STATEMENT AND CRITICISM OF THE OLD DOCTRINES.
Nec Babylonios
Tentaris numeros.
HOR. _Carm._ I. 11. 2.
We now proceed to the statement and criticism of the old doctrines of
the origin of metallic currency and weight standards. To enter into an
elaborate account of the various shades of doctrine held by the followers
of Boeckh would be useless and wearisome, for as they all alike are
agreed in starting from an arbitrary scientifically obtained unit, it
matters not as far as my object is concerned. Certain metrologists lay
down that Egypt borrowed her system from Babylon, whilst others[250]
again declare that Egypt is the true mother of weight standards, and
this battle is raging hotly at the present moment. Thus but recently
Professor Brugsch has written a vigorous article (in the _Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie_[251]) to prove that the Chaldeans borrowed their system from
Egypt. But the Assyriologists were not prepared to assent to a doctrine
which placed the Babylonians in an inferior position. Accordingly Dr
C. F. Lehmann (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1889, p. 245 _seqq._) has
made an elaborate defence of the original doctrine first propounded
by Boeckh and developed and expounded by Dr Brandis and Dr Hultsch.
This Assyrio-Egyptian struggle for pre-eminence has at present no
importance for our enquiry, as it is based almost entirely on _à priori_
assumptions, although when we come eventually to deal with the question
of efforts at systematization which arose at a later stage in the
evolution of weight and measure standards, it will be necessary for us
to examine the respective claims. At present we are engaged in searching
for an historical basis, and as both the Assyriologists and Egyptologists
alike unite in deriving all weights from a deliberate scientific attempt
on the part of a highly civilized people, they are perfectly agreed in
the principle, the soundness of which it is the object of the present
investigation to test. The ablest exponent in this country of the German
theory is Dr B. V. Head, who has given an admirable summary of the
position of that school in his Introduction to his great work, _Historia
Numorum_ (p. xxviii.). To ensure a fair statement of the doctrine for the
reader, it will be better for me to give here Mr Head’s exposition in
preference to any summary of my own, as any statement by the critic of
the doctrine to be criticized is always liable to the suspicion of being
_ex parte_ and consequently inadequate. Such a suspicion is avoided by
letting as far as possible our opponents state their position in their
own words.
“For many centuries before the invention of coined money there can be no
doubt whatever that goods were bought and sold by barter pure and simple,
and that values were estimated among pastoral people by the produce of
the land, and more particularly in oxen and sheep.
“The next step in advance upon this primitive method of exchange was a
rude attempt at simplifying commercial transactions by substituting for
the ox and the sheep some more portable substitute, either possessed of
real or invested with an arbitrary value.
“This transitional stage in the development of commerce cannot be more
accurately described than in the words of Aristotle, ‘As the benefits
of commerce were more widely extended by importing commodities of which
there was a deficiency, and exporting those of which there was an excess,
the use of a currency was an indispensable device. As the necessaries of
Nature were not all easily portable, people agreed for purposes of barter
mutually to give and receive some article which, while it was itself a
commodity, was practically easy to handle in the business of life; some
such article as iron or silver, which was at first defined simply by
size and weight, although finally they went further and set a stamp upon
every coin to relieve them from the trouble of weighing it, as the stamp
impressed upon the coin was an indication of quantity.’ (_Polit._ I. 6.
14-16, Trans. Welldon.)
“In Italy and Sicily copper or bronze in very early times took the place
of cattle as a generally recognized measure of value, and in Peloponnesus
the Spartans are said to have retained the use of iron as a standard
of value long after the other Greeks had advanced beyond this point of
commercial civilization.
“In the East, on the other hand, from the earliest times gold and silver
appear to have been used for the settlement of the transactions of daily
life, either metal having its value more or less accurately defined in
relation to the other. Thus Abraham is said to have been ‘very rich in
cattle, in silver and in gold’ (Gen. xiii. 2, xxiv. 35), and in the
account of his purchase of the cave of Machpelah (Gen. xxiii. 16), it is
stated that ‘Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver which he had named in
the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current
with the merchants.’
“As there are no auriferous rocks or streams in Chaldaea, we must infer
that the old Chaldaean traders must have imported their gold from India
by way of the Persian Gulf, in the ships of Ur frequently mentioned in
cuneiform inscriptions.
“But though gold and silver were from the earliest times used as measures
of value in the East, not a single piece of coined money has come down
to us of these remote ages, nor is there any mention of coined money in
the Old Testament before Persian times. The gold and silver ‘current
with the merchant’ were always weighed in the balance; thus we read that
David gave to Ornan for his threshing-floor [including oxen and threshing
instruments] 600 shekels of gold by weight (1 Chron. xxi. 25).
“It is nevertheless probable that the balance was not called into
operation for every small transaction, but that little bars of silver
and of gold of fixed weight, but without any official mark (and therefore
not coins) were often counted out by tale, larger amounts being always
weighed. Such small bars or wedges of gold and silver served the purposes
of a currency, and were regulated by the weight of the shekel or the mina.
“This leads us briefly to examine the standards of weight used for the
precious metals in the East before the invention of money.
“_The metric systems of the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians._
“The evidence afforded by ancient writers on the subject of weights and
coinage is in great part untrustworthy, and would often be unintelligible
were it not for the light which has been shed upon it by the gold and
silver coins, and bronze, leaden and stone weights which have been
fortunately preserved down to our own times. It will be safer, therefore,
to confine ourselves to the direct evidence afforded by the monuments.
“Egypt, the oldest civilized country of the ancient world, first claims
our attention, but as the weight system which prevailed in the Nile
valley does not appear to have exercised any traceable influence upon the
early coinage of the Greeks, the metrology of Egypt need not detain us
long....
“The Chaldaeans and Babylonians, as is well known, excelled especially
in the cognate sciences of arithmetic and astronomy. On the broad and
monotonous plains of Lower Mesopotamia, says Professor Rawlinson,
where the earth has little to suggest thought or please by variety the
‘variegated heaven,’ ever changing with the times and the seasons, would
early attract attention, while the clear sky, dry atmosphere, and level
horizon, would afford facilities for observations so soon as the idea of
them suggested itself to the minds of the inhabitants. The records of
these astronomical observations were inscribed in cuneiform character
on soft clay tablets, afterwards baked hard and preserved in the royal
or public libraries in the chief cities of Babylonia. Large numbers of
these tablets are now in the British Museum. When Alexander the Great
took Babylon, it is recorded that there were found and sent to Aristotle
a series of astronomical observations extending back as far as the
year B.C. 2234. Recent investigations into the nature of these records
render it probable that upon them rests the entire structure of the
metric system of the Babylonians. The day and night were divided by the
Babylonians into 24 hours, each of 60 minutes, and each minute into 60
seconds—a method of measuring time which has never been superseded, and
which we have inherited from Babylon, together with the first principles
of the science of astronomy. The Babylonian measures of capacity and
their system of weights were based, it is thought, upon one and the same
unit as their measures of time and space, and as they are believed to
have determined the length of an hour of equinoctial time by means of
the dropping of water, so too it is conceivable that they may have fixed
the weight of their _talents_, their _mina_, and their _shekel_, as well
as the size of their measures of capacity, by weighing or measuring the
amounts of water, which had passed from one vessel into another during a
given space of time. Thus, just as an hour consisted of 60 minutes and
the minute of 60 seconds, so the talent contained 60 minae, and the mina
60 shekels. The division by sixties or sexagesimal system, is quite as
characteristic of the Babylonian arithmetic and system of weights and
measures, as the decimal system is of the Egyptian and the modern French.
And indeed it possesses one great advantage over the decimal system,
inasmuch as the number 60, upon which it is based, is more divisible than
10.
“About 1300 years before our era the Assyrian empire came to surpass
in importance that of the Babylonians, but the learning and science of
Chaldaea were not lost, but rather transmitted through Nineveh by means
of the Assyrian conquests and commerce to the north and west as far
as the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Let us now turn to the actual
monuments. Some thirty years ago Mr Layard discovered and brought home
from the ruins of ancient Nineveh a number of bronze lions of various
sizes which may now be seen in the British Museum. With them were also a
number of stone objects in the form of ducks[252].”
From this double series of weights Mr Head infers that there were two
distinct minae simultaneously in use during the long period of time which
elapsed between about B.C. 2000, and B.C. 625. “The heavier of these two
minae appears to have been just the double of the lighter. Brandis is
probably not far from the mark in fixing the weight of the heavy mina at
1010 grammes, and that of the light at 505 grammes.
“It has been suggested that the lighter of these two minae may have been
peculiar to the Babylonian, and the heavier to the Assyrian empire; but
this cannot be proved. But nevertheless it would seem that the use of the
heavy mina was more extended in Syria than that of the lighter, if we may
judge from the fact that most of the weights belonging to the system of
the heavy mina have in addition to the cuneiform inscription an Aramaic
one.
“The purpose which this Aramaic inscription served must clearly have been
to render the weight acceptable to the Syrian and Phoenician merchants
who traded backwards and forwards between Assyria and Mesopotamia on the
one hand, and the Phoenician emporia on the other.
“_The Phoenician traders._
“The Phoenician commerce was chiefly a carrying trade. The richly
embroidered stuffs of Babylonia and other products of the East were
brought down to the coasts, and then carefully packed in chests of
cedarwood in the markets of Tyre and Sidon, whence they were shipped by
the enterprising Phoenician mariners to Cyprus, to the coasts of the
Aegean, or even to the extreme West.
“Hence the Phoenician city of Tyre was called by Ezekiel (xxvii.) ‘a
merchant of the people for many isles.’
“But the Phoenicians in common with the Egyptians, the Greeks and the
Hebrews etc. with whom they dealt were at no time without their own
peculiar weights and measures upon which they appear to have grafted the
Assyrio-Babylonian principal unit of account or the weight in which it
was customary to estimate values. This weight was the 60th part of the
_manah_ or mina.
“The Babylonian sexagesimal system was foreign to Phoenician habits.
While therefore these people had no difficulty in adopting the
Assyrio-Babylonian 60th as their own unit of weight or shekel, they did
not at the same time adopt the sexagesimal system in its entirety but
constituted a new mina for themselves consisting of 50 shekels instead
of 60. In estimating the largest weight of all, the _Talent_, the
multiplication by 60 was nevertheless retained. Thus in the Phoenician
system as in that of the Greeks 50 shekels (Gk. _staters_) = 1 Mina, and
60 Minae or 3000 shekels or staters = 1 Talent.
“The particular form of shekel which appears to have been received by the
Phoenicians and Hebrews from the East was the 60th part of the heavier
of the two Assyrio-Babylonian minae above referred to. The 60th of the
lighter for some reason which has not been satisfactorily accounted for
seems to have been transmitted westwards by a different route, viz.
across Asia Minor, and so into the kingdom of Lydia.
“_The Lydians._
“‘The Lydians,’ says E. Curtius (_Hist. Gr._ I. 76), ‘became on land what
the Phoenicians were by sea, the mediators between Hellas and Asia.’ It
is related that about the time of the Trojan Wars and for some centuries
afterwards, the country of the Lydians was in a state of vassalage to the
kings of Assyria. But an Assyrian inscription informs us that Asia Minor,
west of the Halys, was unknown to the Assyrian kings before the time
of Assur-banî-apli, or Assurbanipal (circ. B.C. 666), who it is stated
received an embassy from Gyges, king of Lydia ‘a remote’ country, of
which Assurbanipal’s predecessors had never heard the name. Nevertheless
that there had been some sort of connection between Lydia and Assyria in
ancient times is probable, though it cannot be proved.
“Professor Sayce is of opinion that the mediators between Lydia in the
west, and Assyria in the east, were the people called Kheta or Hittites.
According to this theory the northern Hittite capital Carchemish
(later Hierapolis) on the Euphrates, was the spot where the arts and
civilization of Assyria took the form which especially characterises the
early monuments of Central Asia Minor.
“The year B.C. 1400 or thereabouts was the time of greatest power of the
nation of the Hittites, and if they were in reality the chief connecting
link between Lydia and Assyria it may be inferred that it was through
them that the Lydians received the Assyrian weight, which afterwards in
Lydia took the form of a stamped ingot or coin.
“But why it was that the light mina rather than the heavy one had become
domesticated in Lydia must remain unexplained. We know however that one
of the Assyrian weights is spoken of in cuneiform inscriptions as the
‘_weight of Carchemish_.’ If then the modern hypothesis of a Hittite
dominion in Asia Minor turn out to be well founded, the _weight of
Carchemish_ might by means of the Hittites have found its way to Phrygia
and Lydia, and as the earliest Lydian coins are regulated according to
the divisions of the Light Assyrian mina this would probably be the one
alluded to.
“From these two points then, _Phoenicia_ on the one hand and _Lydia_
(through Carchemish), on the other, the two Babylonian units of weight
appear to have started westwards to the shores of the Aegean sea, the
heavy shekel by way of Phoenicia, the lighter shekel by way of Lydia.”
So far I have thought it but right to give Mr Head’s exposition _in
extenso_, that the enquirer may be enabled to fully grasp the principles
of the orthodox school, before we enter on any criticism of them. I shall
now treat more summarily all that remains to be said.
Let us briefly state the peculiar doctrines of two leading continental
metrologists. The veteran Dr Hultsch derives all standards of weight
thus: The royal Babylonian cubit was based on the sun’s apparent
diameter; the cube of this measure gave the _maris_, the weight in water
of one-fifth of which was the royal Babylonian talent, which was divided
into 60 _manehs_ (_minae_) and each mina in turn into 60 shekels. For
silver and gold however they formed their standard by taking _fifty_
shekels to form a mina[253]: thus after elaborating with such care a
scientific system, they abandoned it as soon as they came to deal with
the precious metals.
M. Soutzo[254] in a clever essay has maintained that all the weight
systems both monetary and commercial of Asia, Egypt, Greece, come from
one primordial weight the Egyptian _uten_ (96 grammes), or from its
tenth, the _kat_ (9·60 grammes). He ascribes the origin of these weights
to an extremely remote epoch not far perhaps from the time of the
discovery of bronze in Asia, and the invention of the first instruments
for weighing: he considers also that bronze _by weight_ was the first
money employed in Asia, Egypt, and Italy, and that everywhere the decimal
system of numeration has preceded the sexagesimal.
The evidence which we have produced in the earlier part of this work has
I trust convinced the reader that gold, not copper, was the first object
to be weighed; M. Soutzo’s assumption that the _uten_ is the primordial
unit is upset even for the Egyptians themselves by the passage already
cited from Horapollo (p. 129).
_The invention of coinage._
The evidence of both history and numismatics coincides in making the
Lydians the inventors of the art of coining money. At first sight it
may seem surprising that none of the great peoples of the East, whose
civilization had its first beginning long ages before the periods at
which our very oldest records begin, should have developed coined money,
acquainted as they indubitably were with the precious metals, both for
ornament and exchange. But a little reflection shews us that it has been
quite possible for peoples to attain a high degree of civilization
without feeling any need of what are properly termed coins. Transactions
by means of the scales are comparatively simple, and as a matter of fact
we shall find hereafter that even after a coinage had been for centuries
established, men constantly had recourse to the balance in monetary
transactions, just as down to the present moment the Chinese, who have
enjoyed a high degree of culture for several thousand years, still have
no native currency but their copper cash, foreign silver dollars being
the only medium in the precious metals, whilst all important monetary
transactions are carried on by the scales and weights. I may here
likewise point out incidentally that where the supply of the precious
metals is only sufficient to meet the demand for personal adornment, the
establishment of a coinage in those metals will naturally be slow, whilst
on the other hand where there is so abundant a supply of the metals, that
there is more than sufficient for purposes of personal use, the tendency
to produce a coinage will be much greater. If we enquire what were the
metalliferous regions of Asia Minor, we at once find that Lydia above all
other countries was especially rich in gold, or rather a natural alloy
of gold and silver. The wealth of two Lydian kings, Gyges and Croesus,
which has been through the ages a proverb consisted of vast quantities of
this metal, which the Greeks called _electron_ (ἤλεκτρον) or _white gold_
(λευκὸς χρυσός, Herodotus, I. 50). The ancients regarded it as almost
a distinct metal, doubtless because from their imperfect methods they
experienced the greatest difficulty in extracting the pure metal. The
pure gold in circulation in Asia Minor must have come from the valley of
the Oxus, or the Ural mountains. Thus Sophocles speaks of “the electron
of Sardis and the gold of Ind[255].” Even in the time of Strabo (A.D.
21), the process was regarded as so difficult that the great geographer
thinks it worth while to quote from Posidonius (flor. 90 B.C.), the
description of how the separation of the metals was effected (III. 146).
It is therefore natural to find in Lydia, the land of gold, the first
attempts at coined money.
“So far as we have knowledge,” says Herodotus[256], “the Lydians were the
first nation to introduce the use of gold and silver coin.”
This statement is fully borne out by the evidence of Xenophanes[257],
and also by the coins themselves, although some writers, _e.g._ Th.
Mommsen[258], have held that it was in the great cities of Ionia, Phocaea
and Miletus that money was first coined. “From the little we know of the
character of this people (the Lydians) we gather that their commercial
instinct must have been greatly developed by their geographical position
and surroundings, both conducive to frequent intercourse with the peoples
of Asia Minor, Orientals as well as Greeks.”
About the time when the mighty Assyrian empire was falling into decay,
Lydia, under a new dynasty called the Mermnadae, was entering upon a new
phase of national life.
“The policy of these new rulers of the country was to extend the power of
Lydia towards the West, and to obtain possession of towns on the coast.
With this object Gyges (who, according to the story told by Plato, was a
shepherd who owed his good fortune to the finding of a magic ring in an
ancient tomb, and who was the founder of the dynasty of the Mermnadae,
circ. B.C. 700) established a firm footing on the Hellespont, and
endeavoured to extend his dominions along the whole Ionian coast. This
brought the Lydians into direct contact with the Asiatic Greeks.
“These Ionian Greeks had been from very early times in constant
intercourse, not always friendly, with the Phoenicians, with whom
they had long before come to an understanding about numbers, weights,
measures, the alphabet, and such like matters, and from whom, there
is reason to think, they had received the 60th part of the _heavy_
Assyrio-Babylonian mina as their unit of weight or _stater_. The Lydians
on the other hand had received, probably from Carchemish, the 60th of the
_light_ mina.
“Thus then, when the Lydians in the reign of Gyges came into contact
and conflict with the Greeks, the two units of weight, after travelling
by different routes, met again in the coast towns and river valleys of
Western Asia Minor, in the borderland between the East and the West.
“To the reign of Gyges, the founder of the new Lydian empire as distinct
from the Lydia of more remote antiquity, may perhaps be ascribed the
earliest essays in the art of coining. The wealth of this monarch in the
precious metals may be inferred from the munificence of his gifts to
the Delphic shrine, consisting of golden mixing cups and silver urns,
amounting to a mass of gold and silver such as the Greeks had never
before seen collected together.” This treasure was called the Gygadas,
and is described by Herodotus[259].
“It is in conformity with the whole spirit of a monarch such as Gyges,
whose life’s work it was to extend his empire towards the West, and at
the same time to hold in his hands the lines of communication with the
East, that from his capital Sardes, situated on the slopes of Tmolus and
on the banks of the Pactolus, both rich in gold, he should send forth
along the caravan routes of the East and into the heart of Mesopotamia,
and down the river valleys of the West to the sea, his native Lydian ore
gathered from the washings of Pactolus and from the diggings on the sides
of Tmolus and Sipylus.
“This precious merchandize (if the earliest Lydian coins are indeed
his) he issued in the form of oval-shaped bullets or ingots, officially
sealed or stamped on one side as a guarantee of their weight and value.
For the eastern or land-trade the _light_ mina was the standard by
which this coinage was regulated, while for the western trade with the
Greeks of the coast the _heavy_ mina was made use of, which from its
mode of transmission we may call the _Phoenician_, retaining the name
_Babylonian_ only for the weight which was derived from the banks of the
Euphrates.”
To prevent misapprehension, it may be advisable to mention that the
standards here termed _Phoenician_ and _Babylonian_ are not to be
confounded with the _heavy_ and _light_ shekels already mentioned, but
are the standards derived from the latter specially for silver, in the
ways shown a little lower down.
Modern analysis of electrum from Tmolus shows that it consists of 27
per cent. of silver and 73 per cent. of gold[260]. It consequently
stood to silver in a different relation from that of pure gold. Thus
while gold stood to silver as 13·3:1, electrum would stand at 10:1 or
thereabouts. Mr Head considers that “this natural compound of gold and
silver possessed some advantages for coining over gold. In the first
place it was more durable, harder, and less liable to injury and waste
from wear. In the second place it was more easily obtainable, being
a natural product; and in the third place, standing as it did in the
proportion of about 10:1 to silver, it rendered needless the use of a
different standard of weight for the two metals, enabling the authorities
of the mints to make use of a single set of weights, and a decimal system
easy of comprehension and simple in practice” (p. xxxiv.). The second of
these reasons is probably the true one, the first being a good example
of the tendency of even the most able modern writers to ascribe to early
times ideas which are only the outcome of a far later period. The idea
of getting a metal which will be more durable in circulation is purely
modern, and not even received by Orientals in modern times. Thus the gold
mohurs of India down to their latest issue were of pure gold, free from
alloy (in consequence of which they are still sought after by the native
Hindu goldsmiths in preference to the English sovereign, as the addition
of alloy makes the latter less easy to work up into jewellery).
I allude to this here because we shall find in the course of our enquiry
that most of the errors into which metrologists have fallen, are the
consequence of their failing to recognize the great gulf which is fixed
between the habits and ideas of a primitive community, slowly evolving
principles which are now part and parcel of the common heritage of
civilization, and an era like our own, when all progress is effected
by the development and application of scientific principles long since
discovered.
Electrum was thus coined on the same standard as silver, one _talent_,
one _mina_ and one _stater_ of electrum being consequently equal to ten
_talents_, ten _minae_, or ten _staters_ of silver. The weight of the
electrum stater in each district would depend therefore on the standard
which happened to be in use there for silver bullion, or silver in the
shape of bars or oblong bricks, the practice of the new invention of
stamping or sealing metal for circulation being in the first place only
applied to the more precious of the two metals, electrum representing in
a small compass a weight of uncoined silver ten times as bulky and ten
times as difficult of transport.
The invention was soon extended to pure gold and silver, and there is
good reason to believe that by the time of Croesus (568-554 B.C.) both
these metals were used for purposes of coinage in Lydia.
_The Greeks begin to coin money._
The clever Greeks of Asia Minor, who formed the portal through which so
many of the arts of the East reached the Western lands, were not slow to
adopt, and by reason of their superior artistic taste to improve, the
great Lydian invention. To the Ionic cities such as Phocaea and Miletus
we must probably ascribe the credit of substituting artistically engraved
dies for the rude Lydian punch-marks, and at a somewhat later period of
inscribing them with the name or rather the initial of the people or
potentate by whom they were issued.
The official stamps by which the earliest electrum staters were
distinguished from mere ingots consisted at first only of the impress of
rude unengraved punches, between which the lump or oval-shaped bullet of
metal was placed to receive the blow of the hammer. Subsequently the art
of the engraver was called in to adorn the lower of the two dies, which
was always that of the face or _obverse_ of the coin, with the symbol of
the local divinity under whose auspices the currency was issued.
As our object is to deal with coins from the point of view of metrology,
the short summary here given of the genesis of the art of coining will
suffice for our purposes.
_Weight standards._
“Silver was very rarely at this early period weighed by the same talent
and mina as gold, but, according to a standard derived from the gold
weight, somewhat as follows:—
Gold was to silver as 13·3:1. This proportion made it difficult to weigh
both metals on the same standard. That a round number of silver shekels
or staters might equal a gold shekel or stater, the weight of the silver
shekel was either raised above or lowered below that of the gold. The
_heavy_ gold shekel weighed 260 grains Troy, being the double of the
_light_ gold shekel, which weighed 130 grains Troy (8·4 grammes).
THE SILVER STANDARDS DERIVED FROM THE GOLD SHEKEL[261].
I. From the _heavy_ gold shekel of 260 grains:
260 × 13·3 = 3458 grains of silver.
3458 grains of silver = 15 shekels of 230 grains each.
On the silver shekel of 230 grains the _Phoenician_ or Graeco-Asiatic
_silver_ standard may be constructed:
Talent = 690,000 grains = 3000 staters (or shekels).
Mina = 11,500 grains = 50 staters.
Stater = 230 grains.
II. From the _light_ gold shekel of 130 grains we get the so-called
Babylonian or Persian standard:
130 × 13·3 = 1729 grains of silver.
1729 grains of silver = 10 shekels of 172·9 grains each.
On the silver shekel or stater of 172·9 grains the _Babylonic_, _Lydian_,
and Persian _silver_ standard may be thus constructed:—
Talent = 518,700 grains = 3000 staters = 6000 sigli.
Mina = 8645 grains = 50 ” = 100 ”
Stater = 172·9 grains = 1 ” = 2 ”
Siglos = 86·45 grains.”
It is desirable “to take note of the fact that in Asia Minor and in
the earliest periods of the art of coining, (α) the heavy gold stater
(260 grains) occurs at various places, from Teos northwards as far as
the shores of the Propontis; (β) the light gold stater (130 grains)
in Lydia (Κροίσειος στατήρ) and in Samos (?); (γ) the electrum stater
of the Phoenician _silver_ standard, chiefly at Miletus, but also at
other towns along the west coast of Asia Minor, as well as in Lydia,
but never however in full weight; (δ) the electrum and silver stater of
the Babylonic standard, chiefly if not solely in Lydia; (ε) the silver
stater of the Phoenician standard (230 grains) on the west coast of Asia
Minor[262].”
Here we may call attention to the fact that whilst Miletus struck her
electrum staters on the Phoenician _silver_ standard (their normal
weight being 217 grains), the Phocaeans always from the infancy of
coining employed for their electrum the _gold_ standard of the _heavy_
shekel (260 grains). But the proper time for discussing why the Lydians,
Milesians and Phocaeans all struck their electrum coins of various
standards, will come further on in our enquiry.
_The coin-standards of Greece Proper._
Before we attempt to examine into the connection of the Homeric talent
or ox unit, and the ancient systems of the East, it will be advisable to
get a clear view of the coin-standards found in actual use in historical
times, and to understand the common doctrine of the derivation of the
same. As gold was not coined in Greece Proper until a comparatively late
period, owing doubtless to the fact that there was no great supply of
it to be had, and that all of it was required to meet the demand for
personal adornment, the entire early coinage of Greece (with some few
exceptions to be presently noted) consisted of silver. These silver
issues were all struck on either of two systems; (1) the Aeginean, or
Aeginetic, and (2) the Euboic, the stater of the former weighing about
195 grains, that of the latter about 135-130 grains. But it is a fact of
paramount importance that gold, whenever and wherever coined in Greece,
was always on the Euboic standard, and there is likewise every reason
to believe that gold bullion in the days before gold was coined was
computed according to the same standard. Such at least was undoubtedly
the case at Athens, as we learn from Thucydides[263], where he describes
the resources of Athens both in coined and uncoined metal, and in the
gold plates which overlaid the famous chryselephantine statue of Pallas
Athene, the masterpiece of Pheidias, and the glory of the Acropolis; and
such also, as we shall see, was the case, in the days of Solon.
All ancient accounts are agreed in the statement that Aegina was the
first place in Hellas Proper which saw the minting of money. That island
was famous from old time as the meeting-place of merchants, and as such
under its ancient name of Oenone was glorified by Pindar[264]. Its
position rendered it a most convenient emporium, where the merchantmen
of Tyre met in traffic the traders from both Peloponnesus and northern
Greece. Tradition makes its population a very mixed one: “It was called
Oenone,” says Strabo, “in ancient times, and it was settled by Argives,
Kretans, Epidaurians, and Dorians[265].” According to a fragment of
Ephorus, to be referred to presently, it was owing to the barren nature
of the soil that the natives turned to trade.
All Greek tradition is unanimous in representing Pheidon of Argos as the
first to coin money in Hellas Proper, and to have done so at Aegina.
Much obscurity enshrouds the history and the date of Pheidon, owing to
the conflicting accounts of the historians. For our immediate purpose
it would be quite sufficient to state simply that he cannot have lived
later than 600 B.C., but in consequence of some prevailing doctrines
with regard to the history of Greek weights being based on inferences
(probably quite unwarrantable) which have been drawn from the statements
given about this despot, we must take a more elaborate survey of the
sources.
Pausanias[266], writing about 174 A.D. says that the Pisaeans in the
eight Olympiad (747 B.C.) brought to their aid Pheidon of Argos, who of
all despots in Hellas waxed most insolent, and that along with him they
celebrated the festival. But now comes the testimony of Herodotus[267],
who was writing circ. 440 B.C., and who tells us (VI. 127) that when
Cleisthenes the despot of Sicyon held the _svayamvara_ for his daughter
Agariste; amongst the suitors who came from all parts of Hellas, was
“Leocedes, son of Pheidon, the despot of the Argives, Pheidon, who
had made their measures for the Peloponnesians, and had of all Greeks
waxed to the greatest pitch of violence, he who expelled the Elean
presidents of the games and himself held the festival.” There cannot be
the slightest doubt that both Pausanias and Herodotus refer to the same
tyrant, but the dates are irreconcileable. As Cleisthenes, the Athenian
law-giver, was the son of Agariste, her wooing cannot have been much
earlier than 560 B.C., and consequently Pheidon must have reigned at
Argos shortly before 600 B.C.
Weissenborn (followed by Ernst Curtius) has sought to cut the Gordian
knot by emending the text of Pausanias, thus reading 28th instead of
8th Olympiad, which would make Pheidon help the Pisaeans in the year
668 B.C. But even this drastic remedy is hardly sufficient to meet the
requirements of the statement of Herodotus.
Our earliest authority for the tradition that Pheidon coined at Aegina
is a passage of Ephorus preserved by Strabo (VIII. 376)[268]: “Ephorus
says that in Aegina silver was first struck by Pheidon; for it had become
an emporium, inasmuch as its population, owing to the barrenness of
the land, engaged in maritime trade; whence trumpery goods are called
Aeginean ware.” According to another passage of Strabo, which may be
likewise from Ephorus, as it comes at the end of a long statement,
the first part of which Strabo expressly declares is taken from that
writer: (“They say) that Pheidon of Argos, who was tenth in descent from
Temenus, and who surpassed his contemporaries in his power, whence he
recovered the whole of the inheritance of Temenus, which had been rent
into several parts, and that he invented the measures which are called
Pheidonian and weights and stamped currency, both the other kind and that
of silver.” It must be carefully observed that this is the only ancient
passage which says a word about the invention of _weights_ by Pheidon. If
this statement can be taken as trustworthy we might very well conclude
that Pheidon was the person who introduced the decimal principle and
made 10 silver pieces instead of 15 equivalent to the gold stater. If
however this is an addition of Strabo[269], who wrote about A.D. 1-21,
and whose account of Greece Proper is the most defective portion of his
great work, we cannot let this passage weigh against that already given
from Herodotus, who is perfectly silent as regards the invention of
_weights_. Furthermore there is the fact that Strabo does not venture to
describe the _weights_ as called _Pheidonian_, but carefully limits that
appellation to the measures as we find also to be the case with Pollux,
when he is describing various kinds of vessels: “and likewise a Pheidon
would be a kind of vessel for holding oil, deriving its name from the
Pheidonian measures respecting which Aristotle speaks in his Polity of
the Argives[270].” Here again we find a clear mention of the Pheidonian
measures, coupled with the high authority of Aristotle’s treatise on the
Constitution of Argos in his great “Collection of Polities,” formed to
serve as the material from which to build his great philosophic work on
Politics.
There is again no mention of Pheidonian _weights_ in the newly found
Polity of the Athenians (which seems beyond doubt the same as that
known to the ancients under the name of Aristotle), where it is stated
that “in his (Solon’s) time the measures (at Athens) were made larger
than those of Pheidon” (c. 10)[271]. Although the writer refers to the
Aeginetic coin-weights in the next clause, he does not refer to them as
the Pheidonian.
Now let us pass on to a remarkable passage in the _Etymologicum Magnum_
(_s.v._ Ὀβελίσος).
“First of all men Pheidon of Argos struck money in Aegina; and having
given them (his subjects) coin and abolished the spits, he dedicated
them to Hera in Argos. But since at that time the spits used to fill
the hand, that is the grasp, we, although we do not fill our hand with
the six obols (spits) call it a _grasp full_ (δραχμὴ) owing to the
_grasping_ of them. Whence even still to this day we call the usurer the
spit-_weigher_, since by weights the men of old used to hand (money)
over[272].” The writer of this passage evidently regards Pheidon as the
first inventor of the art of coining but not of _weight_ standards.
Finally the Parian Marble recounts that, “Pheidon the Argive confiscated
the measures ... and remade them and made silver coin in Aegina[273].”
Such then is the body of evidence which we possess, all pointing to
Aegina as the first place in Greece which saw a mint set up, and to
Pheidon of Argos as the first to establish that mint. As we have pointed
out above we have nothing but a very dubious statement of Strabo (which
is coupled with another most certainly wrong, _i.e._, that Pheidon was
the inventor of every other kind of money as well as silver) as regards
the invention of weights by Pheidon, although from the passage in
Herodotus already quoted, metrologists one after another have assumed
that the measures (μέτρα) meant a _metric system_ in the modern sense,
and have not hesitated to build on this somewhat crazy foundation an
elaborate Aeginetic system of weights and measures intimately related to
each other.
We are then probably justified in assuming that Pheidon coined silver at
Aegina. The numismatic evidence coincides with the literary authorities.
The coins of Aegina are well known, for from first to last the symbol of
the sea tortoise (χελώνη, from which they are called in vulgar parlance
_tortoises_) is found on them. Why Pheidon set up his mint in Aegina
instead of in his own city of Argos is not very difficult to understand.
Argos was an inland town remote from the highways of commerce, and
little in contact with the merchants of the Levant. On the other hand
Aegina stood at the portal of central Greece, intercepting the trade of
Athens and Corinth; in later days Pericles called it the “eyesore of the
Piraeus.” It would be probably here that the Greeks first saw the new
invention of the East in the hands of the foreign traders, and it would
be here, in a great emporium, that the need of a currency would be most
felt. In an inland city like Argos or Sparta bars of bronze or iron would
serve well for the small commercial transactions of a very primitive
society, as we know that the iron currency actually did at Sparta in
historical times. E. Curtius suggested (_Numism. Chron._, 1870) that the
tortoise on the Aeginetan coins, which is the symbol of Ashtaroth who was
the Phoenician goddess both of the sea and of trade, may be an indication
that the mint was set up in the temple of Aphrodite, which overlooked
the great harbour of Aegina. Whilst his hypothesis as regards the origin
of the tortoise type on the coin is probably wrong, it is quite possible
that the coins were first struck in some temple, as we know that the
great shrines of the ancient world served as banks and treasuries, as for
example the temple of Athena at Athens, that of Apollo at Delphi, and
that of Juno Moneta at Rome. The temple priests of Delphi and other rich
shrines had at their command large stores of the precious metals, which
in the earliest times doubtless were in the shape of small ingots or
bullets, such as the gold talents mentioned in the Homeric Poems.
The temple shrines of Delphi and Olympia, Delos and Dodona were centres
not merely of religious cult, but likewise of trade and commerce, just
as the great fairs of the Middle Ages grew primarily out of the feast
day of the local saint, merchants and traders taking advantage of the
assembling together of large bodies of worshippers from various quarters
to ply their calling and to tempt them with their wares. The temple
authorities encouraged trade in every way; they constructed sacred roads,
which gave facility for travelling at a time when roads as a general
rule were almost unknown, and what was just as important, they placed
these roads and consequently the persons who travelled on them under
the protection of the god to whose temple they led in each case, thus
affording a safe conduct to the trader as well as the pilgrim; again at
the time of the sacred festivals all strife had to cease, the voice of
war was hushed, and thus even amidst the noise of intestine struggles
and international strife, peace offered a breathing space for trade and
commerce. Hence the probability is considerable that the art of minting
money, that is, of stamping with a symbol the ingots or _talents_ of gold
or silver which had circulated in this simple form for centuries, first
had its birth in the sanctuary of some god.
On the whole then we may assume that the bullet-shaped coins of Aegina,
which are undoubtedly the earliest coins of Greece Proper, are the
Pheidonian currency mentioned in the ancient authors and on the Parian
Marble. As silver was probably not at all plenty at Argos, but was
brought to Aegina by the traders, Pheidon had every motive for minting
at Aegina instead of at his own capital. The fact that the Romans
struck silver coins in Campania before they issued any at Rome affords
a curious parallel. A local supply of the metal offers the explanation
in each case. “It may be also positively asserted that none of the
Aeginetan coins are older than the earliest Lydian electrum money, and
that consequently the date of the introduction of coined money into
Peloponnesus must be subsequent to circ. 700 B.C. It follows that Pheidon
was not the inventor of money, for already before his time all the coasts
and islands of the Aegean must have been acquainted with the pale yellow
electrum coins of Lydia and Ionia[274].”
What then was the standard on which these early coins of Aegina were
struck?
The heaviest specimens of these Aeginetan staters or didrachms weigh over
200 grains Troy, but these seem somewhat exceptional. The best numismatic
authorities are agreed in setting the normal weight at 196 grains Troy;
the drachm consequently weighs 98 grains, and the obol about 16 grains.
The origin of this standard has caused much difficulty to metrologists.
For it is not the standard of the Babylonian gold shekel of 130 grains,
nor of the Babylonian silver shekel of 172 grains, nor again that of
the Phoenician silver shekel of 230 grains. Various solutions have been
proposed. Brandis[275] regards it as a raised Babylonian silver standard,
172·9 to 196 grains. Mr Head regards it as the reduced Phoenician
standard; “The weight standard which the Peloponnesians had received in
old times from the Phoenician traders had suffered in the course of about
two centuries a very considerable degradation[276].” Others, like Mr
Flinders Petrie (Encyclop. Britannica, _Weights and Measures_), regard it
as Egyptian in origin. According to Herodotus (II. 178) the Aeginetans
were on terms of friendly intercourse with Egypt; furthermore weights of
this standard have been found in Egypt.
Again, Dr Hultsch (_Metrol._² p. 188) regards it as an independent
standard midway between the Babylonian silver standard (172·9 grs.) on
the one hand, and the Phoenician silver standard (230 grs.) on the other,
the old Aeginetan silver mina being equivalent in value to six light
Babylonian shekels of gold (130 × 6 = 780 grs. = 10300 grs. of silver),
assuming that in Greece as in Asia Minor gold was to silver as 13·3:1.
All these theories labour under serious difficulties. Brandis’ theory was
overthrown easily as soon as attention was called to the well-defined
heavy series of Aeginetic coins, he having been led to his opinion by a
comparison of the heaviest specimen of the Babylonian standard with the
lightest of the Aeginetic. Here incidentally we may call the readers’
attention to the fact that in numismatics the weight of the heaviest
specimens of any series must be regarded as the true index of the normal
weight, for whatever may have been the inclination to mint coins of a
weight lighter than the proper standard, we may rest assured that the
ancient mint-master was no more inclined than his modern representative
to put into coins of gold or silver a single grain more than the legal
amount. Hence it is a most faulty and fallacious method when dealing with
coin weights to take the average of a certain number of specimens as
the true standard. Out of 30 specimens 29 may have lost more or less in
weight by wear, whilst one may be a _fleur de coin_, perfect as at the
moment when it left the die. No one can doubt that the evidence of that
single coin as regards the standard is worth far more than that of all
the remaining 29 examples. I have thought it well to call attention to
this question of method as the vicious principle of arriving at standards
by taking the average is still found in works of men of great eminence.
Next let us consider the probability of the derivation of the Aeginetic
standard from Egypt. The fact that weights of like standard have been
found in that country, although superficially plausible, in reality is
of little force as evidence of borrowing. For unless we find that the
Egyptians used those weights for weighing _silver_, even the _prima
facie_ case breaks down at once. As a matter of fact there is no evidence
up to the present that these weights were so employed, although there is
some evidence of their being employed for gold (Flinders Petrie, _op.
cit._). But even granting that the Egyptians used the same standard as
the Aeginetans for silver, it does not at all follow that there has been
borrowing on either side. On the principle laid down below it will be
seen that it is quite possible for two peoples to evolve a like _silver_
standard perfectly independently of each other. But the real difficulty
which besets the theory of an Egyptian origin is that if the Aeginetans
were to borrow their standard from abroad, the people from whom they
would in all probability have obtained it were not the Egyptians, with
whom they had but slight relations directly, but rather the Phoenicians,
with whom they were in constant intercourse.
It cannot be proved that at any time the Egyptians were a maritime
people trading round the coasts of Greece. There was undoubtedly
intercourse between Greece and Egypt, but that intercourse was through
the medium of the shipmen of Tyre. Why should then the Aeginetans adopt
a standard from abroad which differed from that of the Phoenicians
with whom they were in constant commercial relations? Again, if there
is any connection between the importation of weight standards and the
commencement of coinage, it may be urged that whilst it was from the
Phoenicians the Aeginetans learned the art which had been originated in
Asia Minor, or at all events from the Greeks of the coast of Asia Minor
who coined electrum money on the Phoenician standard, we ought naturally
to find the Greeks of Aegina using this standard for their earliest
coinage rather than a standard borrowed from Egypt, which most certainly
was very backward in developing the art of coining, seeing that it was
not until after the conquest of that country by Alexander the Great (B.C.
330) that money was there struck for the first time[277].
Passing by for the moment Mr Head’s view, let us next deal with that
of Dr Hultsch. This theory has the great merit of granting that the
Greeks were capable of evolving a _silver_ standard for themselves
from a knowledge of the relative value of gold and silver, whilst the
other theories assume that they borrowed blindly ready-made standards,
which they for some unknown reason either raised according to Brandis,
or degraded according to Head. But Dr Hultsch is met by two crucial
difficulties. (1) Why should the Aeginetans have taken six light
Babylonian shekels of gold and arbitrarily made them the basis of
their new silver standard? (2) But the fatal objection is that whereas
Hultsch’s theory depends on gold being to silver in the same relation
(13·3:1) in Greece Proper as it was in Asia Minor, as a matter of fact it
can be proved that the precious metals there stood in a very different
relation to each other. In the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, 1887, I
gave some reasons for believing that in early times gold was to silver
in Greece in the relation of 15:1. For whilst gold was plentiful in
Asia, at no place in Greece Proper were there auriferous deposits.
Hence it is probable that gold had to silver a higher relative value
in Greece than it had in Asia. Certain archaeological discoveries
recently made at Athens add great strength to the view which I then put
forward. At a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Science in 1889 Dr Ulrich
Köhler discussed certain fragments of inscriptions which refer to the
famous statue of Athena, wrought in gold and ivory by Pheidias for the
Parthenon. By combining with a fragment published by M. Foucart (_Bullet.
de Corresp. Hell._ 1889, p. 171), another fragment previously copied by
himself, Dr Köhler arrived at the result that the fragments relate to
the purchase of materials for the construction of the statue, that is of
gold and ivory. The gold purchased is described both according to its
weight and according to the price (τιμή) paid for it in Attic silver
currency (whilst the ivory is only described by the value or price). The
sum paid for gold amounted to 526·652 drachms, 5 obols, the weight of the
gold being 37·618 drachms: from this we learn that the relative value of
gold to silver at that time was as 14:1. According to Thucydides (II.
13), forty talents of gold were used in the making of the statue, whilst
according to the more explicit statement of Philochorus the amount was
forty-four. The image was dedicated at the great Panathenaic festival of
the year 438 B.C. As not more than 10 to 11 talents of gold were used in
the three years to which the fragments refer, Köhler draws the inference
that the construction of the statue commenced in the same year as that of
the Parthenon (447 B.C.), and that Pheidias was engaged on his great work
for fully nine years.
We thus know now the relative value of silver and gold in Attica about
450 B.C. But we must not regard this as the relation which existed
at earlier times. It was only after the Persian wars that Athens had
got possession of the island of Thasos with its rich gold mines, and
the equally rich districts on the Thracian coast. The fact of her
coming into the possession of such wealthy gold-producing regions
must have materially lowered the price of gold in Athens. We know how
the development of the mines of Pangaeum by Philip of Macedon in the
following century lowered the value of gold throughout Greece, for by the
time of Alexander the relative value of the two precious metals was as
10:1. In the sixth century B.C. gold was so scarce in Greece that when
the Spartans wanted to make a dedication in gold they had to send to Asia
to obtain a sufficient supply of the metal[278]. Hence if we conclude
that in earlier times the relative value of gold to silver in Greece
proper was as 15:1, we shall not be far from the truth. At all events it
is put beyond doubt that the relation was higher than that of 13·3:1,
and accordingly Dr Hultsch’s theory of the origin of the Aeginetic
silver standard, which is based on that relation falls at once to the
ground, unless he can shew that such a standard, based on six light gold
Babylonian shekels had been previously fixed in Asia or Egypt, and thence
adopted by the Greeks without any regard to the relative value existing
in Greece itself between the precious metals. But as a matter of fact Dr
Hultsch does not make any such attempt. Thus this essay at a solution
breaks down.
On the other hand if we make the very slight and very probable assumption
that the early Greeks had formed a definite idea of the relative value
of gold and silver, which they would have determined exactly on the same
principle as they would arrive at a notion of the relative value of any
other two commodities, which they were in the habit of giving and taking
in exchange, that is by the simple principle of supply and demand, we
shall find a ready solution without having to resort to either Egypt or
Babylon. If gold was to silver as 15:1 in Greece, it follows that the
Homeric talent, the earliest Greek standard, being about 135 grains, ten
silver pieces of 202 grains each would be equivalent to _one_ gold unit.
135 × 15 = 2025 grs. of silver.
2025 ÷ 10 = 202·5 grs. of silver.
This gives a singularly close approximation to the weight of the existing
coins of the Aeginetic standard of the earliest and heaviest kind. Taking
the Homeric talent at 130 grains of gold, by the same process we obtain
10 silver pieces each of the weight of 195 grains (130 × 15 = 1950; 1950
÷ 10 = 195 grs.)
The second standard which we find in Greece at the beginning of the
historical epoch was the Euboic. This standard was used for both _silver_
and _gold_. The ordinary account of its origin is as follows: “From Ionia
possibly through Samos the Euboeans imported the standard by which they
weighed their silver. This standard was the light Assyrio-Babylonian
gold mina with its shekel or stater of about 130 grains. The Euboeans
having little or no gold transferred the weight used in Asia for gold
to their own silver, raising it slightly at the same time to a maximum
of 135 grains, and from Euboea it soon spread over a large part of the
Greek world by means of the widely extended commercial relations of the
enterprising Euboean cities. This may have taken place towards the close
of the eighth century and before the war which broke out at the end of
that century between Chalcis and Eretria, nominally for the possession of
the fields of Lelantum, which lay between the two rival cities”[279].
This Euboic standard of 135-130 grains is seen at once to be identical in
weight with the Homeric talent.
Several difficulties (irrespective of the fact that there was no need for
the Greeks to borrow from Asia a standard which they themselves already
possessed from very early times) meet this theory.
(1) If the Euboeans derived their standard from Ionia why did they not
rather adopt the Phoenician standards, on which we have already seen the
great Ionian cities based their coinages of gold, silver, and electrum?
Some very early electrum coins found at Samos (Head, _op. cit._ XLI.),
have suggested that that island formed the link. “The theory,” says Mr
Head, “that Samos was the port whence the Euboeans derived the gold
standard subsequently used by them for silver, rests upon the weight of
some very early electrum coins (about 44 grs.) which have been found in
the island of Samos, and of the earliest Euboean coins, Euboea and Samos
having been two of the greatest colonizing and maritime powers of the
Aegean Sea. Thus I think we may account for the fact that the towns of
Euboea, when they began to strike silver money of their own, naturally
made use of the standard which had become from of old habitual in the
island, precisely in the same way as Pheidon in Peloponnesus struck his
first silver money on the reduced Phoenician standard which was prevalent
at the time in his dominions.” But as a matter of fact the recognized
Samian coins are of the Phoenician standard (220 grs.) in its slightly
reduced state as found at Miletus (Head, _op. cit._ 515). This being so
it would indeed be strange if the Euboeans from occasionally coming in
contact with Lydian coins at Samos would have adopted that standard in
preference to that in use in the great cities of Ionia with which their
commerce directly lay.
(2) Why did the Euboeans take the Lydian _gold_ standard of 130 grs. for
their own electrum and silver instead of the Lydian _silver_ standard of
172·9 grs.? According to Mr Head’s view, as we have seen above, the early
Lydian electrum was struck on the standard of 172 grs. (the so-called
Babylonian silver) when meant for circulation in the interior of Asia
Minor, but on the Phoenician standard for circulation in trade with the
Greeks of the coast of Ionia.
(3) We may ask the question, why did the Euboeans if they were taking
over a ready-made standard which had no relation to any standard which
they themselves already possessed, adopt the _gold_ standard of 130 grs.
instead of the electrum and silver standard which was in use among all
the Greek cities with which they traded?
We can now conveniently revert to the theory that the Aeginetan
_silver_ standard was a reduced Phoenician. Much has been written
about _degradation of coin weights_ and _reduced standards_. It may be
therefore well to clear our notions on the subject by asking ourselves
what do we mean by such terms. Both the terms and the process are equally
familiar to those at all acquainted with the history of mediaeval
coinage. The king then controlled, as for instance in England, the
mintage. If the sovereign thought fit to reduce the amount of silver in
the groat from 80 to 72 grains his subjects had no alternative but to
take the new and lighter pieces as equivalent to four pennies sterling.
The sovereign thus was able to relieve an exhausted treasury, making
a considerable profit off every groat and penny put into circulation.
Again, the impecunious monarch might resort to another method of making a
profit, by debasing the coinage, and might issue one such as the fourth
of Henry VIII., of exceeding base silver, and again his subjects could
simply grumble and take the new money. These groats and pennies passed
as such within the realm, but when the question of foreign exchange
came, the matter assumed an entirely new complexion. Would a shrewd
Flemish merchant from Antwerp accept a base or a reduced English groat
at the same rate for which it passed current in England? Of course he
did no such thing, and the scales were at once called into use, and the
silver changed hands not by tale, but by _weight_. Now the condition
under which such a degradation or debasing of the coinage as we have
described can take place is that a state or country shall be of such
considerable magnitude that it has room within its own borders to employ
a large amount of coin in internal trade without much necessity of
external commerce. Did such conditions exist among the Greek states of
antiquity? There is another condition, namely, sovereign power vested
in the hands of a monarch possessed of unlimited authority, who has a
direct personal interest in the profit to be made from the degradation
of the coinage, and who has power sufficient to enable him to force his
debased coinage on a reluctant people. Did such conditions exist in any
of the Greek states of antiquity? Nowhere in Greece Proper do we find
them fulfilled, but if we turn to Sicily we get a good example of the
practice so often followed in after centuries by the mediaeval monarchs.
The tyrant Dionysius there put an arbitrary value on gold in relation to
silver: for although this relation was probably not more than 12:1, this
despot raised it perforce to 15:1[280]. He also issued a coinage of tin,
according to Aristotle[281], which he perhaps forced his subjects to take
as equivalent to silver coins of like size. In later years again when
Timoleon liberated Syracuse and the democracy was once more restored, the
state issued a coinage of electrum instead of that of pure gold, which
had previously been in currency, by this means making a profit of 20 per
cent.[282] It is hardly necessary to point out that whilst this coinage
of Dionysius might pass for an artificial value within the dominions
of Syracuse, the moment a Syracusan came to make payment to a foreign
merchant, its factitious value vanished and the transaction took place
according to the current value of the metals. So as long as the English
penny remained of good weight and quality it found ready currency on the
continent, and the potentates of Flanders issued numerous imitations of
them known as _esterlings_, but when the English silver penny became
debased all foreign imitations ceased[283]. Now the Greek states of
Greece Proper were very small in extent, and seldom had a very strong
central authority. The area being limited it was absolutely necessary for
them to have constant dealings with their neighbours. It would have been
difficult for any government in republican times to have forced on its
citizens a debased silver currency, and even had this been possible, any
benefit derived therefrom would have been counterbalanced by the great
drawback arising to trade. If Athens had reduced her famous “Owls” or as
they were otherwise called “Maidens” (from the head of Pallas Athena),
by five grains, her credit would have suffered and her merchants have
gained nothing by it, as the balance would have been at once resorted to,
and allowance would have had to be made on each coin of the new debased
standard. We who live in modern times are too apt to forget the readiness
with which men in older days had resort to the scales, although at this
moment large transactions in gold between bankers and financiers are
carried out by weight. Only so late as the beginning of this century,
when the gold coinage of the country was in a wretched state, every
farmer and trader went to fairs in Ireland equipped with a pocket
balance (which was adjusted for the guinea, half-guinea, sovereign,
half-sovereign, and gold seven-shilling-piece).
It is difficult then to see what it would have availed the Aeginetans to
have reduced the standard which they are supposed to have got from the
Phoenicians.
Their island state was of diminutive proportions; they devoted themselves
almost entirely to traffick by sea, their island was an emporium where
strangers resorted. In all dealings with the Phoenicians they would have
to pay a drawback on their debased coin; for the cunning Phoenician
or Ionian was not likely to be beguiled into taking staters of 200
grs. as equivalent to 230 grs. It is plain therefore that when we find
divergencies of standard these are not due to mere _degradation_, but
to some far more practical consideration, and this will be seen all
the more clearly when we shall find that whilst we have divergencies
in _silver_ standards, the gold standard which was in use in Greece
from Homeric times down to the Roman Conquest remains almost absolutely
without variation. But there are other and stronger objections against
the Phoenician origin of the Aeginetic standard.
Now if we accept the doctrine that the Greeks received their
coin-standards across the sea from Asia, the _Aeginetic_ from the
Phoenician traders whose commerce lay with Aegina and Peloponnesus,
the _Euboic_ on the other hand from Lydia by way of the great Ionian
cities on the coast of Asia Minor, we become involved in a serious
difficulty. At the time represented in the Homeric Poems, there is not
as yet a single Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor[284]. Miletus,
destined to be in after years the Queen of Ionia, and to be one of the
greatest centres of Hellenic commerce and culture, is as yet known only
as the city of the barbarous-speaking Carians[285]. Yet we find the
Greeks represented in these self-same poems as already in possession of
a standard for gold identical with the light Babylonian or Lydian gold
shekel (130 grs.). But again we find from the same source that the Greeks
were already in full commercial intercourse with one Asiatic people,
but not a people who could serve as a bridge between Lydia and Euboea.
Everywhere in the Homeric Poems we meet the shipmen of Tyre, who are
represented as bringing the products of the skilled artists of Sidon,
beautiful cloths, and cunningly wrought vessels of silver, articles of
jewellery, necklaces[286] set with amber (perhaps brought from the coasts
of the Baltic), and now and then as chance arose, kidnapping women and
children to sell as slaves in the marts of the Mediterranean[287].
If the Hellenes had got their standard from an Asiatic source, it must
have been the heavy gold shekel of 260 grains, which the Phoenicians
employed, and consequently the Homeric Talent would have weighed 260
instead of 130 grains, or on the other hand if it be supposed that the
Greeks might borrow and use for their own _gold_ a standard used only for
_silver_ in Asia, the Homeric Talent ought to have weighed 225 grains,
that is the Phoenician silver standard, which, as we have seen, it
certainly did not.
A further difficulty arises in reference to the _Euboic_ standard. No
one who reflects for a moment could venture to assert that Phoenician
trade and influence were limited to Southern Greece. Yet that virtually
is the tacit assumption made by those who derive the standard from Asia.
There is evidence to shew that the Phoenicians from a very early period
frequented Euboea, doubtless attracted by its copper mines (from which
perhaps the famous city of Chalcis derived its name)[288]. Round no
spot in Hellas do more legends cluster which connect it with Phoenician
colonists than Boeotia. It was here that Cadmus settled, and introduced
the Phoenician alphabet, it was here according to Greek tradition that
Herakles, who is so strongly identified with the Phoenician Melkarth,
had his birth. Why then should the Euboeans have been behind the rest of
Hellas in receiving the Phoenician standard, which, according to Mr Head,
as we saw above, did influence so powerfully the Ionic cities of the
Asiatic seaboard, with which their commerce was so largely connected?
From these considerations it follows that before the Greeks came into
contact with either Phoenicians or Lydians they had a weight standard of
their own, the _Talanton_ of the Homeric Poems, based on the _cow_, which
was as yet only employed for the weighing of gold.
This standard we have found to be identical with one of the two chief
standards employed in historical times for _silver_, and which from first
to last was the _only_ standard employed for gold in all parts of Hellas
Proper.
As we have seen that gold was to silver in that region as 15:1, there was
not much difficulty in regarding fifteen _weights_ or staters of silver
as equivalent to one of gold of like weight. Hence there was not the same
need in Greece to devise a separate silver standard as there was in Asia,
where the relation of the precious metals stood as 13·3:1, a fact which
made simple exchange very difficult. On the other hand we have seen that
for the Aeginetans and Greeks, who used the so-called Aeginetic standard,
the decimal system, the simplest and most primitive method of reckoning,
had a powerful attraction.
Primitive peoples perform all their calculations by means of counters,
using for such purposes their fingers and toes or seeds or pebbles.
Nature herself has supplied man with the simplest and most convenient
of counters in his ten fingers. Hence naturally arises a preference
amongst primitive peoples for counting by tens, and this method, although
it has at times been supplanted partially (seldom altogether) by the
duodecimal and sexagesimal systems, which are superior by possessing a
greater number of submultiples than the decimal (_e.g._ 12 = 6 × 2, 4 ×
3, whilst 10 = 5 × 2 only), was adhered to by the Egyptians all through
their history down to the latest Pharaohs. It may then perhaps be argued
that it was through Egyptian influence with Greece that a large part of
Greece adopted for their silver a standard based on the decimal system,
especially as certain traces of Egyptian influence in very early times
have been discovered of late. But as I have already pointed out above
when discussing the theory of an Egyptian origin for the Aeginetan
standard, because standards of like weight are found in two different
regions, it by no means follows that one has borrowed from the other. If
we can point out that in both Egypt and Greece there was a standard for
gold almost identical in weight, it is at once apparent that there was
no need for the Greeks to borrow from the Egyptians the idea of making
ten silver ingots or wedges equal to one gold; especially as the decimal
idea was next to that of five the simplest and most rudimentary form of
calculation known to mankind. It is certainly preposterous to suppose
that the Greeks were too barbarous at the time when they had attained a
knowledge of silver to devise such a simple process as that of taking
the fifteen ingots of silver, which from the natural laws of supply and
demand they regarded as the equivalent of one gold ingot of like weight,
and redividing them into ten new ingots of silver. This surely will
not seem an incredible feat for the early Hellenes to perform when we
recall to mind the extraordinary skill in arithmetic which is found among
some barbarous peoples. “In West Africa a lively and continual habit of
bargaining has developed a great power of arithmetic, and little children
already do feats of computation with their heaps of cowries[289].” To
imagine that the Greeks could not perform so simple a feat as that which
I propose is to assume that they were in a far lower condition of culture
and intelligence than the negroes of West Africa, rather resembling the
lowest known tribes of men, such as the aborigines of Australia and
the savages of the South American forests. To make such an assumption
respecting a race which has shewn such an unrivalled potentiality of
progress and development as the Greeks is absurd.
At this point it will be convenient to take a general survey of our
results so far. We found in the Homeric Poems a twofold system of
currency, the gold Talanton, and the cow or ox, the latter alone being
employed to express values: we next found that the _Talanton_ was the
equivalent of the cow, the metallic unit being clearly the later in
origin, and being based on or equated to the older unit of barter.
Through the sacerdotal tradition of Delos we were enabled to fix the
value of the Homeric Talanton at 2 gold Attic drachms, or a Daric
(135-130 grains Troy). Next came the standards used in historical Greece.
(1) The Euboic (135 grains Troy) used for _silver_ in the great Euboic
towns, in Corinth, in Athens from the time of Solon, and as a matter of
course in the Chalcidian and Corinthian colonies, and employed as the
_sole_ unit for _gold_ in all parts of Greece Proper at all periods; (2)
the Aeginetic (200-195 grains) employed in Peloponnesus, in Boeotia and
Central Greece. We learned that the Euboic standard coincided with the
Homeric _Talanton_, thus finding the Greeks of historical times using the
same standard universally for _gold_ which they had employed long before
the introduction of the art of coining from Asia, and partly using this
same standard for silver, whilst in other states they employed a standard
for the latter metal, which was based on the gold unit, simply dividing
the amount of silver equivalent to it into ten parts instead of fifteen.
We then put the question, “Is it rational to suppose that the Greeks
borrowed in the 7th century B.C. along with the art of coining from Asia
a standard which they themselves already long since possessed?”
At the time when I first put this view forward, I was unable to offer any
concrete proof of the existence of such a standard on Greek soil before
the introduction of coined money, although the literary evidence was of
the strongest kind. Since then I have been enabled to obtain some data
of considerable importance. I have already (Chap. II.) described the
rings and spirals of gold and silver found at Mycenae, and shewn that
they were not improbably made on a standard of 135 grs. We have thus
found some definite evidence of the existence of a gold and possibly a
silver standard, corresponding to the standard used for both metals in
after ages under the name of the Euboic or Attic. It may of course be
argued that though found on Greek soil, they are not really Greek in
origin. For instance there may be certain indications of Egyptian art and
influence in these pre-historic remains, such as the frieze discovered
in the Palace at Tiryns of alabaster inlaid with blue glass which
according to Lepsius and Helbig[290] is the mock _lapis lazuli_ which
the Egyptians were so fond of making in imitation of the rare and costly
real stone which had to be brought from Tartary. Granting then for the
sake of argument that the Homeric _Talent_ was a standard introduced into
Greece from Egypt at a very early period, it by no means follows that
this standard has had a scientific origin. The Greeks it will be noticed
found it necessary in taking over this standard to equate it to their
primitive barter system. If then the process of human development is such
that the Greeks, who above all people shewed the most extraordinary power
of acquiring civilization, found it necessary even when presented with a
ready made standard for metallic currency, to bring it into harmony with
their immemorial system of appraising values by means of the cow, there
is certainly a strong presumption that the people from whom they derived
that metallic standard had not themselves obtained it by any mathematical
process.
We can hardly doubt that mankind first obtained empirically the art of
weighing, and that it was only at a later period that mathematics were
called in to fix scientifically the standards obtained by the older and
cruder method. Such is the function of mathematics still. Thus Professor
Cayley observed (in his address at Stockport), “I said I would speak to
you not of the utility of mathematics in any of the questions of common
life or of physical science, but rather of the obligations of mathematics
to these different subjects. The consideration which thus presents itself
is in a great measure that of the history of the development of the
different branches of mathematical science in connection with the older
physical sciences, Astronomy and Mechanics. The mathematical theory is
in the first instance suggested by some question of common life or of
physical science, is pursued and studied quite independently thereof, and
perhaps after a long interval comes in contact with it or with quite a
different question[291].”
If such then is the part played by mathematics in an age when even the
mathematician has come to the aid of the hangman, and the wretch meets
a well-deserved doom in strict accordance with a mathematical formula,
_a fortiori_ must empirical discovery have preceded mathematical theory
in the second millennium before the Christian era. Just as countless
malefactors were successfully executed by empirical Jack Ketches before
ever the mathematician turned executioner, so we may be certain that
untold sums of gold had been weighed by means of natural seeds and
according to a standard empirically obtained before ever the sages of
Thebes or Chaldaea had dreamed of applying to metrology the results of
their first gropings in Geometry or Astronomy.
PART II.
CHAPTER X.
THE SYSTEMS OF EGYPT, BABYLON, AND PALESTINE.
We are now in a position to approach the last stage in our task, that
which deals with the growth and development of various weight-standards,
all of which start from a common unit. Of necessity Egypt, Babylon,
Greece and Italy will claim a chief share of our attention. The question
now is, Shall we deal with these regions according to the priority of
their civilization, that is, in the order in which I have just named
them, or shall we rather adhere to the principle which has hitherto
guided us, of working back from that which is better known to that which
is less known?
On the whole the former is perhaps the better for our present purpose.
As we believe that we have discovered by the inductive method the common
unit which lies at the base of all these systems, there is no longer the
same necessity for always starting with that which is the less ancient.
Besides, if we were nominally to pursue this course, it by no means
follows that we would be starting from that which is the best known.
_Prima facie_ we ought to start with the Roman system, the tradition of
which has remained unbroken down to our own days. We could work back
through the system of the Middle Ages to the time of Constantine the
Great, from Constantine to the early Empire, and from the Empire to the
Republic. Moreover no weight-unit is more accurately known than the
Roman pound. But the early history of Rome is so obscure that we have
absolutely no records of a time, when Greece had already a literature of
a venerable antiquity. Rome has no literary remains and even not more
than a very few meagre inscriptions dating from before the first Punic
War (263-241 B.C.), the very time when Hellas was already far advanced
in the autumn of her life. Then Italy had borrowed so much from Hellas
that the enquirer must be cautious as to how far he may be dealing
with material of true Italian or merely adventitious origin. As we are
concerned rather with the _origin_ than with the later developments
of weight-systems, it is plain that for dealing with our principal
objects the Italian systems present us with no special aid. The late
period (268 B.C.) at which the Romans struck silver coins places us at a
still further disadvantage if we start with their system. Greece on the
other hand presents us not only with abundant literary records of great
antiquity, some of them descending from an age which knew not the uses of
coined money, but also with thousands of inscriptions cut in marble or
bronze, many of which contain data of great value for dealing with the
history of currency and weight, and finally presents us with vast series
of coins from which we can learn empirically the coin standards employed
in various times and places. But it is the very wealth of material that
is in some degree here our difficulty. The special feature of Greek
national life was its numerous autonomous states. There was no central
authority with a mint which issued coins for a whole empire as was
virtually the case in the great Persian kingdom, and at a later period in
the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great. In the palmy days of Hellas
each petty state issued its own coinage, following in its silver and
copper mintages whatever standard or module it pleased.
To commence our constructive part with a country where we are confronted
with such an array of separate coinages and of diverse standards would be
unwise if it were possible to start from some region where there was a
single central authority, and consequently less diversity of standards.
We are thus led to choose either Egypt or Babylonia as our starting
point. The former presents to us a system less developed and more simple
than the latter. In fact we are tolerably well justified, in view of
recent discussion, in regarding all that is more complex in the system
of Egypt as borrowed from Babylonia. Yet it must not be supposed that
we escape all difficulties in thus starting with Egypt. If in Hellas we
found ourselves embarrassed by the wealth of coinages, in Egypt on the
other hand we have no native coinage to guide us, for it was only after
the conquest of Egypt by Alexander that under the Greek dynasty founded
by Ptolemy Lagos the essentially Greek art of coining was introduced
into Egypt. We depend therefore for our knowledge of Egyptian standards
upon the actual weighings of weight-pieces and such information as can
be gleaned from the ancient Egyptian documents. The same holds good
likewise on the whole for the Assyrian system, where however the actual
weight-pieces and statements derived from cuneiform inscriptions can in
some degree be supported by collateral evidence. At the same time we must
be careful not to assign as much importance to the literary evidence
supplied to us by Egyptian hieroglyphic or Assyrian cuneiform as we do
to the records of Greece or Rome. The keys to the former have only been
obtained within the present century, and many of the translations of such
documents given us by that brilliant band of savants who have opened to
us the portals of a Past far exceeding in antiquity the most remote epoch
of which the literatures of Greece and Rome contain even any tradition,
must at the best in many cases be considered only as tentative.
Furthermore although the knowledge gained from actually existing
weights, which have been gleaned from the ruins of Nineveh, Khorsabad,
or Naucratis, may be regarded as positive and more or less exact, we
are met by the difficulty that in the case of Egypt and Assyria, where
there was no coined money, we have no means of deciding what class of
weight was used for certain kinds of commodities. In Greece and in the
countries which formed the Persian empire we can be sure at all events of
the standards which were employed in the weighing of gold and silver: the
absence of this test is a serious hindrance in the study of Egyptian and
Assyrian metrology. It is easy to illustrate by a supposed example the
element of uncertainty introduced. Let us suppose that in ages to come
the ruins of some English ironmonger’s shop were excavated, and a series
of weights was found therein, a set of Avoirdupois weights ranging from
a one-hundredweight to half an ounce; a set of Troy weights ranging from
one pound to half a grain, and one of Apothecaries’ weights consisting
of ounces, drachms, scruples, and grains. Suppose likewise that some
ardent metrologist of that age, in addition to this splendid find, should
be able to add to his material from elsewhere one or two sovereign and
half-sovereign weights, a guinea, half-guinea, quarter-guinea, and
seven-shilling-piece weight, perhaps even a noble, or a half-noble
weight, and then without consulting literary sources, or previously
studying the standards on which the English coinage had been struck at
different periods, proceeded to reconstruct the metrological system of
England. It is needless to say that his conclusions would be indeed
widely aberrant from the truth.
Having thus sketched however roughly some of the difficulties which beset
our path, and after warning the reader that in metrology if anywhere the
maxim of the old Sicilian poet is to be observed,
Sober keep, to doubt inclined be;
Hinges these are of the mind[292],
I shall now proceed to set forth the method in which I conceive the
various systems gradually rose and expanded. Let us bear in mind the fact
already proved that gold was the first of all commodities to be weighed,
and that consequently the standards employed for weighing that metal are
the most archaic.
EGYPT.
As has been previously remarked, we are not concerned with the long
battle still raging between Assyriologists and Egyptologists as regards
the respective claims of Egypt and Babylonia to the invention of measure
and weight-standards. Boeckh himself seems instinctively to have felt
this difficulty. For whilst he took Babylonia as the birthplace and home
of all the ancient systems, nevertheless he held that contemporaneously
there must have existed a connection between Egypt and Babylonia in
remote antiquity, from which alone certain agreements and relations
between the measures and weights of Egypt and Babylonia were capable
of explanation[293]. The primitive measures of length are undoubtedly
by the consensus of mankind based upon the parts of the body, such as
the finger, the thumb, the foot, the arm, or both arms fully extended,
standards common to Egyptians and Chaldaeans alike. Whilst at a later
stage in the history of all civilized peoples efforts have been made
to obtain more accuracy in these standards, which of necessity have
produced certain local and national divergencies, yet inasmuch as all
alike started from these standards which have been supplied by nature,
it is obvious that many striking similarities and relations will always
be found when any comparative study of different systems is attempted.
The same principle of course holds good for weight-standards. According
to our argument there was a common animal unit existing in Assyria and
Egypt, which was represented by a metal unit, prevailing alike in both
regions possibly with certain modifications. Egypt and Assyria starting
with this common unit, each in their own fashion constructed their
distinctive national systems, and we need not be surprised if at a later
period under certain political conditions certain parts of the system of
one of these regions are found exercising some influence upon that of the
other.
We shall now briefly state the Egyptian weight-system. In the oldest
Egyptian documents two weights continually occur, the Kat (_Ket_ or
_Kite_) and the Uten (_Ten_ or _Outen_). Already in the third millennium
before Christ the precious metals were in full use in Egypt, and copper
likewise was employed in the purchase of articles of small value.
Although very large amounts are recorded, yet they had devised no larger
unit than those mentioned.
[Illustration: FIG. 22. Egyptian Five-Kat weight (Harris Collection).]
To M. Chabas belongs the honour of being the first to clear up the
relations between the uten and kat. The history of this discovery is
an interesting proof of the fruitlessness of the purely empirical form
of metrology which confines itself to the measuring of buildings, and
weighing of ancient weight-pieces and coins, unless its path is made
clear by means of the light derived from ancient records. The names uten
and kat had been long known, as both of them recur frequently on the
walls of the temple of Karnak (_Temp._ Thothmes III. 1700-1600 B.C.), and
Egyptian weights were in the museums of Europe, but nevertheless “the
exact relation of the one to the other remained unknown until it was
fortunately disclosed by a passage in the Harris papyrus, which contains
the annals of Rameses III. (circ. 1300 B.C.). From this it appears that
the Uten contained ten Kats[294].” The uten therefore is the tenfold of
the kat: Nissen[295] thinks that the latter was perhaps originally a
gold weight (_vielleicht ursprünglich ein Goldgewicht_). These two units
served for the weighing of gold, silver and copper, and there seems to
be no difference noted in the documents between the units used for each
purpose. In the lists of booty we read of such sums as 3144 utens of
gold and 36692 utens of electrum. In lists of prices of commodities kats
and utens of silver and copper are frequently mentioned. The weight of
the kat has been fixed by Lepsius at 9·096 grammes (142·1 grains) and
that of the uten at 90·959 grammes (1421·2 grains). But as it often
happens in the case of coins that one well-preserved specimen is a better
index of the normal standard than any that can be attained by taking
the average of 100 bad specimens, so in the case of weights, one good
specimen, made of some hard and imperishable substance, will give us a
truer representation of the standard unit than the average of a large
number of weights made of some less durable material, and carelessly
executed, and meant merely for traffic in goods of little value. If such
a weight as we have supposed is inscribed with its name, and we can also
get some indication that it has all the authority that belongs to a
weight used for official purposes, its value becomes still greater. Such
a piece fortunately exists in the Harris Collection. It is a beautifully
preserved serpentine weight, and weighs 698 grs. Troy. Allowing for its
extremely slight loss we may suppose its original weight to have been
about 700 grs. It bears the inscription, _Five Kats of the Treasury of
On_. This gives 140 grains Troy as the weight of the kat[296]. This
inscription also proves that the kat was the unit. For if as is commonly
stated the uten is the unit, of which the kat is simply the one-tenth, we
must naturally expect to find this weight described as ½ uten rather than
as 5 kats. This is confirmed by a statement of the grammarian Horapollo
(or Horus, who although writing about 400 A.D. nevertheless preserves
much valuable information) that “with the Egyptians the didrachm is the
monad. But the monad is the source of production of all numeration.” As
two drachms were 135 grs., it is evident that it is the kat of 140 grs.,
and not the uten of 1400 grs. which the Egyptians themselves regarded as
the basis of their system[297]. Mr Flinders Petrie from the weights of
158 specimens found in the ruins of Naucratis, which range from 136.8
grains to 153 grains, concludes that there were two distinct kat units,
one weighing 142 grs., the other 152 grs. But until some literary
evidence is forthcoming for the existence of this second and heavier
kat[298], we must suspend our judgment. It is perfectly possible that
such existed, being used for some purpose different from that of the kat
of 140 grains. For instance it might have been used specially for copper
owing to a desire to make certain adjustments between silver and copper,
but this is of course mere conjecture.
It is worth while here to see the method by which those who believe in a
scientific system of Egyptian origin obtain their unit.
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 23. Lion weight.]
[Illustration: 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?
Now for the evidence of the monuments themselves.
The weights found by Sir A. H. Layard fall into two classes, (_a_) those
in the shape of Lions, which are made of bronze, and (_b_) those in the
shape of Ducks, which are of stone[305]. “The bronze Lions are for the
most part furnished with a handle on the back of the animal, and are
generally inscribed with a double legend, one in cuneiform characters,
the other in Aramaic.” The Ducks which are inscribed have a legend in
cuneiform characters only. These inscriptions contain not only the
name of the king of Babylon or Assyria in whose reign they were made,
but likewise a statement of the number of the minas or fractions of a
mina which each weight originally represented. As these weights were
found in the ancient palace some have thought that they were possibly
official standards of weight deposited from time to time in the royal
palaces[306]. This seems at least to be implied by the inscriptions on
some of them, such as those of the largest and most ancient of the Duck
weights, which run as follows:
(1) ‘The palace of Irta-Merodach, King of Babylon [circ. B.C.
1050], 30 Manahs[307].’
Wt., 15060·5 grammes, yielding a Mina of 502 gram.
(2) ‘Thirty Manahs of Nabu-suma-libur, King of Assyria,’ [date
unknown].
Wt., 14589 gram.
A small portion of this weight is broken off; if this is allowed
for it will yield a Mina of about the same weight as No. 1.
(3) ‘Ten Manahs’ (somewhat injured), bears the name of ‘Dungi,’
according to George Smith, King of Babylon circ. B.C. 2000.
Wt., 4986 gram., yielding a Mina of 498·6 gram.
On three of the Lions we read as follows:
(1) ‘The Palace of Shalmaneser [circ. B.C. 850] King of the
Country, two manahs of the King,’ in cuneiform characters, and
‘Two Manahs’ weight of the country’ in Aramaic characters.
Wt., 1992 gram., yielding a Mina of 996 gram.
(2) ‘The Palace of Tiglath-Pileser [circ. B.C. 747], King of the
Country, two Manehs’ in cuneiform characters.
Wt., 946 gram., yielding a Mina of 473 gram.
(3) ‘Five Manahs of the King’ in cuneiform characters, and ‘Five
Manahs’ weight of the country’ in Aramaic characters.
Wt., 5042 gram., yielding a Mina of 1008 gram.
The results which we obtain from these weights are that there were
evidently two standards used side by side in the Assyrio-Babylonian
empire, the Mina of one being about 1010 gram., that of the other about
505 gram. In other words one standard was simply the double of the
other; also the weights on which Aramaic legends appear are those which
belong to the double standard. Again, there is no evidence that the
Talent was as yet conceived, as all the weights are Minae or fractions
(or multiples) of Minae. Might we not equally well expect fractions of
the Talent, as for instance to find the weight of 30 Manahs described as
half a Talent, if the Talent already at this period formed part of the
system[308]?
But there is one most important point to be noticed. The single mina
of 505 gram, is plainly different from the mina of gold, (the Euboic
mina of Herodotus) which contained 50 shekels, staters (Darics) of 130
grains (8·4 gram.) each. For it would require 50 shekels of 10·5 gram.
(164 grains) each to make a mina of 505 gram. On the other hand it will
be found that if we take 60 shekels of the Daric or ox-unit weight they
will exactly make up the mina of 505 gram. Neither can this mina be the
Babylonian silver mina of 50 shekels of 172 grains (11·2 gram.) each. For
the Babylonian silver mina consists of 50 shekels of 11·2 gram., whereas
the mina of 505 gram, would give 50 shekels of only 10·1 gram. each. The
obvious conclusion is that this mina of 505 gram. is neither the gold nor
the silver standard. It is a mina composed of 60 shekels of the weight
of the gold unit (Daric or ox-unit). And its talent was composed when
the system was completed, of 60 minae, as was the case with all other
talents. From the weights just described it may reasonably be assumed
that both the heavy and light systems were employed contemporaneously
in the Assyrio-Babylonian empire. Some have suggested that whilst the
light system was employed in Babylon, its double, or the heavy one, was
employed in the northern part of the empire. But the fact that it is
on the weights of the latter standard that we find the double legends,
the second being in Aramaic characters, seems to point irresistibly to
the conclusion that the heavy standard (no matter what it may have been
employed for) was especially used in Syria.
It is of great significance that it is in this very quarter we find in
use as the gold unit not our usual Daric or ox-unit, but its double,
which is commonly known as the heavy gold shekel of 260 grains. I have
suggested elsewhere that the explanation of this may be due to the fact
that among certain peoples, especially those who dwelt after the fashion
of the Sidonians, quiet and full of riches, and who had passed from the
life pastoral into the settled agricultural stage, the yoke or pair of
oxen would readily be regarded as the unit instead of the single ox of
primitive days. The fact that a _zeugos_ or yoke of oxen was taken as the
unit of assessment by Solon for the third of the Athenian classes lends
some support to this view[309]. We have likewise seen how the ancient
Irish, after borrowing the Roman ounce, and equating an ounce of silver
to the cow, made for their silver a higher unit by taking three ounces,
which represented three cows, the ordinary price of a female slave
(_cumhal_).
The Phoenicians employed the double shekel as their unit, but there is
evidence to show that the light shekel was the original unit. We have
seen that in Egypt, Palestine and Greece, from the remotest time, gold
circulated in the form of rings made of a fixed amount of gold, and also
that the unit on which they were made was our ox unit, or light shekel
(130-5 grains). From the practice of using gold rings in currency as well
as for ornament, we may safely conclude that the standard of 130 grains
upon which these were probably made was far anterior to the use of the
double shekel in Syria and Phoenicia.
The standards which we have learned from the weights found at Nineveh
and Khorsabad are now generally known as the light royal talent, and
the heavy royal talent, because on specimens of both standards the
inscriptions describe them as weights “of the king.”
It is evident that as gold and silver had each a separate standard, the
“royal” standards were not employed for the precious metals. It is then
most probable that they were employed for the weighing of the inferior
metals such as copper, which of course played a most important part in
the daily life of both Babylonians and Assyrians. We may rest assured
that corn was not weighed but continued to be bought and sold by dry
measure, as it was with the Hebrews in the days of the Prophets, when the
_Homer_ and the _Ephah_ were employed to measure it.
I shall now give a tabular view of the three standards used by the
peoples of Mesopotamia and their neighbours, treating the _heavy royal
talent_ as merely the double of the light one.
GOLD.
1 Stater = 130 grs. Troy (8·4 gram.).
50 Staters = 1 Mina = 6500 grs. (420·0 gram.).
60 Minae = 1 Talent = 390000 grs.
SILVER.
1 Shekel = 172 grs.
50 Shekels = 1 Manah = 8600 grs.
60 Manahs = 1 Talent = 516000 grs.
ROYAL STANDARD.
1 Shekel = 130 grs. (8·4 gram.).
60 Shekels = 1 Manah = 7800 grs.
60 Manahs = 1 Talent = 468000 grs.
Let us now examine for a moment the current explanation of the origin and
inter-relations of these standards and we shall find that they all start
at the wrong end, assuming as earliest that which can be proved to be
later, and deducing what are really the earliest stages from those which
were in fact the historical outcome of the others.
“The proficiency of the Chaldaeans in the cognate sciences of Arithmetic
and Astronomy is well known[310],[311]. The broad and monotonous plains
of lower Mesopotamia had nothing to attract the eye, and impelled their
inhabitants to fix their attention upon the overarching skies studded
with stars that shone with exceptional clearness and lustre in the dry
pellucid atmosphere of that region. There were no dark mountains looming
in the distance to hinder the eye from watching down to the very horizon
the heavenly bodies in their periodic movements. Thus as Geometry may
be regarded as the special offspring of the Egyptian mind, so Astronomy
and Astrology were the children of Babylonia. The results of their
astronomical observations were duly recorded on clay tablets in the
cuneiform characters, and these tablets were then baked hard, and stored
up in the great libraries in their chief cities. It is recorded that when
Alexander the Great captured Babylon, he obtained and forwarded to his
tutor Aristotle a series of astronomical records extending back as far as
the year B.C. 2234, according to our reckoning.”
Certain investigations into these tablets, primarily suggested by a
fragment of Berosus which described the method of dividing time employed
by the Babylonians, have led scholars to conclude that upon these
observations “rests the entire structure of the metric system of the
Babylonians[312].”
Thus was obtained the famous Babylonian Sexagesimal system. Although the
French metric system of modern days has returned to the decimal system,
which was the first employed by primitive men, being probably suggested
to them by those natural counters, the fingers, the sexagesimal had
a considerable superiority over the older decimal system (which the
Egyptians had clung to) for certain practical purposes, as the number on
which it was based could be resolved into fractions far more conveniently
than the number 10. Dr Hultsch (_Metrologie_², p. 393) arrives at the
Babylonian weight-unit thus: the Babylonian _maris_ is equal to one-fifth
of the cube of the Royal Babylonian Ell, which is itself obtained from
the sun’s apparent diameter. The weight in water corresponding to this
measure of capacity gave the _light_ Royal Babylonian Talent; this Talent
was divided into 60 Minae, and each Mina into sixty parts or _Shekels_.
Their _gold_ Talent was derived from the _sixtieth_ of this Royal Mina,
with the modification that now _fifty_ sixtieths of the Royal Mina made a
_Mina of gold_ and sixty Minae made a Talent[313].
It seems strange that the framers of this theory did not consider that
just as undoubtedly the Chaldaeans must have reckoned their time by
the primitive methods of sunrise, noon and sunset, “full market,” or
ox-loosing time for centuries before they arrived at their scientific
division of time, and just as the Chaldaean artificer employed his
fingers or palm, or span or foot, as a measure of length ages before
the Royal Cubit was equated to the sun’s apparent diameter, so in all
probability they employed as measures of capacity, gourds or eggshells
(as did the Hebrews) and for weights the seeds of plants.
But since, after what we have already seen, it is perfectly clear that
the first of articles to be weighed is gold, and that the unit of weight
is consequently small, we at once join issue with several points in the
theory of Brandis and his school. First they start with the Talent as
the unit, and only arrive at the shekel (the _weight_ par excellence)
by a twofold process of subdivision; secondly, it is assumed that the
Royal Talent which we have had reason to believe was a purely commercial
Talent, seeing that it was employed neither for gold or silver, was the
first to be invented, and that it was only at a later stage that the mina
and talent specially employed for gold were developed, not out of the
primal unit obtained originally from the one-fifth of the cube of the
_maris_, but from the sixtieth of the mina of that Royal Talent; thirdly
one asks in wonder why did the Chaldaeans, who only achieved their
famous Sexagesimal system after gazing at the stars through unnumbered
generations, abandon this precious discovery the very moment they set
about the construction of a weight-unit for gold, for instead of taking
one-sixth of the cube of the _maris_, they are represented as following
their old decimal system with invincible obstinacy by taking one-_fifth_
of the _maris_ as their point of departure; lastly, it is astonishing
that the Chaldaeans did not employ their new discovery in the weighing
of the precious metals, the thing which above all others ought to have
called for the most scientific accuracy.
The fact is, that just as children find some difficulty in realising that
their parents were ever children, so when we stand in the presence of
the remains of the great cities of Egypt and Babylonia, those ancients
of the earth, we are too prone to forget that Thebes, Babylon or Nineveh
had ever their day of small things. The familiar tale of Romulus and
Remus with their band of outlaws dwelling in their hovels beside the
Tiber has kept people in mind that “Rome was not built in a day.” If we
can but just approach the question of the first beginnings of Egyptian
or Chaldaean civilization with the same idea, it will be far easier to
project ourselves into the past of those great races, and thus to realize
far better the conditions under which they grew and lived.
There can be little doubt that the unit of the Babylonian system was the
light shekel (Daric or ox-unit) of 130-5 grs. Troy. But I have shown
that the Chaldaeans were aware of and made use of the method of fixing
weight-units by means of grains of corn such as we have found to be the
universal practice from Ireland to China, and we have at once removed all
need for supposing that it was only when they had discovered a scientific
method of metrology that the Chaldaeans constructed their weight-unit.
After what we have shown upon p. 115 concerning the methods employed in
the buying and selling of corn, where it has been made clear that of all
commodities corn is one of the very last to be weighed because of its
bulkiness in proportion to its cheapness, I think no one will readily
accept M. Aurè’s ingenious hypothesis[314].
Are we not now justified in supposing that, just as the peoples of
Mesopotamia had marked their seasons and time by primitive methods,
and used their fingers and hands and feet as measures long before they
dreamed of scientific methods, so that likewise they had employed for
weighing their gold the natural weight-unit which lay ready to their
hands in the wheat-ears that crowned their plains.
Let us now start with the light shekel as our unit. According to our
argument it was nothing more than the amount of gold which represented
the value of the cow, the unit of barter throughout all Europe, Asia
and Africa, as it still is over considerable areas of both the latter
continents. There is no reason for not believing that as among other
people, all articles of property, utensils, weapons, clothes, ornaments
and the various kinds of animals stand to one another in well-known
relations of value, so the same principle was in full force among the
Semites of Mesopotamia. We found that the wild tribes of Laos had a
regular scale commencing with a hoe as their lowest unit, leading up
through kettles and porcelain jars to the buffalo, their main unit; we
also found that the weight of a grain of corn in gold was equated to
a hoe, and that thus by a simple process of multiplication it was easy
to ascertain the value of a buffalo in gold. The unit thus attained was
kept from fluctuating, as it was known to every one how many grains of
corn gave the true weight of the unit. The practical accuracy of this
method of fixing monetary units has been demonstrated from the case of
the Early English and Mediaeval English silver penny (p. 180). There is
complete evidence to show that the light shekel system was older than the
heavy system. Firstly the so-called Duck weights with their cuneiform
inscriptions point to the fact that Babylonia was the special home of
this system, whilst the Lion weights with their Aramaic inscriptions
point to a later period, when the Assyrian Empire was in immediate touch
with the merchants of Phoenicia. But, in the next place, a far more
powerful argument can be drawn from the Hebrew system. In later times
the heavy shekel system prevailed in Palestine, in accordance with which
the maneh contained 50 heavy or double shekels of 200 grs. each. But
that this maneh was simply imposed on the older light shekel system is
demonstrated from the fact that when in two parallel passages articles of
a certain weight of gold are mentioned, in the one the weight is given at
three manehs, in the other at 300 shekels, the maneh thus being counted
at 100 shekels. These 100 shekels are equal to the 50 heavy shekels of
the heavy Assyrian or Aramaic maneh. Now it is evident that if the heavy
system had been the original one employed by the Hebrews, the maneh would
simply have been reckoned at 50 (heavy) shekels. As the matter stands
it is evident that on the contrary, the heavy mina was introduced into
a system where the unit was simply the light shekel, and the Hebrews
therefore clinging to their old unit, described the maneh as consisting
of 100 shekels instead of 50. Further evidence to the same effect will
be adduced later on. Finding thus the light shekel in Babylonia, in
Palestine and in Egypt, and current even under the Assyrian Empire side
by side with the heavy system even amongst people who used the Aramaic
system of writing, we may without any hesitation regard it as the older.
The process by which the gold Talent was arrived at was somewhat thus:
The ox-unit of 130-135 grs. is the basis.
Next the fivefold of this was taken, whether from five being the simplest
multiple, since it was suggested from the primitive method of counting by
the fingers of one hand, or far less likely from a slave being estimated
at 5 oxen, somewhat as we find among the Homeric Greeks an ordinary
slave-woman estimated at four cows, and in ancient Ireland at three cows.
This weight is known as the Assyrian five-shekel standard, and from it Mr
Petrie derives the 80-grain standard which he detects as the unit of a
certain number of weights found at Naucratis (_Naukratis_, p. 86). Whilst
the Egyptians contented themselves with the 5 ket and 10 ket, or uten,
as their highest unit, the Chaldaeans advanced to the fifty-fold (5 ×
10), and thus obtained that which probably for a long time formed their
highest unit.
What was this _Maneh_? Is it a Semitic word or is it rather an Aryan,
as the present writer has argued elsewhere[315]? At all events it is
interesting to find the appearance of a similar word in the Rig Veda
and that too in connection with gold: this has been regarded by some
as a loan word from Babylon[316]. But it is equally possible, that it
is a “loan word” from India to Babylon. The maneh evidently belongs to
a period anterior to the development of the sexagesimal system, for if
it had come into use along with or subsequent to that system, we should
certainly find 60 instead of 50 shekels in the mina of gold and the mina
of silver: hence it cannot in any wise be regarded as a distinctive
feature of the Babylonian scientific system, as it plainly existed at
the time when the decimal system was still dominant. As the latter was
the system which prevailed among the Indians of the Vedic period there
was no reason why they should borrow the Chaldaean term. On the contrary
there is rather a reason why the Chaldaeans would have borrowed the
term from India. Gold did not pass into India from Babylonia, for as we
have already seen there are no auriferous strata in Mesopotamia, but
it passed from the rich surface deposit of the valley of the Oxus and
Central Asia into Chaldaea. Now if the same term intimately associated
with the same commodity is found among two different peoples, and it is
known as a matter of certainty that one of these countries supplies the
other with this particular article, there is a considerable probability
that the peculiar term connected with the commodity has passed along with
it from the source of its production into the country which imports it.
We saw above that there was no native gold in Chaldaea and therefore it
must have been imported by those Chaldaean merchantmen from India by way
of the Persian Gulf. But was there no gold in Chaldaea until the shipmen
of Ur were able to construct vessels capable of a voyage, even albeit
only a coasting voyage, to the mouths of the Indus? Working in metals
must have been far advanced when such ships were built. That gold came
from India we can have little doubt. But it probably came overland for
ages before anything in the form of a ship larger than a ‘dug-out’ had
ever floated on the Indian Seas.
The first voyage undertaken to the ancient El Dorado may have been to
search for the region from whence came the gold, somewhat in the fashion
that in after-times Pytheas of Massalia sallied forth to investigate
the sources of the tin and amber which reached Marseilles overland from
Britain and the Baltic. After weighing these considerations we shall
be careful to avoid any dogmatic declarations as to the origin of the
word _mana_. One thing however is clear, and that is that the ancient
Hindus were employing certain lumps of gold probably of uniform size in
Vedic times, as we saw[317]. The Indians of the Vedic times had thus a
gold unit of their own (and as we have shown above probably based on
the value of a cow) before they as yet knew the use of silver or had
as yet reached the sea in their downward advance into the peninsula of
Hindustan. Even granting that they borrowed the _Manā_ from Babylonia,
it is plain that they had already their own gold unit, for otherwise
instead of employing _hiranya pinda_, a most primitive term meaning only
_gold-lump_, they would certainly have borrowed the term _shekel_ along
with the _maneh_. But the fact of most importance for us at present is
that, whether _maneh_ be Semitic or Aryan, in either case it seems to
mean not a _weight_ but a _measure_. It will be remembered that we found
the _catty_ or pound of Further Asia was in origin a natural unit of
capacity, as was shown by its Cambodian name _neal_, which simply means a
cocoa-nut, and that we found in China the joints of the bamboo of certain
sizes serving as their measures of capacity, and both cocoa-nuts and
bamboo joints among the Malays of the Indian Isles. This will naturally
suggest the question, Is it possible that the _maneh_ had a somewhat
similar origin? Was some natural object, such as the gourd, which is at
the present moment the ordinary unit of capacity at Zanzibar, taken to
serve as a measure of liquids or of corn? It is probable that the Greek
_cyathus_ (κύαθος) like its Latin congener _cucurbita_ meant originally
some kind of gourd. But there is a certain amount of probability that the
Semitic peoples used gourds in primitive times for vessels, not simply
from _à priori_ considerations, but from the fact that the most archaic
pottery obtained by Mr Petrie from his excavations on the site of the
ancient city of Lachish in 1890 show unmistakable signs of being modelled
after the shape of a gourd. Although the Chinese never have employed
their _ching_ (catty) for the precious metals, yet the Cambodians have
advanced to counting silver not only by the _catty_ but also by the
_picul_. Did then the Babylonians make 50 shekels of gold or silver
roundly equal to their _maneh_ or measure of capacity? This is of course
pure speculation, but it is at least supported by the comparison of what
has actually taken place elsewhere; and even from the empire of the Great
King himself can we get an insight into the method by which the _maneh_
(and likewise the Talent) may have been brought into the weight system.
Herodotus[318] tells us that when the tribute of gold (largely in gold
dust) and silver was brought to the King he stored it thus: “he melts it
and pours it into earthenware jars, and when he has filled the vessels
he strips off the earthenware, and whenever he wants money, he cuts off
as much as he needs on each occasion.” We saw above that the Cambodian
_catty_ of silver is twice the weight of the catty of rice, the Cambodian
_catty_ being simply the cocoanut, the ordinary unit of capacity, which
after being filled with rice or silver and then weighed has given two
different _catties_. The Great King no doubt poured his gold into jars
of known capacity, and the weight of such a jar when filled with gold
was well known. It seems then not unlikely that in this way from either
a jar, or from the gourd which preceded the jar, the mina was derived.
However the _maneh_ may have been determined, it is fairly certain that
the Babylonians fixed upon 50 as a convenient multiple of the gold unit
when silver first came into use; as we have seen above it was probably
equal if not superior in value to gold and it was naturally weighed by
the same unit. But in the course of time as it became more plentiful, and
at the same time if likewise the art of weighing began to be employed by
merchants in the traffic in the costly spices and balsams of the east, a
necessity would be specially felt among traders for a somewhat heavier
unit than the original shekel. Possibly then the Aramaean merchants
adopted the double shekel (based on the double ox-unit) for the purpose
of weighing silver (when that metal had now become much more plentiful
than gold), and for trade in precious gums and spices. Such a procedure
can be well paralleled by the old English pound of silk, which is simply
two pounds Troy weight. Silk was of course of great value, and was
accordingly weighed after the same system as the precious metals; but
when it became less costly and more abundant the weight unit was simply
doubled. We may therefore regard the doubling of the original shekel as
an early step towards the development of a commercial standard. It is not
difficult to understand how in the course of time a nation of traders
like the Phoenicians preferred this double standard even for their gold,
and made it perhaps, as we shall shortly see, the basis of their silver
standard.
We saw above that there is every reason to believe that when silver first
became known to mankind, they esteemed it as highly as gold, if not more
so. It would naturally, therefore, be weighed on the same standard as
gold. This would continue until, in the course of years, a time came
when the relation between gold and silver had become fairly fixed over
all Asia Minor. We know that in the beginning of the 5th cent. B.C. gold
was to silver as 13:1 (or rather 13·3:1). Herodotus, in the celebrated
passage in which he describes the organisation of the Persian empire into
satrapies, and details the amount of tribute appointed by Darius for
each, tells us that the gold was reckoned at thirteen times the value
of silver. Now for ordinary purposes of exchange this relation would be
extremely inconvenient, and the more accurate relation of 13·3:1 would
be still more so. It became thus desirable to fix some separate standard
for silver by which a convenient number, such as 10, of silver ingots
would be equal to the gold ingot of the ox-unit standard. Metrologists
are wont to speak of the desirability of being able to exchange a round
number of talents of silver for a talent of gold. But not even in the
palmiest days of the wealthy Orient lands was the ordinary individual so
rich that he felt any inconvenience in the way of exchanging _talents_
of gold and silver. The Great King might deal out talents as he pleased,
but his subjects were chiefly concerned with the exchange of silver and
gold shekels. I have made this remark because it appears to me that many
of the misconceptions connected with this whole subject have arisen from
scholars concentrating all their attention on the talent, and taking it
as their point of departure.
The Babylonians arrived at their silver standard as follows:
1 gold shekel of 130 grs. was worth 1730 grs. of silver (130 × 13·3),
since gold was to silver as 13·3:1.
130 grs. gold = 1730 grs. silver.
They divided this amount of silver by 10, and thus:
1 gold shekel of 130 grs. = 10 silver shekels of 173 grs.
As we stated already, Herodotus says that the Babylonian talent was equal
to 70 Euboic minas, that is, one-sixth more than the Euboic talent. The
latter contained 390,000 grs. Troy, therefore the Babylonian ought to
give 455,000 grs. If we multiply our silver shekel by 50 and then by 60,
we shall obtain a total amount for the talent of silver of 519,000 grs.
Unfortunately several inaccuracies have crept into the text of Herodotus,
numerals always being especially liable to corruption in MSS. He seems,
however, to have regarded the relation of the Euboic to the Babylonian
talent as about that of 5:6, and also to have estimated the current
weight of the Persian silver piece at about 162 grs. Troy. But there can
be little doubt that the full standard weight of the Babylonian silver
shekel was 169 grs. (or, according to Mr Head, 172·9 grs.).
From this it is easy to construct the Babylonian _silver_ system, which
was employed in Lydia and in the Persian empire.
1 shekel = 169 grs.
50 shekels = 1 mina = 7450,
60 minae = 1 talent 447000.
From the double gold shekel was formed another silver standard known as
the _Phoenician_.
Gold being to silver as 13:1,
1 double shekel of 260 grs. = 3380 grs. silver,
3380 grs. silver = 15 shekels of 225·3 grs.
As this silver standard is found in the same area as the double gold
shekel, I have thought it best to follow the usual derivation, but at the
same time it is worth pointing out that it may have been gained directly
from the light shekel.
The light shekel (which in the form of coined money appears either as the
gold of Croesus, or the Daric), in the case of the Babylonian system was
made equal to ten silver didrachms, or 20 drachms known under the name of
Sigli; it likewise is equal in value to 15 Phoenician didrachms of 112·6
grs. Thus, whilst in one region they obtained a silver unit, ten of which
would be an equivalent to the gold unit, in another they formed a silver
unit, 15 of which would be equivalent to the same gold unit of 130 grs.
In each case a number convenient for purposes of exchange was substituted
for the extremely unmanageable number 13 (or still more intractable 13·3)
of the older system, according to which silver was made into ingots of
the same size as those of gold.