Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/234

 the normal weight, for whatever may have been the inclination to mint coins of a weight lighter than the proper standard, we may rest assured that the ancient mint-master was no more inclined than his modern representative to put into coins of gold or silver a single grain more than the legal amount. Hence it is a most faulty and fallacious method when dealing with coin weights to take the average of a certain number of specimens as the true standard. Out of 30 specimens 29 may have lost more or less in weight by wear, whilst one may be a fleur de coin, perfect as at the moment when it left the die. No one can doubt that the evidence of that single coin as regards the standard is worth far more than that of all the remaining 29 examples. I have thought it well to call attention to this question of method as the vicious principle of arriving at standards by taking the average is still found in works of men of great eminence.

Next let us consider the probability of the derivation of the Aeginetic standard from Egypt. The fact that weights of like standard have been found in that country, although superficially plausible, in reality is of little force as evidence of borrowing. For unless we find that the Egyptians used those weights for weighing silver, even the prima facie case breaks down at once. As a matter of fact there is no evidence up to the present that these weights were so employed, although there is some evidence of their being employed for gold (Flinders Petrie, op. cit.). But even granting that the Egyptians used the same standard as the Aeginetans for silver, it does not at all follow that there has been borrowing on either side. On the principle laid down below it will be seen that it is quite possible for two peoples to evolve a like silver standard perfectly independently of each other. But the real difficulty which besets the theory of an Egyptian origin is that if the Aeginetans were to borrow their standard from abroad, the people from whom they would in all probability have obtained it were not the Egyptians, with whom they had but slight relations directly, but rather the Phoenicians, with whom they were in constant intercourse.

It cannot be proved that at any time the Egyptians were a