Signor Bortolotti (Del primitivo cubito Egizio) thinks that the uten of 1400 grains is exactly the ⅟₁₀₀₀ part of the weight of a cubic cubit of Nile water, the cubit in question being not the ordinary royal cubit of 20·66 inches, but a measure which he calls the primitive Egyptian cubit of 19·71 inches in length. Signor Bortolotti also suggests that the standard uten of Mr Petrie’s heavy system was 1486 grains, being the ⅟₁₅₀₀ part of the weight of a cubic royal cubit (20·66 inches) in Nile water. But as I have just pointed out the evidence is in favour of the kat being the original unit rather than the uten. Besides if the Egyptians obtained their system for the first time by the scientific process, we ought naturally to find some of those larger units such as the talent and mina, which are found in Egypt at a later epoch. But as we have seen in the case of Greeks, Hebrews, Chinese and Hindus, everywhere weight systems begin with a weight for gold, and this is naturally a small unit.
There is still one element in this matter which we must not overlook. A certain number of gold rings have been found in Egypt. Their unit is fixed by Lenormant at 8·1 grammes (128 grains). Brandis regarded them as Syrian in origin, and thus got rid of all difficulty. Others regard the rings as evidently of Egyptian manufacture, and from finding as they think a corresponding mina appearing in Egypt in Ptolemaic times regard this unit as a genuine ancient Egyptian standard in use long anterior to the Persian conquest. It may thus be very probable that the standard employed in early days in Egypt for gold (and also electrum and silver) was this unit of 128 grains, which is of course almost identical with an ox-unit. Silver, according to Erman[299], was in the time of the oldest Egyptian records more valuable than gold, for in enumeration it is always named before gold, whereas under the later dynasties it is named as with us always after gold, shewing that a great change had taken place in the relations between these metals. It is then clearly conceivable that at the outset one and the same unit of about 128-30 grains, under the name of kat, served as the unit for both gold and silver (which explains perfectly the fact that an ox is valued at a kat of silver), but that in after days when the change in the relative values of the metals came, there was found a need for a new silver unit, just as the Greeks in certain places found it necessary to form the Aeginetan and other standards, and the Babylonians found themselves compelled to form that standard which alone can with truth be termed the Babylonian, the silver unit of 172 grains.
We have now before us the data for the early Egyptian weight system[300]. It is simple; the unit is the kat probably based on the ox as we have seen already. The fact that weights formed in the shape of cows and cows’ heads are represented in Egyptian paintings as employed in the weighing of rings, indicates that in the mind of the first manufacturer of such weights there was a distinct connection between the shape given to the weight and the object whose value in gold (or silver) it expressed. Specimens of such weights are known, and are always of small size, a sure indication that the commodity for which they were employed was very precious. The fact that we find weights in the shape of lions can be readily accounted for by the supposition that in the course of time when the connection between the ox and the original weight-unit became forgotten, and different standards had been evolved, some distinctive animal form was adopted to distinguish the weights of a particular standard. The original unit being thus obtained, the higher unit, the uten, was formed by the method most familiar to all races of men. The fingers of one hand suggested to mankind a simple means of counting; and the combined fingers of both hands gave them the decimal system. The Egyptians accordingly simply took the tenfold of the ox-unit as their highest unit. As weighing in the earliest stage was confined to the precious metals, this unit was sufficient for all practical needs[301]. It will be noticed that the process employed in forming this weight-system is exactly that which we have found in the Chinese and its related systems. The Chinese liang (tael or ounce) corresponds to the Egyptian kat (or shekel). Under its name of tical or bat we found it as the unit of gold in South-Eastern Asia, and for the weighing of precious metals we found that the highest unit employed was the nên, the tenfold of the original unit, (the tael) itself still the only unit in use in China for the precious metals. In process of time when ordinary commodities of life began to be reckoned by weight, the Chinese made use of the pical (which originally simply meant a man’s load) as their highest commercial unit. Much the same process seems to have taken place in Egypt, for in later times we find talents of various kinds in use. Thus the Alexandrine talent which was employed for wood contained 360 utens. Was this talent originally nothing more than a man’s load, which in a later and more scientific age was adjusted to the weight standard time out of mind employed for metals? In this talent of 360 utens we can see the influence of the sexagesimal systems of Asia Minor, which, as we shall presently see, was really a commercial standard of comparatively late development and never at any time was employed for the precious metals. The Alexandrine talent of 360 utens contained 3600 kats, just as the royal Babylonian talent contained 3600 shekels.
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?