Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/201

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

To all the evidence collected from Asia and Europe we can likewise add a fact of great importance from Africa. We saw that it was highly probable that the Carthaginians traded for gold to the West Coast of Africa, and beyond all reasonable doubt the natives of the Gold Coast have for ages been acquainted with that metal. Now it can be proved that these peoples, whilst employing no weights for any other mercantile transaction, used the seeds of certain plants for weighing their gold; thus Bosman writing two centuries ago says, "Having treated of gold at large, I am now obliged to say something