Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/265

 of gold, (the Euboic mina of Herodotus) which contained 50 shekels, staters (Darics) of 130 grains (8·4 gram.) each. For it would require 50 shekels of 10·5 gram. (164 grains) each to make a mina of 505 gram. On the other hand it will be found that if we take 60 shekels of the Daric or ox-unit weight they will exactly make up the mina of 505 gram. Neither can this mina be the Babylonian silver mina of 50 shekels of 172 grains (11·2 gram.) each. For the Babylonian silver mina consists of 50 shekels of 11·2 gram., whereas the mina of 505 gram, would give 50 shekels of only 10·1 gram. each. The obvious conclusion is that this mina of 505 gram. is neither the gold nor the silver standard. It is a mina composed of 60 shekels of the weight of the gold unit (Daric or ox-unit). And its talent was composed when the system was completed, of 60 minae, as was the case with all other talents. From the weights just described it may reasonably be assumed that both the heavy and light systems were employed contemporaneously in the Assyrio-Babylonian empire. Some have suggested that whilst the light system was employed in Babylon, its double, or the heavy one, was employed in the northern part of the empire. But the fact that it is on the weights of the latter standard that we find the double legends, the second being in Aramaic characters, seems to point irresistibly to the conclusion that the heavy standard (no matter what it may have been employed for) was especially used in Syria.

It is of great significance that it is in this very quarter we find in use as the gold unit not our usual Daric or ox-unit, but its double, which is commonly known as the heavy gold shekel of 260 grains. I have suggested elsewhere that the explanation of this may be due to the fact that among certain peoples, especially those who dwelt after the fashion of the Sidonians, quiet and full of riches, and who had passed from the life pastoral into the settled agricultural stage, the yoke or pair of oxen would readily be regarded as the unit instead of the single ox of primitive days. The fact that a zeugos or yoke of oxen was taken as the unit of assessment by Solon for the third of the Athenian classes lends some support to this view. We have