Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/269

Rh physical reason why one side should be more worn than the other unless the stone is greatly softer on one side, which in so small a piece of an evenly grained hæmatite may be regarded as impossible. I conclude that the second inscription was engraved after the weight was worn by use. To verify this conclusion I requested a practical physical observer to look at the stone, and after careful examination he declared that he could not understand how anyone believed the two inscriptions to be of the same age. For further verification I took a strong lens and examined the toolmarks on each side, with the result that I found the second inscription to exhibit a different and inferior technique. To a certain extent the technical inferiority of the side is manifest even on the cast; notably in the letters. But on the original the same thing appears in other letters—e.g., in the. Straight strokes, which the first artist effected by a clean and uniform sawcut, are produced on the second side by two or three cuts, made by an uncertain hand, which could not keep a single direction truly.

6. Of course, if this be so—and the matter is one on which I appeal with confidence to all who will take the trouble to examine the original with minute precision—the idea that the two inscriptions are continuous and mean "quarter of a quarter of a " (whatever the last word may mean) falls to the ground. And here I may notice another little point which possibly leads in the same direction. If the weight is set on its plane base, the second inscription is right side up, and the first is upside down, which hardly looks as if they were meant to be read continuously. At all events, it is now plain that the older inscription is complete in itself, and if it really reads, it may be best interpreted as standing for , "a quarter of full weight." This use of is Biblical, the contraction is strictly in accordance with analogy, and the phrase as a whole finds its exact parallel in the adjective wāfin "of full weight" on the glass coin weights of the Arabs.

According to old Hebrew idiom, "a quarter," without specification of the unit, can only mean a quarter shekel. Now Mr. Petrie, in Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1890, p. 267, makes our weight 39·2 grains, which would give a shekel of 156·8 (or something more if we allow for wearing). The weight of the old Hebrew shekel is still disputed, but the balance of evidence seems to me to favour the conclusions of Professor Ridgeway, who puts it at 130 to 135 grains. In that case, our quarter is too heavy; but it came from Samaria, and we know from Amos viii, 5, that the merchants of Samaria made the ephah small and the shekel great in order to cheat their customers.

In truth Professor Sayce's reading of this side gives an interpretation so easy and good, that one is reluctant to abandon it, and wonders why he himself did not hit on it. But, as we have seen, the possibility of reading is doubtful or more than doubtful. And, if this reading is given up, it does not seem possible to make any other letters out of the group of signs without inventing imaginary supplementary lines on a scale for