver piece at about 162 grs. Troy. But there can be little doubt that the full standard weight of the Babylonian silver shekel was 169 grs. (or, according to Mr Head, 172·9 grs.).
From this it is easy to construct the Babylonian silver system, which was employed in Lydia and in the Persian empire.
| 1 | shekel | = | 169 grs. | |||
| 50 | shekels | = | 1 | mina | = | 7450, |
| 60 | minae | = | 1 talent 447000. | |||
From the double gold shekel was formed another silver standard known as the Phoenician.
Gold being to silver as 13:1,
| 1 double shekel of 260 grs. | = | 3380 grs. silver, |
| 3380 grs. silver | = | 15 shekels of 225·3 grs. |
As this silver standard is found in the same area as the double gold shekel, I have thought it best to follow the usual derivation, but at the same time it is worth pointing out that it may have been gained directly from the light shekel.
The light shekel (which in the form of coined money appears either as the gold of Croesus, or the Daric), in the case of the Babylonian system was made equal to ten silver didrachms, or 20 drachms known under the name of Sigli; it likewise is equal in value to 15 Phoenician didrachms of 112·6 grs. Thus, whilst in one region they obtained a silver unit, ten of which would be an equivalent to the gold unit, in another they formed a silver unit, 15 of which would be equivalent to the same gold unit of 130 grs. In each case a number convenient for purposes of exchange was substituted for the extremely unmanageable number 13 (or still more intractable 13·3) of the older system, according to which silver was made into ingots of the same size as those of gold.
These now are the systems on which depended all traffic and currency of the precious metals throughout Western Asia for many centuries. I have been compelled in the statement of the two silver systems to anticipate one step in the growth of the fully developed weight system by speaking of the Talent. We have seen that the mina of silver, like that of gold, contains only 50 shekels, thus evidently having likewise been developed before the full elaboration of the Chaldaean system of numeration, or at least before the application of that system to their metric standards. But when we come to deal with the talent we find that in every case alike, whether it be the gold, silver, or royal talent of commerce, the talent invariably consists of sixty minae. From this we may with safety infer that it was at a period posterior to the invention of the sexagesimal method that the Talent was added to the gold and silver systems. When we turn to the royal system (both light and heavy), we find that the mina consists of sixty shekels, just as the talent consists of 60 minae, and consequently we are constrained to believe that this royal system was fixed at a date long after the growth of the gold and silver minae, and when the sexagesimal system had now complete sway. We have already seen good reason for considering the royal talent to be essentially a mercantile unit. It certainly was not used for gold or silver. Corn was not sold by weight, and so in all probability it was meant for copper, iron, lead, and merchandise of value. We have learned from our studies in the metal trade of primitive peoples that copper and iron are not weighed but are sold by measurement, being wrought into bars or plates of a well defined size. It is only when communities are well advanced in culture that they begin to employ the scales for the buying and selling of the common metals. We argued above that the double shekel system arose from a desire amongst a nation of traders like the Phoenicians for a heavier standard, more serviceable for such goods as were less valuable than gold. It was probably the same desire which found its complete realization in the royal system. Whilst gold and silver had only the mina as their highest unit, there was a new system developed scientifically from the ancient shekel or ox-unit. The sixty-fold of this unit was taken to form a mina considerably heavier than the old gold mina, and now a new higher unit, the sixty-fold of the mina, was introduced. This we know under its Greek name of talent, but it was called kikkar in the Semitic languages. Now are we to suppose that this kikkar or talent was purely and simply nothing more than a higher unit formed by taking a convenient multiple of the lower unit, just as in the French metric system the kilogram is 1000 times the gramme; or was it rather some ancient natural unit, originally formed empirically, and at a later epoch, when science had advanced, fitted into the system of commercial weight by being made exactly the sixty-fold of the mina? Comparison with other systems in various lands will incline us to the latter alternative. If we enquire for a moment in what manner the highest unit of weight for merchandise is fixed among barbarous and semi-civilized nationalities, we shall find that the load, that is, the amount that a man of average size and strength can carry, is the universal unit. Readers of the various recent books of African travel frequently meet in their dreary and monotonous pages allusions to so many loads for which porters have to be supplied. The amount of the load seems to vary in different parts. Thus amongst the Madi or Moru tribe of Central Africa, a pure negro race, according to that admirable observer Mr Felkin, the load is about 50 lbs. in weight, whilst according to Major Barttelot, the load carried by the Zanzibaris on the Emin Pacha Relief expedition was 65 lbs. (besides the man’s own rations for several days). We have already had occasion to refer to the picul of Eastern Asia, which we found was simply the Malay word for a load; and we also found that the load varied in different places. Finally, we found that the Chinese had introduced the picul into their system of commercial weight, fixing it at 100 chings (catties), but at the same time excluded it from their silver and gold system, where the tael (ounce) has remained always the highest unit. Yet in Cambodia we find that the further step has been made, and that the commercial system of the catty and picul has been called into service for the weighing of silver. In Java, whilst gold and silver are weighed by units of small size, copper is sold by the picul.
It seems to me not unreasonable to suppose that the origin of the talent has been analogous to that of the picul. There is certainly nothing in either the Hebrew kikkar or the Greek talanton to imply in the slightest degree that they represented a numerical multiple of the mina. The Greek word means simply a weight, whilst the Hebrew seems to mean nothing more than a round mass or cake of anything, whether applied to a tract of country, as the region round the Jordan (as in Nehemiah vii. 28), or a loaf of bread (Exodus xxix. 23; 1 Samuel ii. 36). For as the talent was only introduced into the Hebrew system at a late period the term was probably applied to a cake or pig of copper or iron the weight of the ordinary load. That there was a direct connection between the kikkar and a man’s load seems implied by the fact that Naaman “bound two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of garments, and laid them upon two of his servants; and they bare them before him” (2 Kings v. 23). As we find Naaman asking Elisha for “two mules’ burden of earth” (v. 17) it is at least certain that the Semites regularly estimated bulky weights by some kind of load. We saw above that in Assyrian the same ideogram stands for tribute and talent. If a load of corn was the regular unit for tribute, the use of a single ideogram may be explained. In the case of talanton we have no difficulty in directly regarding it as a load, whilst with kikkar it is not difficult to see how easy it was for the meaning of a load of a certain weight to spring from the earlier meaning of the word. Its use as a loaf is interesting in connection with the fact noted on p. 159 that in Annam the largest unit in use for gold and silver is called a loaf.
When under a strong central government a metric system more or less scientific was introduced at Babylon, it was natural that an accurate adjustment of the old empirical unit of merchandise, the load, to the mina and shekel should be carefully carried out, just as in China the Mathematical Board have fixed the picul of commerce as the hundred fold of the ching (catty), giving it a value equal to 133⅓ lbs. avoirdupois. Such scientific adjustments take place in all countries with the advance of civilization and commerce, and above all under the influence of a strong central government. Let us reflect how long it has taken for the English Statute Acre to conquer the local ancient acres in use in various parts of the United Kingdom, such as the Irish, the Scotch or the Winchester acre. In like fashion, although the standards of weight and capacity were regulated by Act of Parliament in 1824, local usage still held on, and units of weight unknown to the Statute still survive in the usage of provincial places. Now it is not unreasonable to suppose that the name royal or king’s weight was given to the Babylonian commercial system, which was constructed on purely sexagesimal lines, because it was enforced by royal proclamation and power throughout the whole of the empire, and that in like manner the royal cubit mentioned by Herodotus (I. 178) owes its origin to the establishment of one uniform standard for the dominions of the Great King. In fact no better illustration of what took place can be found than that afforded by our own terms such as imperial pint, or imperial gallon, or in a less degree by the statute acre, as contrasted with the older customary pints, or gallons, or acres. The mistake made by metrologists, in regarding the scientifically constructed Babylonian system as the first beginning of the art of weighing, is just as great as if a person writing a manual of English Metrology were to start with the metric legislation of 1824 as the first beginning of our metrology, and were to try and explain all traces of an earlier system or systems by forcing the facts into some sort of conformity with our modern standards. Undoubtedly in such an effort great facility would be found inasmuch as the present scientific standards are simply the ancient units of the realm accurately defined. But the reader will best understand the relations which probably existed between the Babylonian royal standard (both single and double) by having a short account of the adjustment of our standards laid before him. Great inconvenience having been felt in the United Kingdom for a long time from the want of uniformity in the system of weights and measures, which were in use in different parts of it, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1824 and came into force on January the 1st 1826, by which certain measures and weights therein specified were declared to be the only lawful ones in this realm under the name of imperial weights and measures. It was settled by this Act (1) that a certain yard-measure, made by an order of Parliament in 1760 by a comparison of the yards then in common use, should henceforward be the imperial yard and the standard of length for the kingdom: and that, in case this standard should be lost or injured, it might be recovered from a knowledge of the fact that the length of a pendulum, oscillating in a second in vacuo in the latitude of London and at the level of the sea (which can always be accurately obtained by certain scientific processes), was 39·13929 inches of this yard: (2) that the half of a double pound Troy, made at the same time (1760), should be the Imperial Pound Troy and the standard of weight; and that of the 5760 grains which this pound contains, the pound Avoirdupois should contain 7000; and that, in case this standard should be lost or injured, it might be recovered from the knowledge of the fact that a cubic inch of distilled water at the temperature of 62° Fahrenheit, and when the barometer is at 30 in., weighs 252·458 grains: (3) that the imperial gallon and standard of capacity should contain 277·274 cubic inches (the inch being above defined), which size was selected from its being nearly that of the gallons already, in use, and from the fact that 10 lbs. Avoirdupois of distilled water weighed in air at a temperature of 62° Fahrenheit, and when the barometer stands at 30 in., will just fill this space. On p. 180 we saw that the standard gallon in the Tudor period ultimately depended on the pennyweight, which was, as we found, fixed by being the weight of 32 grains of wheat, dry and taken from the midst of the ear of wheat after the ancient laws of the realm. It was from the descendants of this gallon that the imperial gallon of 1824 was fixed, with a slight modification so as to make it contain 10 lbs. of distilled water weighed in air at a temperature of 62° and when the barometer stands at 30 in. The double pound Troy made in 1760 depended in like fashion for its ultimate origin on the wheat-grains, and it also affords us an interesting illustration of the doubling of the original single unit, such as we find in the heavy royal Babylonian system. We may find further analogies between our own system and that of the Babylonians. Whilst at the Mint gold and silver are weighed for coinage by Troy weight, the copper coinage on the other hand is regulated by the lb. Avoirdupois, the ordinary commercial standard. As already remarked, it is almost certain from the method of elimination that copper was the principal article for which the royal Babylonian system was employed, as gold and silver had separate standards of their own, and corn was sold by measure and not by weight.
To sum up then the results of our enquiry into the Assyrio-Babylonian system, we started with the so-called light shekel or ox-unit as the basis of the system; and found that gold and silver were weighed by it and by its fifty-fold, the maneh, which may have been itself a natural measure of capacity, such as the catty used in Eastern Asia, where we know for certain that this weight was originally a measure of capacity obtained from the joints of bamboos or the cocoanut; that in a certain part of the empire a need was felt for a slightly heavier unit for the weighing of silver and precious commodities such as gums and spices, and that accordingly the great trading Aramaic peoples used the two-fold of the ox-unit (260 grains Troy); that at the earliest period copper would not be sold by weight but would be sold by bars or plates of fixed dimensions, as is still the practice with iron and copper among the barbarous peoples of Further Asia and Africa; that with the advance of culture the art of weighing was extended to copper and other articles of small value in proportion to their bulk, and that, as the maneh, or contents of a gourd, and the load or amount that a man could carry on his back, had been most probably in general use as units for common merchandise, the time came when under the all-mastering authority of the Great King a standard based on the ancient ox-unit, but framed on the new scientific sexagesimal system, was established for copper and certain other kinds of merchandise; that in this system 60 shekels made the maneh, and the load (the kikkar or talent) was adjusted to the new system as the sixty-fold of the maneh; and that in the course of time this higher unit of the kikkar or talent was added to the gold and silver systems, sixty manehs in each case making the kikkar as in the case of the royal or commercial system; that in the case of silver, which on its first discovery and employment was as valuable as gold, and was therefore weighed on the same standard, when in course of time it became about thirteen times less valuable than gold, and there was a difficulty experienced in exchanging the units of gold and silver; a separate standard was created by dividing into ten new parts or shekels the amount of silver which was the equivalent of the gold shekel (ox-unit); that this was probably developed before the royal commercial mina of 60 shekels had been formed, as in that case the silver mina would have contained 60 shekels likewise; we were able to give an explanation of the name royal as applied to the commercial standard by regarding it as of late origin, created by a supreme central authority for the regulation of the commerce of a great empire made up of a heterogeneous mass of races, just as in the present century our own imperial standards have been fixed for the whole kingdom, being based, as was the Babylonian, on an ancient unit empirically obtained; and just as the royal arms are stamped on our imperial standards, so the weights of the Assyrian royal system were shaped in the form of a lion, the symbol of royalty throughout the East. Finally we found that at the base of the Assyrio-Babylonian system lay, as the determinant of the ox-unit or shekel, the grain of wheat, which we have already traced all across Europe into Asia. We can therefore now come to a very reasonable conclusion that the Assyrio-Babylonian weight system was in its origin empirical, and that it was only at a comparatively late date in its history, just as in the case of our own standards, that a certain uniformity between the standards of measures and weights was brought about by the (not complete) application of the sexagesimal system of numeration, the invention of which is their eternal glory.
Having now dealt with Egypt, and the systems which prevailed in the Assyrio-Babylonian empire, it will be best to treat of the region which lay between them. In both the former countries we found the light shekel or ox-unit in use from the earliest times; and it will also be remembered that at an earlier stage we found that Abraham was able to traverse all the wide country that lay between Mesopotamia and the ancient kingdom of the Nile with his flocks and herds, and that he dwelt in the land of Canaan in close neighbourhood and on friendly terms with the sons of Heth, or Hittites, who were then the possessors of that land; and that furthermore monetary transactions were then carried on by means of certain small ingots of silver, as we see from the purchase of the Cave of Machpelah. These ingots, translated shekels in the English version and called didrachms in the Septuagint, are termed in Hebrew Keseph (כֶּסֶף), simply pieces of silver, or silverlings. In the old Hebrew literature values in silver and gold are expressed either in shekels or by a simple numeral with the words “of silver,” “of gold” added (where the latter method is followed the English version supplies pieces or substitutes “a thousand silverlings” for “a thousand of silver” (Isa. vii. 23). The Septuagint renders the shekel by the Greek didrachm). There are several inferences to be drawn from this. It is evident that pieces of silver (and no doubt of gold also) of a certain quality and weight were employed as currency in Palestine, and we may likewise suppose with some probability that these pieces of silver were according to the standard in common use in Egypt and Chaldaea. Again, since we have already shown that gold in the form of rings and other articles for personal adornment was exchanged according to the ox-unit of 130-5 grs., as evidenced by the story of the ring given to Rebekah, it follows that there was but one and the same standard for gold from the Euphrates to the Nile. This is confirmed by the story of the sale of Joseph by his brethren to the company of Ishmaelites “who came from Gilead with their camels bearing spices and balm and myrrh going to carry it down to Egypt”; to these Ishmaelites or Midianites Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver[319]. Here we have evidence that the same silver unit was current from Gilead to Egypt. There are various other large sums of silver mentioned both in Genesis and also in the Book of Judges and in Joshua. Thus Abimelech, King of Gerar, is said to have given Abraham a thousand [pieces] of silver[320], whilst the lords of the Philistines persuaded Delilah to beguile Samson into telling her wherein lay his great strength by the promise of eleven hundred [pieces] of silver, which money she afterwards received[321]. Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal (Gideon) was enabled to form his conspiracy by hiring ‘vain and light persons’[322] with the three-score and ten [pieces] of silver taken by his mother’s brother from the house of Baal-berith. Finally, we have a sum of eleven hundred [pieces] of silver which were stolen by that “man of Mount Ephraim whose name was Micah” from his mother, of which his mother took (when he had restored the money) two hundred [shekels] and gave them to the founder, who “made thereof a graven image and a molten image[323].” Now although all these are considerable sums, all exceeding a mina, yet there is no mention whatever made of the latter unit of account in any of these passages. The story of another theft shows that gold as well as silver was reckoned originally only by the shekel and not by the mina. Thus Achan “saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment and two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight[324].” As fifty shekels were a mina, here if anywhere we ought to have found the latter term. From this we infer without hesitation that the shekel was the original unit.
But there is another word besides keseph which is translated piece of money or piece of silver. This is the term qesitah (קְשׂׅיטָה) which occurs in three passages of the Old Testament. Thus Jacob bought the parcel of ground where he had spread his tent at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem’s father, “for an hundred pieces of money” (Gen. xxxiii. 19); and the same word is used in the parallel passage in Joshua (xxiv. 32) where the children of Israel buried Joseph’s bones in Shechem in the parcel of ground which Jacob bought for an hundred pieces of money. Lastly, Job’s kinsfolk and acquaintances gave him every man a piece of money, and every one a ring of gold (xlii. 11). It has been always a matter of doubt what this piece of money really was. The Septuagint translates qesitah in these three passages by ἑκατὸν ἀμνῶν, ἑκατὸν ἀμνάδων, and ἀμνάδα μίαν, thus in every case regarding it as a lamb. The most ancient interpreters all agree in this, whilst some of the later Rabbis regarded it as signifying a coin stamped with the form of a lamb: one of them says that he found such a coin in Africa[325].
Fig. 25. Weights in the form of Sheep[326].
Long ago Prof. R. S. Poole, speaking of this word, said: “The sanction of the LXX, and the use of weights bearing the forms of lions, bulls, and geese by the Egyptians, Assyrians, and probably Persians, must make us hesitate before we abandon a rendering [lamb] so singularly confirmed by the relation of the Latin pecunia and pecus[327].” The connection between weights and units of currency is especially close at a time when coined money is as yet unknown, and hence when we find weights in the form of sheep coming from Syria, and also recollect that sheep were employed as a regular unit in Palestine for the paying of tribute, and with the light obtained from primitive systems of currency, we may well conclude that the qesitah was an old unit of barter, like the Homeric ox, and as the latter was transformed into a gold unit, so the former was superseded by an equivalent of silver. We read (2 Kings iii. 4) that Mesha, king of Moab (now so famous from the inscription which bears his name), was a sheep-master, and he rendered unto the king of Israel one hundred thousand lambs, and one hundred thousand rams with the wool. When payment in metal came more and more into use silver served as the sub-multiple of gold, just as sheep formed that of the ox, and it is not surprising that in later times when coins were struck by the Phoenicians, as at Salamis in Cyprus and many other places, bearing a sheep or a sheep’s head, there arose some doubt as to whether the qesitah was a sheep, a piece of uncoined silver, or a coin stamped with a sheep. The very fact of the Phoenicians having such a predilection for this type is in itself an indication that the silver coin in its origin represented the value of a sheep. At a later stage, when we come to deal with the early Greek coin types, we shall develop this principle more completely. The mere fact that the sheep on the Phoenician coins is sometimes found accompanying a divinity does not militate against our doctrine, as I shall explain when I deal with the coins of Messana and Thasos.
Fig. 26. Coin of Salamis in Cyprus.
But then comes the question, which was the shekel employed by the Hebrews? It must have been either (1) the ox-unit of 130 grs., used alike for gold and silver in early days both in Egypt and Mesopotamia and Greece, or (2) the double of this, or heavy shekel of 260 grs., used for gold only in parts of Asia Minor, or (3) the Phoenician shekel of 225 grs., used only for silver and electrum along the coast of Asia Minor, and never employed for gold, or (4) the Babylonian or Persic standard of 172 grs., used only for silver. In later times the silver shekel in use amongst the Jews was most undoubtedly the Phoenician shekel, obtained, as we saw above, by dividing the amount of silver equivalent to the double gold shekel into 15 parts. But it may be reasonably doubted whether the silver piece or shekel (called always a didrachmon in the Septuagint) mentioned in Genesis and Judges is the Phoenician shekel. It is used without any distinctive epithet, as if it were the weight par excellence, and is employed for gold as well as silver. But when we turn to certain other passages we find mention made of a shekel called the Shekel of the Sanctuary[328]. This shekel is frequently mentioned, generally in connection with silver, and in reference to such things as the contribution of the half-shekel to the Tabernacle, the redemption of the firstborn, the sacrifice of animals, and the payment of the seer. Yet we find this shekel likewise employed in the estimation of gold, a fact which at once shews that it is neither the Phoenician shekel of 220 grs. nor the Persic of 172 grs., both of which were confined to silver. It must then have been either the ox-unit of 130 grs. or the heavy shekel of 260 grs. As the latter was confined in use to gold it follows that the ox-unit of 130 grs. alone fits the conditions required. If then we can discover what in the case of either silver or gold was the weight of this shekel, we shall have determined it for both metals, for it will hardly be maintained that there was one shekel of the Sanctuary for gold and one of different weight for silver.
Now we read in Exodus (xxxviii. 24 seqq.) that “all the gold that was occupied for the work in all the work of the holy [place], even the gold of the offering, was twenty and nine talents and seven hundred and thirty shekels, after the shekel of the Sanctuary. And the silver of them that were numbered of the congregation was an hundred talents and a thousand seven hundred and three-score and fifteen shekels, after the shekel of the Sanctuary; a bekah for every man, that is, half a shekel after the shekel of the Sanctuary, for every one that went to be numbered from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty men. And the brass of the offering was seventy talents and two thousand and four hundred shekels.” From this passage we learn that, whilst the gold and silver were estimated on the shekel of the Sanctuary (or Holy Shekel), the brass was probably reckoned by some other standard.
It is also of importance to note that it is the shekel which is regarded as the unit of the system, for we never hear of a talent or mina of the Sanctuary. From this passage likewise we readily discover that the talent of silver contained 3000 shekels (603,550 ÷ 2 = 301,775 shekels - 1775 = 300,000 ÷ 100 = 3000 shekels).
Now when king Solomon made three hundred shields of beaten gold, three minas (translated pounds in the Authorized Version) went to one shield (1 Kings x. 17). But in the parallel passage (1 Chron. ix. 1) we read that “three hundred shields made he of beaten gold, three hundred shekels went to one shield,” from which it is evident that a maneh of gold contained 100 shekels[329]. A very important conclusion follows from these facts, for it is plain that when the Hebrews adopted the heavy or double maneh from the Phoenicians they did not adopt for gold and silver at the same time the double shekel, of which that maneh was the fifty-fold, but on the contrary they retained their own old unit of the light shekel, and made one hundred of them equivalent to the Phoenician or heavy Assyrian mina. Since this light shekel was employed in the estimation of the gold and silver dedicated by King Solomon for the adornment of the Temple, this shekel can hardly be any other than the Holy Shekel of the Sanctuary.
We are thus led to conclude that the shekel was the same both for gold and silver, and was simply the time-honoured immemorial unit of 130-5 grs.
It is natural on other grounds that this should be the unit employed by the Israelites for the precious metals, since it was the unit employed both for silver and gold in Egypt, the land of their bondage.
The question next suggests itself, Why was the shekel called by a distinctive name? It is only when there are two or more examples or individuals of the same kind that any need arises for a distinctive appellation: again, as we have already observed, in such cases the older institution continues to prevail in all matters religious or legal. It is important to note that in Exodus xxi. 32, a passage which the best critics consider of great antiquity, the penalties are expressed in shekels simply without any distinctive appellation. At that period there was probably only one shekel (the ox-unit of 130-5 grs.) as yet in use, and so there was no need to distinguish the shekel in which fines were paid. This shekel was then described in the later part of Exodus, where there was a second standard in use, as the holy shekel. As a matter of fact we have another weight mentioned in 2 Samuel (xiv. 26), where it is related of Absalom that “when he polled his head (for it was at every year’s end that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it) he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels after the king’s weight[330].”
Now it will be observed that in the passage from Exodus quoted above, whilst the shekel of the Sanctuary is carefully mentioned when amounts of gold and silver are enumerated, no such addition is made in reference to the “seventy talents and two thousand and four hundred shekels of brass.” If then the heavy or double shekel and its corresponding mina and talent, known to us hitherto as the royal Assyrio-Babylonian heavy standard, had already been introduced among the Hebrews (and we have just seen that according to the First Book of Kings it was in use, at least a mina of 50 double shekels (100 light) was employed for gold), nothing is more likely than that this standard would bear a title similar to that which it enjoyed in Babylonia and Syria, and be known as the king’s weight or stone. As I have observed in the case of the royal Assyrian standards that they were employed for copper, lead, and commodities sufficiently costly to be sold by weight, so we may with considerable probability conjecture that this king’s weight was employed regularly among the Semites for the weighing of the less precious metals, and other merchandise. Hence it is that there was no need to add any explanation of the nature of the standard by which the 70 talents of brass were weighed, and it was only because in the case of Absalom’s hair we have an article not commonly weighed, that it was thought necessary by the writer to make clear to us by which of the two standards usually employed the estimate of the weight of the year’s growth of hair was made. We may therefore conclude with probability that “the king’s shekel” was no other than the double shekel (260 grains). It will have been noted that in Genesis and Judges, admittedly two of the oldest books, there is mention made of only one kind of shekel, and that it is only in Exodus, Numbers and Leviticus, all of late date, that we find the shekel distinguished as that of the Sanctuary, and that it is only in Samuel that we find reference made to the royal shekel. It is also worthy of notice that neither in Genesis nor Judges is there any mention made of a maneh or talent, although there was full opportunity for the appearance of the former if it had been then in use, as we find such sums as 400 shekels (4 manehs), 1100 shekels (11 manehs) and 1700 shekels (17 manehs), whilst in the other series of books named we find both the maneh and the talent. It is not unreasonable therefore to suppose, that with the advent of the maneh and kikkar or talent from their powerful kinsfolk and neighbours came also the practice of employing the double shekel, the fiftieth part of the mina of gold and mina of silver, which was employed in that part of the Assyrio-Babylonian empire, where the use of the heavy Assyrian shekel was in vogue. Besides gold and silver, spices were likewise weighed according to the shekel of the Sanctuary. “Take thee also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred [shekels], and of sweet cinnamon half as much [even] two hundred and fifty [shekels], and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty [shekels], and of cassia five hundred [shekels], after the shekel of the Sanctuary[331].” If we had any doubt as to whether it was not possible that there were two separate shekels of the Sanctuary, one for gold, and one of different standard for silver, our misgivings are at once dispelled by finding spices weighed after the holy shekel. It is certainly incredible that there could have been a separate standard of the Sanctuary for the weighing of spices. There seems then no reasonable doubt that there was only one shekel of the Sanctuary, and that the unit of 130 grains. In support of this we may adduce Josephus[332], who made the Jewish gold shekel a Daric (which as we have already seen is our unit of 130 grains). This in turn derives support from the fact that the Septuagint, which regularly renders the Hebrew sheqel (which like the Greek Talanton means simply weight) by both siklos and didrachmon, not unfrequently renders shekel of gold by chrysûs[333], which means of course nothing more than gold stater, that is a didrachm of gold, such as those struck by the Athenians, by Philip of Macedon, Alexander and the successors of the latter, including the Ptolemies of Egypt, under whom was made the Septuagint Version. We have thus found the earliest Hebrew weight unit to be that standard which we have found universally diffused, and which we have called the ox-unit.
Next let us see how from this unit grew their system. In several passages the shekel of the Sanctuary is said to consist of 20 gerahs[334], a word rendered simply by obolos in the Septuagint. As before observed, the Hebrew metric system was essentially decimal, like that of Egypt; in fact had Tacitus been a metrologist he might have quoted this as an additional proof that the Jews were Egyptian outcasts, expelled by their countrymen because they were afflicted with a plague, perhaps the scabies[335], which so frequently affects swine. The measures of capacity, both dry and liquid, are decimal, and so accordingly we find a decimal division applied to the shekel. The latter is divided into two bekahs (בֶּקַע, “a division,” “a half”), and each bekah is divided into 10 gerahs (גֵּרָה). The latter signifies “a grain” or “bean.” The Hebrew literature does not state what kind of seed or grain it was, although it is defined by Rabbinical writers as equal to 16 barleycorns. But the fact is that, as we see from the Septuagint rendering, the name in the course of time came to be considered simply as that of one-twentieth of the shekel, whether that shekel was the shekel of the Sanctuary, the Phoenician silver shekel of 220 grains, or the kings shekel of 260 grains used for copper and lead. The gerah of the gold shekel or shekel of the Sanctuary was probably the most ancient and came closest to the natural seed from which it derived its name; this gerah would be about 6½ grains (130 ÷ 20 = 6·5). On an earlier page ([p. 194]) we gave the weights of a number of grains and seeds of plants, and amongst them that of the lupin, called by the Greeks thermos. According to the ancient tables the thermos is equal to two keratia, or siliquae (the seeds of the carob tree); but since each siliqua = 4 wheat grains, the thermos = 8 wheat grains, or 6 barleycorns, or 6 Troy grains. If the wheat grain in Palestine was as heavy as that of Egypt or Africa (·051 gram, instead of ·047 gram.), the 8 wheat grains, would = 6·4 grains troy. Again, the Roman metrologists estimated the lupin as the third part of the scripulum, which weighed 24 grains of wheat[336]; thus the Roman lupin also = 8 wheat grains. We may therefore have little doubt that the gerah was simply the lupin[337]. But what about the Rabbinical gerah of 16 barleycorns? In the first place let us recall the confusion which exists in the Arab metrologists respecting the habba, some making three habbas, some four equal to the karat. This arose, as we saw, from confounding the wheat and barley grain. If the 16 grains assigned to the gerah by the Rabbis are really wheat grains, all is at once clear. The gerah to which they refer is that of the royal or double shekel (260 grs.), or in other words it is a double gerah. We have just found the gerah of the Sanctuary shekel to be the lupin, and equal to 8 wheat grains, accordingly its double will contain 16 wheat grains. Nothing is more common than a change in the value of a natural weight unit, when in the course of time its real origin has been forgotten, and it has been adjusted to meet the requirements of newer systems. Thus the value of the Greek thermos and its Roman equivalent the lupin both suffered in later days, and were regarded as only equal to 6 wheat grains instead of the original 8 owing to a like confusion between wheat grains and barleycorns. Finally there is a further reason why the authors of the Septuagint Version would translate gerah by obolos. Writing at Alexandria under Ptolemaic rule, at a time when the Ptolemaic silver stater of 220 grains contained exactly 20 obols of the Attic or ordinary Greek standard of 11 grains, they would all the more readily adopt a rendering, which harmonized so well with the monetary system of their own day; at the same time the Greek habit of dividing all staters into 12 obols, no matter on what standard the stater was struck, naturally would incline them all the more to regard the gerah not as an actual weight, but simply as the twentieth of the shekel, be the shekel what it might.
The Hebrew gold standard accordingly consisted of a shekel of 130 grains, subdivided into 2 bekahs or halves; each of which in turn contained 10 gerahs or lupins: 100 such shekels made a maneh, and according to Josephus[338] 100 manehs made a kikkar or talent. It would thus appear that, just as in the time of Solomon the heavy mina had been introduced which was equal to 100 shekels of the Sanctuary, so the Hebrews carried out consistently this principle by making 100 minae go to the talent. It is however most probable that before that time they had employed a maneh of their own of 50 light shekels, for we have seen above that the talent of silver mentioned in Exodus consisted of only 3000 shekels, just as in all the other gold and silver systems of Asia Minor and Greece: and since we have proved that the silver shekel of the Sanctuary was the ordinary light shekel of 130 grains, it is evident that the silver talent is not made up of 3000 double shekels, but is really nothing more than the sixty-fold of a mina which contained 50 shekels of the ox-unit standard. If gold was weighed at all by any higher standard than the shekel, it is almost certain that it must have been weighed by this mina and talent[339]. However, by the time of the monarchy it is most probable that the double or heavy mina had been introduced for silver as well as for gold. In fact the probabilities are that it was applied for the weighing of silver before that of gold. Thus when Naaman the leper set out to go to the Hebrew prophet, “he took with him ten talents of silver, and six thousand [pieces] of gold, and ten changes of raiment[340].” Here the 6000 gold pieces are perhaps the 6000 light shekels which would make a talent of the heavy Assyrian standard after the ordinary Phoenician system of 50 shekels = 1 mina, and 60 minae = 1 talent: and doubtless Naaman counted these 6000 gold pieces as a talent of gold; but inasmuch as the Hebrews had a peculiar system of their own, by which 100 minae, and 10,000 light shekels went to the kikkar, these 6000 are not described as a talent by the Hebrew writer. We may thus regard the silver talent as consisting of 3000 light shekels, at the earliest period, and later on as of 3000 heavy shekels: finally, when coinage was introduced and money was struck under the Maccabees on the Phoenician silver standard, it consisted of 3000 shekels of 220 grs. each. But there is one period about which we find great difficulty in coming to any conclusion. After the return from the Babylonian captivity what standards were employed for gold and silver? As Judaea formed part of the dominions of the Great King, we would naturally expect to find in Nehemiah and Ezra traces of the standard then employed throughout the Persian Empire for the precious metals. As we have found that the light shekel formed the unit for gold from first to last, and as it was also the gold unit of the Babylonians and Assyrians, we may unhesitatingly assume that it formed the basis of the Jewish system in the days of Nehemiah (446 B.C.). As regards the silver standard we have fortunately one piece of evidence, which may give us the right solution. We found that in Exodus each male Israelite contributed a bekah, or half a shekel (of the Sanctuary) to defray the cost of the tabernacle: this half-shekel was a drachm of about 65 grs. Troy. Now after the Return from Captivity, we find Nehemiah (x. 32) writing: “We made ordinances for us, to charge ourselves yearly with the third part of a shekel[341] for the service of the house of our God.” Why the third of a shekel instead of the half of earlier days? When we read of the generous and self-sacrificing efforts made by the Jews to restore the ancient glories of the Temple worship, we can hardly believe that it was through any desire to reduce the annual contribution. The solution is not far to seek when we recollect that the Babylonian silver stater of that age weighed about 172·8 grs. This formed the standard of the empire, and doubtless the Jews of the Captivity employed it like the rest of the subjects of the Great King. The third part of this stater or shekel weighed about 58 grains; so that practically the third part of the Babylonian silver shekel was the same as the half of the ancient light shekel, or shekel of the Sanctuary. From this we may not unreasonably infer that after the Return the Jews employed the Babylonian silver shekel as their silver unit, and this probably continued in use until Alexander by the victories of Issus and Arbela overthrew the Persian Empire, and erected his own on its ruins. But although the Babylonian shekel was the official standard of the empire there can be no doubt that the old local standards lingered on, or rather held their ground stubbornly in not a few cases. We saw above that the Aramaean peoples had especially preferred the double shekel, and from it they developed the so-called Phoenician or Graeco-Asiatic silver standard. Gold being to silver as 13·3:1, one double shekel of 260 grains of gold was equal to fifteen reduced double shekels of silver of 225 grains each. Now it is important to note that the Phoenician shekel or stater was always considered not as a didrachm but as a tetradrachm; a fact which is explained by its development from the old double shekel, which of course was regarded as containing four drachms, and which at the same time explains why it is that in the New Testament the Temple-tax of the half shekel is called a didrachm, the term applied to the shekel itself in the Septuagint. When the Jews coined money under the Maccabees, they struck their silver coins on this Phoenician standard, and their shekel was always regarded as a tetradrachm. For the ancient half shekel of the Sanctuary they soon substituted the half of their shekel coins, that is about 110 instead of 65 grains of silver. This change probably took place under the Maccabees; silver had then probably become much more plentiful in Judaea as shown by the fact that they were able to issue a silver coinage. When those who collected the Temple-tax asked Christ for his didrachm, he bade Simon Peter go to the sea and catch a fish, in the mouth of which he would find a stater, “that give him, said he, for both me and thee.” As the stater evidently sufficed to pay a didrachm for each, there can be no doubt that the shekel or stater was considered by the Jews to be a tetradrachm.
It is very uncertain whether the Hebrews at any time employed a maneh of 60 shekels. They most certainly did not do so for gold and silver, and probably not even for copper and other cheap commodities. Very unfortunately the famous passage in Ezekiel (xlv. 12), which deals with weights and measures, is so confused in the description of the maneh that we cannot employ it as evidence. The one element of certainty is that the gold shekel never varied from first to last. It is likewise probable that, whilst the heavy maneh was introduced for gold silver and copper alike, the shekel always remained the same, 100 shekels being counted to the mina of gold and silver in the royal system, whilst 50 shekels always continued to be regarded as composing the maneh of the Sanctuary, such as we found it in the Book of Exodus. To confirm this view of the shekel we can cite the Bull’s-head weight ([fig. 27]), which came from Jerusalem, and weighs 36·800 grammes, which represents the amount of 5 light shekels (making allowance for a small fracture), the light shekel being 8·4 grams. (130 grs.). It is plain that this is a multiple of the light and not of the heavy shekel, for it is not likely that such a multiple as 2½ would be employed. On the other hand, we found the five-fold multiple of the light shekel appearing in the Assyrian system, and also the Egyptian.
Fig. 27. Bull’s-head Five-shekel Weight.
The Hebrew systems, as we have tentatively set them forth, may be seen in the following tables.
I. Earliest period. Shekel of 130-5 grs. alone employed for gold and probably silver.
II. Mosaic period. Gold and Silver. (The old light shekel or ox-unit is now called shekel of the Sanctuary to distinguish it from its double.)
| 50 | light Shekels | = | 1 | Maneh |
| 3000 | light Shekels | = | 60 | Manehs = 1 Kikkar (talent). |
III. Regal period. Gold.
| 100 | light | (= 50 double) shekels | = | 1 | heavy Maneh | |
| 5000 | heavy | (= 10,000 light) ” | = | 100 | heavy Manehs | = 1 talent. |
The same system was probably employed for silver and copper, but instead of counting 100 light shekels to the Maneh as in the case of gold, they reckoned silver and copper by the double shekel, probably called the king’s shekel in contradistinction to that of the Sanctuary.
IV. After the Return. The light shekel still retained for gold, and the Babylonian, or Phoenician silver standard, employed for silver.
V. Maccabean Period. Gold on the old standard, and silver (now first coined) struck on the Phoenician silver standard of 220 grains.
Copper was estimated most probably on the old double shekel system; and most likely the royal Assyrian heavy system of 60 shekels to the maneh and 60 manehs to the talent was adopted in its entirety for copper and other articles of no great value in proportion to their bulk[342].