The sign
, which frequently occurs in the Ebers Papyrus, might quite easily and almost inevitably come to be written something like our ʒ; but Ebers values it at two-thirds of a litre, where it is named as a fluid measure. He deduces this from the hypothesis that the
is the hieratic equivalent of the hieroglyphic
, dnat, or tenat.
Scribonius Largus, in the first century, and Apuleius in the second, both give Ζ as the Greek sign for a drachm in medical formulas. The former says this was equivalent to the Roman denarius, or one eighty-fourth of a pound.
A writer in the Lancet of August 18, 1906, very confidently attributed these signs to the abbreviations made by the copyists of ancient manuscripts in the Middle Ages. One of the old abbreviation marks is still familiar in the z, which appears in “oz.” and “viz.” The z was formerly a ʒ, which was largely used to indicate that the word had been abbreviated; in the cases quoted from onza and videlicet. Palæontologists say that the ʒ was itself a modification of the mark “;” which was a common contraction at the end of words ending in bus or que. Thus, for instance, omnibus and quaque would be written omni; and qua;. It is alleged that in writing; without removing the pen from the paper, something like ʒ will result. This is interesting, but it does not explain how the abbreviation came to signify drachm.
The Lancet writer further stated that the ℥ was a slurred form of writing oz., and that the scruple sign was a ligature representing the letters sr.