Assuming for convenience that the kite was worth 15/-, we could have purchased at the end of the XXth Dynasty 800 ’Ad fish for this sum. One fish would thus cost (15 × 12)⁄800 = 9⁄40 of a penny: but since the Egyptian Mugil capito, as sold in the big markets, averages (I am informed) ½ lb., the conclusion of the whole matter is that in the era mentioned 1 lb., or two fish, cost 9⁄20, or ·45 of a penny. In pre-war days the average marketable price worked out at 2·954 pence per lb., so the Egyptian Mugil in 1913 cost about 6½ times more than c. 1200 b.c., while the English Mugil in 1913, which (according to figures kindly furnished me by the Fishmongers Company) averaged 10 to 12 pence per lb., cost about 24 times more.
The Egyptian correlation of 6½ to 1 cannot, it is true, be definitely established until we have data proving that the kite was exactly 9·1 grammes, nor can it be accurately applied to other commodities, but it may help us to a rough approximation of what some of their prices were in the XXth Dynasty.[871]
The depreciation of money between the XVIIIth and XXth Dynasties, heavy as it seems, was as nothing to that which ensued in subsequent centuries. Examples of this can be observed in the fall of the Gallienus tetradrachm from about half a crown to one halfpenny in less than a century. Again under Macrianus (260 a.d.) the coinage was so bad and so worthless that the banks closed their doors, but were compelled by the king to open and continue “his divine coinage.” At the time of Diocletian’s Edict on maximum prices (301 a.d.) a denarius (4 drachmæ) was reckoned at 1⁄50000 of a litra of gold, but in Egypt after Constantine’s reign it fell much lower, e.g. 432,000 denarii equalled 1 pound.
From the Papyrus Oxyrh. 1223 we find the solidus computed at 2,020 × 10,000 = 20,200,000, (!) denarii at the end of the fourth century.[872]
Billon Denarii, i.e. made out of copper and very little silver, ceased to be coined at Alexandria after a.d. 297, and got utterly depreciated.
We get little farther in our quest of correlation of prices even with other passages; in Pap. Fayum Towns (a.d. 100), of 12 drachmæ for fish; in Pap. Petrie III. 107 (e), 6, 24 drachmæ for fish (third century b.c.); and in a Papyrus not yet (1918) published, 4 obols and 5 obols for a “male” Cestreus, or Mugil capito.
With salt fish, again, we have no certain leading. For 2 dipla or double jars of this comestible the price was 2 drachmæ, but then their size is uncertain.[873] So again it doth not vantage us much to read of 240 drachmæ being given in a.d. 255 for “a jar of pickled fish” (λεπτίον), because the size of the jar is still undetermined.[874] Nor does “56 drachmæ for 100 pieces of salt fish” (third century a.d.) solve the problem because, although a “piece of salt fish” probably implied some definite weight, we have no data for discovering to what this amounted.[875] Nor again can we deduce anything definite from the statement that in the third century a.d. a jar (κεράμιου) of salt fish fetched 1 drachma 1½ obols.
The superior derision with which some writers regard the simple, if inaccurate account, given by Herodotus of the spawning of the Egyptian fish betokens their ignorance of the parable of the beam and the mote.
If Herodotus erred, what (and this I keep reiterating, on the Kipling principle of “lest we forget”) about the theorists for 2300 years as to the procreation of Eels?
Aristotle with his “Entrails of the earth,” Oppian with his “Slime of their bodies,” Helmont with his “May Dew,” others with their “Horse-hair,” and Walton with his “Spontaneous Generation” are they as correct zoologists as the Father of History? With him procreation resulted from a semi-direct if inaccurate connection, but May Dews and Horse-hairs, etc., etc., what do they or what could they do in the galley of contact?