V. Maccabean Period. Gold on the old standard, and silver (now first coined) struck on the Phoenician silver standard of 220 grains.
Copper was estimated most probably on the old double shekel system; and most likely the royal Assyrian heavy system of 60 shekels to the maneh and 60 manehs to the talent was adopted in its entirety for copper and other articles of no great value in proportion to their bulk[342].
Phoenician Standard.
The total loss of the literature and records of the Phoenicians, and the fact that neither in their own country nor in the greatest of their colonies, Carthage, did they employ coined money until a comparatively late period, make the task of restoring their weight system very difficult if not hopeless. The silver standard called Phoenician or Graeco-Asiatic is the sole evidence to show that they employed as their unit for gold the heavy Babylonian shekel of 260 grs. On the other hand we have just seen that their close neighbours, the Hebrews, from first to last, and the ancient people of the Nile with whom the Phoenicians were in the closest trade relations (having large trading communities settled in the Delta, and from whom they had borrowed the hieroglyphic syllabic symbols, which with them became the Alphabet), had employed the light shekel, the only gold unit that likewise from first to last prevailed throughout the vast regions of Central Asia Minor, and as we have seen, was the unit of Greece even in the early days when the great cities of Mycenae and Tiryns were in direct contact with, and deriving their arts and civilization from Asia or from Egypt.
The derivation of the Phoenician silver standard of about 225 grs. (14·58 gram.) according to the hitherto received doctrine is as follows. As the Babylonians formed their silver standard by making into ten pieces the amount of silver equivalent to the “light gold shekel,” so the Phoenicians and Syrians are supposed to have divided the amount of silver equivalent to “the heavy shekel” into fifteen pieces, gold being to silver in each case as 13·3:1. But we ask why did the Phoenicians adopt so awkward a scale as the quindecimal when it was possible for them to employ the decimal or duodecimal? In the next place by the supposed system 7½ silver shekels were equal to one light shekel, that is the gold unit which was universally employed amongst all the peoples with whom they traded: and what number could be more awkward for purposes of exchange than 7½? If therefore we can show that it is probable that at one period silver was exceedingly abundant in Phoenicia compared with gold, and that consequently gold was worth considerably more than 13 times its weight in silver, the sole support for the heavy shekel being the Phoenician unit is removed, and the theory of the fifteen stater system falls to the ground. It is well known that the Phoenicians had much of the trade of Cilicia and the other coast regions of Asia Minor in their hands. It was Cilicia that produced the chief supplies of silver for Western Asia[343]. From this land therefore the Phoenicians obtained vast quantities of silver, and it was from them almost certainly the Egyptians, who had no native silver, obtained a supply of that metal. But this was not all. About 1000 B.C. the Phoenicians, in their quest after new and unexhausted regions, made their way westward and reached Spain. I have already related the ancient stories which embody the account of the marvellous amount of silver which the first bold explorers brought back. We need not wonder then if in the days of king Solomon, “silver was nothing accounted of” in Syria and Palestine. We also saw that the relative value of gold and silver was just as liable to fluctuate in ancient, as in modern times, according to the supply of either metal, and when we come to deal with the Greek system we shall find many instances of this. If we then suppose that gold was to silver as 17:1 in Phoenicia, the gold shekel of 130 grs. would be worth ten silver pieces of 220 grs. each. (130 × 17 = 2210; 2210 ÷ 10 = 221). This is in reality far closer to the actual weight of the coins than the result obtained by the old hypothesis: 260 × 13·3 = 3466 ÷ 15 = 231 grs. Troy, which is about 10 grs. higher than the actual coin weights.
The approximation gained by our conjectural relation of 17:1, is far closer than that obtained by that of 13·3:1. The conclusion is probable that silver was far cheaper in Phoenicia and the contiguous coasts than elsewhere in Asia Minor, and that it was natural that the weight of the silver unit was increased in order to preserve the relation in value between one gold unit, and ten silver units. Lastly we may point out that at no place on the coast of Phoenicia or Asia Minor, the region especially in contact with the Phoenicians, do we find gold pieces struck on the heavy shekel. Electrum certainly was coined on this foot; but of this we shall be able to give a satisfactory explanation. We have (with the exception of some Lydian pieces) to go as far north as Thasos or Thrace before we find a gold coin of such a nature, which is of course nothing more than a double stater.
The Phoenician gold mina was probably like the Hebrew, which was most likely borrowed from it, the fifty-fold of the heavy shekel, 100 gold shekels and 100 silver shekels constituting a maneh, as amongst the Hebrews in the time of Solomon. But we can conjecture with some probability that at an earlier stage they weighed their gold and silver according to the old common ox-unit, which we found in use among the Hebrews under the name of the Holy Shekel or shekel of the Sanctuary. No doubt the mina for gold always contained 100 light or 50 heavy shekels, and when their own peculiar shekel of 220 grs. came into vogue for silver, 50 such shekels made a mina. Finally, there can be little doubt that 60 minas invariably went to the talent.
In the case of commercial weights, it is most probable that 60 heavy shekels made a mina: this is rendered almost perfectly certain by the Lion weights with Phoenician as well as cuneiform inscriptions found at Nineveh, 60 heavy minas forming a heavy talent.