Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/303

 Spain. I have already related the ancient stories which embody the account of the marvellous amount of silver which the first bold explorers brought back. We need not wonder then if in the days of king Solomon, "silver was nothing accounted of" in Syria and Palestine. We also saw that the relative value of gold and silver was just as liable to fluctuate in ancient, as in modern times, according to the supply of either metal, and when we come to deal with the Greek system we shall find many instances of this. If we then suppose that gold was to silver as 17:1 in Phoenicia, the gold shekel of 130 grs. would be worth ten silver pieces of 220 grs. each. (130 x 17 = 2210; 2210/10 = 221). This is in reality far closer to the actual weight of the coins than the result obtained by the old hypothesis: 260 x 13·3 = 3466 ÷ 15 = 231 grs. Troy, which is about 10 grs. higher than the actual coin weights.

The approximation gained by our conjectural relation of 17 : 1, is far closer than that obtained by that of 13·3 : 1. The conclusion is probable that silver was far cheaper in Phoenicia and the contiguous coasts than elsewhere in Asia Minor, and that it was natural that the weight of the silver unit was increased in order to preserve the relation in value between one gold unit, and ten silver units. Lastly we may point out that at no place on the coast of Phoenicia or Asia Minor, the region especially in contact with the Phoenicians, do we find gold pieces struck on the heavy shekel. Electrum certainly was coined on this foot; but of this we shall be able to give a satisfactory explanation. We have (with the exception of some Lydian pieces) to go as far north as Thasos or Thrace before we find a gold coin of such a nature, which is of course nothing more than a double stater.

The Phoenician gold mina was probably like the Hebrew, which was most likely borrowed from it, the fifty-fold of the heavy shekel, 100 gold shekels and 100 silver shekels constituting a maneh, as amongst the Hebrews in the time of Solomon. But we can conjecture with some probability that at an earlier stage they weighed their gold and silver according to the old common ox-unit, which we found in use among the Hebrews under the name of the Holy Shekel or shekel of the