Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/284

 higher unit of the kikkar or talent was added to the gold and silver systems, sixty manehs in each case making the kikkar as in the case of the royal or commercial system; that in the case of silver, which on its first discovery and employment was as valuable as gold, and was therefore weighed on the same standard, when in course of time it became about thirteen times less valuable than gold, and there was a difficulty experienced in exchanging the units of gold and silver; a separate standard was created by dividing into ten new parts or shekels the amount of silver which was the equivalent of the gold shekel (ox-unit); that this was probably developed before the royal commercial mina of 60 shekels had been formed, as in that case the silver mina would have contained 60 shekels likewise; we were able to give an explanation of the name royal as applied to the commercial standard by regarding it as of late origin, created by a supreme central authority for the regulation of the commerce of a great empire made up of a heterogeneous mass of races, just as in the present century our own imperial standards have been fixed for the whole kingdom, being based, as was the Babylonian, on an ancient unit empirically obtained; and just as the royal arms are stamped on our imperial standards, so the weights of the Assyrian royal system were shaped in the form of a lion, the symbol of royalty throughout the East. Finally we found that at the base of the Assyrio-Babylonian system lay, as the determinant of the ox-unit or shekel, the grain of wheat, which we have already traced all across Europe into Asia. We can therefore now come to a very reasonable conclusion that the Assyrio-Babylonian weight system was in its origin empirical, and that it was only at a comparatively late date in its history, just as in the case of our own standards, that a certain uniformity between the standards of measures and weights was brought about by the (not complete) application of the sexagesimal system of numeration, the invention of which is their eternal glory.

Having now dealt with Egypt, and the systems which prevailed in the Assyrio-Babylonian empire, it will be best to treat of the region which lay between them. In both the former countries we found the light shekel or ox-unit in use