Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/52

 memorial passed in the ordinary course of barter from hand to hand. This is strongly supported by a piece of evidence produced independently of the previous suggestion by Dr Hoffmann of Kiel, who has showed that betzer the word used for gold in Job xxii. 24-25 (b[)e]tz[)e]r) and in Job xxxvi. 19 (b'tzar), from a comparison of its cognates in Hebrew and Arabic means simply a ring, which through the extended meaning ring-gold came finally to be used as a name for the metal simply. To take another example from a very different region, the golden ornaments of the ancient Irish (of which numerous specimens exist in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy) were made according to specified weight. Thus queen Medbh is represented as saying: 'My spear-brooch of gold, which weighs thirty ungas, and thirty half ungas, and thirty crosachs and thirty quarter [crosachs].' O'Curry, Manners and Customs of Ancient Irish, iii. 112. But we need not go beyond Greek soil itself for such illustrations. The well-known story of Archimedes and the weight of the golden crown, which led to the discovery of specific gravity, is sufficient to show that the practice in Greece was such as I describe.

The rings seen on Egyptian monuments (of which we give a representation in a later chapter) are of round wire; those found by Schliemann in the tombs of Mycenae (Fig. 9) consist both of round wire rings like the Egyptian, and likewise of spirals of quadrangular wire. As finger rings ([Greek: daktylioi]) are not mentioned in Homer, it has been assumed that the Homeric Greeks did not employ rings at all. Hence in a famous passage where the ornaments made by Hephaestus for the goddesses are described, we find mention of brooches, bent spirals ([Greek: helikes]) ear-drops, and chains. Helbig explains the helikes as a kind of brooch made of four spirals, such as are worn in parts of Central Europe, but it is difficult to believe that people who were using brooches with pins and necklaces would not have known and employed the far simpler ring. Again, why should.]