Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/219

 based on the sun's apparent diameter; the cube of this measure gave the maris, the weight in water of one-fifth of which was the royal Babylonian talent, which was divided into 60 manehs (minae) and each mina in turn into 60 shekels. For silver and gold however they formed their standard by taking fifty shekels to form a mina : thus after elaborating with such care a scientific system, they abandoned it as soon as they came to deal with the precious metals. M. Soutzo in a clever essay has maintained that all the weight systems both monetary and commercial of Asia, Egypt, Greece, come from one primordial weight the Egyptian uten (96 grammes), or from its tenth, the kat (9·60 grammes). He ascribes the origin of these weights to an extremely remote epoch not far perhaps from the time of the discovery of bronze in Asia, and the invention of the first instruments for weighing: he considers also that bronze by weight was the first money employed in Asia, Egypt, and Italy, and that everywhere the decimal system of numeration has preceded the sexagesimal. The evidence which we have produced in the earlier part of this work has I trust convinced the reader that gold, not copper, was the first object to be weighed; M. Soutzo's assumption that the uten is the primordial unit is upset even for the Egyptians themselves by the passage already cited from Horapollo (p. 129). The invention of coinage.

The evidence of both history and numismatics coincides in making the Lydians the inventors of the art of coining money. At first sight it may seem surprising that none of the great peoples of the East, whose civilization had its first beginning long ages before the periods at which our very oldest records begin, should have developed coined money, acquainted as they indubitably were with the precious metals, both for ornament and exchange. But a little reflection shews us that it has been quite possible for peoples to attain a high