Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/233

 What then was the standard on which these early coins of Aegina were struck?

The heaviest specimens of these Aeginetan staters or didrachms weigh over 200 grains Troy, but these seem somewhat exceptional. The best numismatic authorities are agreed in setting the normal weight at 196 grains Troy; the drachm consequently weighs 98 grains, and the obol about 16 grains. The origin of this standard has caused much difficulty to metrologists. For it is not the standard of the Babylonian gold shekel of 130 grains, nor of the Babylonian silver shekel of 172 grains, nor again that of the Phoenician silver shekel of 230 grains. Various solutions have been proposed. Brandis regards it as a raised Babylonian silver standard, 172·9 to 196 grains. Mr Head regards it as the reduced Phoenician standard; "The weight standard which the Peloponnesians had received in old times from the Phoenician traders had suffered in the course of about two centuries a very considerable degradation ." Others, like Mr Flinders Petrie (Encyclop. Britannica, Weights and Measures), regard it as Egyptian in origin. According to Herodotus ( 178) the Aeginetans were on terms of friendly intercourse with Egypt; furthermore weights of this standard have been found in Egypt.

Again, Dr Hultsch (Metrol.^2 p. 188) regards it as an independent standard midway between the Babylonian silver standard (172·9 grs.) on the one hand, and the Phoenician silver standard (230 grs.) on the other, the old Aeginetan silver mina being equivalent in value to six light Babylonian shekels of gold (130 × 6 = 780 grs. = 10300 grs. of silver), assuming that in Greece as in Asia Minor gold was to silver as 13·3 : 1.

All these theories labour under serious difficulties. Brandis' theory was overthrown easily as soon as attention was called to the well-defined heavy series of Aeginetic coins, he having been led to his opinion by a comparison of the heaviest specimen of the Babylonian standard with the lightest of the Aeginetic. Here incidentally we may call the readers' attention to the fact that in numismatics the weight of the heaviest specimens of any series must be regarded as the true index of