Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/215

 series of astronomical observations extending back as far as the year 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into 24 hours, each of 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds—a method of measuring time which has never been superseded, and which we have inherited from Babylon, together with the first principles of the science of astronomy.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 ."*