Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/278

 These now are the systems on which depended all traffic and currency of the precious metals throughout Western Asia for many centuries. I have been compelled in the statement of the two silver systems to anticipate one step in the growth of the fully developed weight system by speaking of the Talent. We have seen that the mina of silver, like that of gold, contains only 50 shekels, thus evidently having likewise been developed before the full elaboration of the Chaldaean system of numeration, or at least before the application of that system to their metric standards. But when we come to deal with the talent we find that in every case alike, whether it be the gold, silver, or royal talent of commerce, the talent invariably consists of sixty minae. From this we may with safety infer that it was at a period posterior to the invention of the sexagesimal method that the Talent was added to the gold and silver systems. When we turn to the royal system (both light and heavy), we find that the mina consists of sixty shekels, just as the talent consists of 60 minae, and consequently we are constrained to believe that this royal system was fixed at a date long after the growth of the gold and silver minae, and when the sexagesimal system had now complete sway. We have already seen good reason for considering the royal talent to be essentially a mercantile unit. It certainly was not used for gold or silver. Corn was not sold by weight, and so in all probability it was meant for copper, iron, lead, and merchandise of value. We have learned from our studies in the metal trade of primitive peoples that copper and iron are not weighed but are sold by measurement, being wrought into bars or plates of a well defined size. It is only when communities are well advanced in culture that they begin to employ the scales for the buying and selling of the common metals. We argued above that the double shekel system arose from a desire amongst a nation of traders like the Phoenicians for a heavier standard, more serviceable for such goods as were less valuable than gold. It was probably the same desire which found its complete realization in the royal system. Whilst gold and silver had only the mina as their highest unit, there was a new system developed scientifically from the ancient shekel or