Another series of inscribed weights, of which three examples are known, bears the inscription beqa. The word comes from a root that means “cleave” or “split.” This word occurs twice in the Old Testament, in Gen. 24:22 and Exod. 38:26. In the passage last mentioned it is defined as half a shekel; (see [Fig. 188]).
A third variety of weight bears the inscription payim. The first of these to be discovered was found by the writer in the hands of a dealer in Jerusalem. On one side it bore the word payim and on the other lezekaryahu yaer, “belonging to Zechariah son of Jaer.” This weight is cubic in form (see [Fig. 187]) and weighs 117.431 grains.[184] Macalister found another of similar shape, which bore only the inscription payim. It weighed 114.81 grains. The word payim is very puzzling. It has been interpreted by Clermont-Ganneau as meaning “two-thirds,” and as designating two-thirds of a shekel. Possibly this is right. This weight is mentioned in 1 Sam. 13:20, 21, and its discovery has explained a Hebrew phrase which has puzzled all translators. We now know that these verses should be rendered: “But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his plowshare, and his axe, and his adze, and his hoe, and the price was a pim (or payim) for the plowshares, and for the axes, and for the three-tined forks, and for the adzes, and for the setting of the goads.” The name of the weight here expresses the price, just as shekel, the name of another weight, does elsewhere.[185] One bronze weight found at Gezer bore words meaning “belonging to the king,” but it is not clear to what king it referred.
A glance at the weights here described makes it evident that the standards of the ancient Hebrews were not exact. If these are representative weights, the shekel must have varied from 200 to more than 300 grains Troy. This is what one acquainted with the Palestine of today would expect. The peasants still use field-stone as weights, selecting one that is approximately of the weight they desire. Even among the merchants of modern Jerusalem, where one would expect more exact standards than among the peasantry, odd scraps of old iron are used for weights.[186]
A large number of uninscribed weights of the same general size and shape of those described[187] were found at Gezer. Whether larger weights or multiples of a shekel were discovered is uncertain. A number of stones might have been used for weights, but they were not inscribed and may have been used for other purposes. A large bronze weight found at Tell Sandahanna is just sixty times the weight of a 311-grain shekel, and may be a mana.[188]
Where weights and measures differed so, the words of Amos (8:5), “making the ephah small and the shekel great,” gain an added significance, and we understand why the wise man denounced “false balances” (Prov. 11:1; 20:23). Indeed, of the weights found at Gezer so many were under the average standard, and so many above it, that the inference lay close at hand that many men had one set of weights by which to purchase and another set by which to sell.[189]
4. Money.—Down to the seventh century before Christ money was not coined. Whenever it was employed as a medium of exchange, it was weighed. In western Asia and Egypt our sources show that in the period from 1500 to 1300 B. C. gold and silver were prepared for commercial use by being formed into rings.[190] These rings were of no standard weight; they were weighed in the mass by scales. Probably the rings were small, so that the weight could, at the will of the merchant, be increased by very slight amounts. The ring-form was probably selected because this shape would present no corners that would rapidly wear away. This type of commercial ring can be traced in the inscriptions of Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria,[191] 884-860 B. C. It was used, then, in Egypt, Syria, Phœnicia, by the Hittites, the Aramæans, and the Assyrians.
(1) Who Invented Coinage?—The oldest coins yet found were made by the Lydians, and on this account it is usually said that the Lydians were the first to coin money. The date of these coins is uncertain. They bear the name of no king, but are usually assigned to the seventh century B. C. Mr. Head, of the British Museum, dated them tentatively at 700 B. C. They probably were made under the Lydian dynasty founded by Gyges in 697 B. C., the last king of which, the famous Crœsus, was overthrown by Cyrus the Great, in 546 B. C. It is improbable that these coins were invented earlier than the reign of Gyges, and they may not have been put into circulation until he had been some years on the throne. It is recognized that the weight of these coins conforms to a Babylonian standard.
There seems to be evidence that coined money was employed by the Assyrians in the reign of Esarhaddon. None of the coins have been found, but a series of loans and payments, dated in the years 676-671 B. C., designate the amounts of money in “shekels of silver-heads of Ishtar.”[192] As has been noted by Menant and Johns, this can hardly mean anything else than silver made into coins of the value of a shekel and stamped with the head of Ishtar. As Gyges was a contemporary of Esarhaddon, it seems probable that Lydia borrowed the idea of coinage from the Mesopotamian Valley.
Be this as it may, the coinage of money was a great step forward. To have the value of a piece of metal determined beforehand and guaranteed by an official stamp greatly facilitated the transaction of business. It eliminated the delays incident to weighing the metal, and the disputes that were sure to ensue as to the correctness of the weights which were put into the balances.
(2) Darics.—The invention of coined money first affected Palestine during the Persian period. Darius I of Persia, 521-486 B. C., organized the coinage of that realm. The gold coins issued by him were of the weight of a Babylonian shekel. They weighed from 125 to 130 grains Troy. One in the British Museum weighs 129 grains. They bore on the face a picture of Darius with a bow to the left; (see [Fig. 189]). Because of this picture they were called “darics,” just as the French 20-franc piece is called a “napoleon.” The daric is mentioned in several Biblical books that were written after the beginning of the Persian period. (See 1 Chron. 29:7; Ezra 2:69; 8:27; Neh. 7:70-72.) It is wrongly translated “dram” in the Authorized Version.