Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/136

 by weight, being as costly as gold. The familiar description of Goliath of Gath, the weight of whose coat of mail "was five thousand shekels of brass," and whose "spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron," will serve to show that articles in the inferior metals were at that time estimated according to weight by the Hebrews and their neighbours, the Philistines. Of the weighing of wool we find no instance, but it is quite possible that it was from the practice of weighing wool that Absalom when he "polled his head, (for it was at every year's end that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it:) he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels after the king's weight" (2 Sam, xiv. 26). But it is perhaps more probable that the habit of weighing a child's hair against gold or silver to fulfil a vow (which was almost certainly Absalom's motive) may have suggested the employment of the scales for wool.