Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/287

 qesitah in these three passages by [Greek: hekaton amnôn, hekaton amnadôn], and [Greek: amnada mian], thus in every case regarding it as a lamb. The most ancient interpreters all agree in this, whilst some of the later Rabbis regarded it as signifying a coin stamped with the form of a lamb: one of them says that he found such a coin in Africa. A.

B.

Weights in the form of Sheep[3 .]

Long ago Prof. R. S. Poole, speaking of this word, said: "The sanction of the LXX, and the use of weights bearing the forms of lions, bulls, and geese by the Egyptians, Assyrians, and probably Persians, must make us hesitate before we abandon a rendering [lamb] so singularly confirmed by the relation of the Latin pecunia and pecus ." The connection between weights and units of currency is especially close at a time when coined money is as yet unknown, and hence when we find weights in the form of sheep coming from Syria, and also recollect that sheep were employed as a regular unit in Palestine for the paying of tribute, and with the light obtained from primitive systems of currency, we may well conclude that the qesitah was an old unit of barter, like the Homeric ox, and