Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/267



1 Shekel = 172 grs. 50 Shekels = 1 Manah = 8600 grs. 60 Manahs = 1 Talent = 516000 grs.

1 Shekel = 130 grs. (8·4 gram.). 60 Shekels = 1 Manah = 7800 grs. 60 Manahs = 1 Talent = 468000 grs.

Let us now examine for a moment the current explanation of the origin and inter-relations of these standards and we shall find that they all start at the wrong end, assuming as earliest that which can be proved to be later, and deducing what are really the earliest stages from those which were in fact the historical outcome of the others.

"The proficiency of the Chaldaeans in the cognate sciences of Arithmetic and Astronomy is well known, . The broad and monotonous plains of lower Mesopotamia had nothing to attract the eye, and impelled their inhabitants to fix their attention upon the overarching skies studded with stars that shone with exceptional clearness and lustre in the dry pellucid atmosphere of that region. There were no dark mountains looming in the distance to hinder the eye from watching down to the very horizon the heavenly bodies in their periodic movements. Thus as Geometry may be regarded as the special offspring of the Egyptian mind, so Astronomy and Astrology were the children of Babylonia. The results of their astronomical observations were duly recorded on clay tablets in the cuneiform characters, and these tablets were then baked hard, and stored up in the great libraries in their chief cities. It is recorded that when Alexander the Great captured Babylon, he obtained and forwarded to his tutor Aristotle a series of astronomical records extending back as far as the year 2234, according to our reckoning."

Certain investigations into these tablets, primarily suggested by a fragment of Berosus which described the method of divi-*