Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/214

 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