We now come to the Assyrians themselves, from the discovery of whose weights in the shape of lions and ducks, the whole modern theory of a scientific origin for all the weight standards of the Greeks as well as Asiatics and Egyptians has had its origin. But even within this sacred precinct of à priori metrology the irrepressible grain of corn springs up vigorously, although almost choked by the abundant crop of tares which have been sown around it. If we find that a Semitic people, who were the ancients of the earth before Pelops passed from Asia into Greece, or Romulus had founded his Asylum, employed the wheat grain as their lowest weight unit, we may then well argue that ages before the birth of the Prophet and the Arab conquest of Egypt and Syria, the Semitic folks employed grains of corn to form their lowest weight unit.

M. Aurès[242], a well-known Assyrian metrologist, has recently set forth the Assyrian system in its latest and most advanced stage. Following the veteran Assyriologist, M. Oppert, he finds that the Assyrians used a denomination lower than the obol. In the Museum of the Louvre there is a small Assyrian weight of the “duck” kind, which bears on its base the Assyrian character of 22 grains ½. The ideogram translated grain is evidently meant to represent some kind of corn with a rounded end. The weight of this object is ·95 gram (14⁶⁄₇ grains Troy). The weight is a ¾ obol, and therefore 30 grains went to the obol. This is the obol of the heavy Assyrian system, of which we shall presently speak. For the sake of clearness, I take M. Aurès’ table.

30grains=1 obol.
6obols=1 drachm.
2drachms=1 shekel.
10drachms=1 “stone.”
60”=1 light mina.

For our present purpose it is quite sufficient to call attention to the fact that this grain which forms the lowest unit of the Assyrian scale weighs ·042 gram (·95 ÷ 22·5) which is a very close approximation to the weight of the wheat-grain (·047). Making allowance for some loss which the weight may have sustained, it seems impossible to doubt that we have here the wheat-grain being used to form the smallest unit as it is in the modern Arabic system. The double obol of the Assyrians weighs 30 grains; we shall also find that the Hebrew gêrâh or obol (twenty of which made a shekel), weighed exactly 15 grains of wheat, that is the Hebrew gêrâh is the light obol which stood side by side with the heavy obol of 30 grains in the Assyrian system. Let us treat the matter from a slightly different point of view: As the light Assyrian obol contained 15 Assyrian grains, the light shekel contained 180 Assyrian grs. But as we know that this light Assyrian shekel weighed 8·4 grams, or 131 grains Troy, and as we know that the Troy grain is really the barley-corn and likewise that 3 barley-corns = 4 wheat grains, it is obvious that 131 grains Troy = 175 wheat grs. nearly, a very close approximation to the 180 Assyrian grs. Again as 180 Assyrian grs. = 8·4 grams, the Assyrian grain weighed ·046 gram, that is almost exactly the weight of a wheat grain (·047 gram).

But let us see for a moment in what fashion M. Aurès accounts for the presence of corn-grains in a system so elaborately scientific as he and his school maintain.

Starting as usual with the old assumption that all weight standards come from the measures of capacity and all measures of capacity in their turn are derived from the linear measures, he proceeds thus: The Assyrian ideogram which represents tribute, likewise represents talent. Tribute being paid in corn, no doubt the idea of weight first arose as the people carried their quota of corn on their backs to the receipt of custom. They accordingly weighed the measure (bar), which contained the proper amount of corn and took it as their weight unit, and then proceeded to make subdivisions of it. When their weight system was thus fixed, for convenience instead of going to the trouble of adjusting weights they took 30 grains of corn which would be just equivalent to the weight of an obol. After the many historical instances quoted in the preceding pages in which the methods of appraising the value of corn and other dry commodities have been set out, and also the manner in which corn grains have been employed for fixing the higher standard, as for instance in the adjustment of the English bushel in the reign of Henry VII., the reader will feel that M. Aurès has simply inverted the true order of events, and that as we found the natives of Annam and the Malays of the Indian Archipelago making their first essay in weighing by means of a grain of maize, or rice, or padi, so the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia made their first beginning, and as we have found everywhere that gold, the most precious of objects, was the first thing to be weighed, and as it only existed in small quantities, thus requiring but a very small unit of weight, so the Assyrians likewise began to weigh gold first of all, employing the natural seeds of corn, and only in process of time arrived at higher units by multiplying the smaller.

To all the evidence collected from Asia and Europe we can likewise add a fact of great importance from Africa. We saw that it was highly probable that the Carthaginians traded for gold to the West Coast of Africa, and beyond all reasonable doubt the natives of the Gold Coast have for ages been acquainted with that metal. Now it can be proved that these peoples, whilst employing no weights for any other mercantile transaction, used the seeds of certain plants for weighing their gold; thus Bosman writing two centuries ago says, “Having treated of gold at large, I am now obliged to say something concerning the gold weights, which are either pounds, marks, ounces or angels.... We use here another kind of weights which are a sort of beans, the least of which are red spotted with black and called Dambas; twenty-four of them amount to an angel, and each of them is reckoned two stiver weights; the white beans with black spots or those entirely black are heavier and accounted four stiver weights: these they usually call Tacoes, but there are some which weigh half or a whole gilder, but are not esteemed certain weights, but used at pleasure and often become instruments of fraud. Several have believed that the negroes only used wooden weights, but that is a mistake; all of them have cast weights either of copper or tin, which though divided or adjusted in a manner quite different to ours; yet upon reduction agree exactly with them[243]”.

I am informed by Mr Quayle Jones, Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, that at the present day, a seed called the Taku, (with a black spot) is employed by the natives of the Gold Coast for weighing gold. He also tells me that small quantities of gold are measured by a quill in ordinary dealings in the market[244]. I learn from another private source that 6 Takus = 1 ackie (20 ackies = 1 ounce). From Bosnian’s equating the bean with the red spot to 2 stiver-weights, we can deduce its weight as 2 grs. troy; this result combined with the colour of the bean would make us a à priori conclude that the Damba was the Abrus precatorius, so familiar to us already under its Hindu name of ratti.

Here we have a primitive people with a weight system of their own based on the Damba and Taku, just as the Hindu is based on the ratti, and here too we have another proof that the first of all articles to be weighed is gold. From Bosman we also learn that gold in small quantities was not always weighed, for he says of the inferior gold which was mixed with silver or copper, that it is cast into fetiches (small grotesque figures). “These fetiches are cut into small bits by the negroes of one, two, or three farthings. The negroes know the exact value of these bits so well at sight, that they never are mistaken, and accordingly they sell them to each other without weighing as we do coined money[245].” This recalls the practice as regards silver among the Tibetans at the present day.

Crossing to the eastern side of Africa we find the natives of Madagascar employing a system, the basis of which is a grain of rice. “The Malagasy have no circulating medium of their own. Dollars are known more or less throughout the island: but in many of the provinces trade is carried on principally by an exchange of commodities. The Spanish dollar, stamped with the two pillars, bears the highest value. For sums below a dollar the inconvenient method is resorted to in the interior, of weighing the money in every case. Dollars are cut up into small pieces, and four iron weights are used for the half, quarter, eighth, and twelfth of a dollar. Below that amount, divisions are effected by combinations of the four weights, and also by means of grains of rice, even down so low as one single grain—“Vary vray venty,” one plump grain, valued at the seven hundred and twentieth part of a dollar”[246]. The grain of rice therefore weighs ⁵⁄₉ gr. troy (·036 gram). As gold is not found in Madagascar[247] the natives could not weigh it first of all things; but they have carried out the principle of taking silver, the most precious article they possessed, as the first object to be weighed.