Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/213

 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. 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