* It is of great importance, in view of subsequent discussions, to observe that the word στατήρ, stater (from fermus in the sense of ‘to weigh’), is the true Gr. equivalent of the Semitic shekel, of which σύγλος (see below) is a transliteration.
+ The word daric (Q«puxés) has probably no etymological connexion with Darius (Old Pers. Darayavaus), but is rather to be traced to the Assyrian dartku, applied to a piece of money in the reign of Nabonidus.
! The siglos, it must be observed, is in reality a half-shekel, being τἀπὶ of the Babylonian silver mina. Inasmuch as the term stater, as the equivalent of shekel, represents y,th of the mina, the Greeks applied the term δρα χμέ, drachm, to the half- stater, or yAnth part. From this point of view, the daric—while a stater or shekel on the light Babylonian standard—might be regarded as a Irachm on the Aeavy standard (see below).
Money of
a ‘type’ but by an irregular oblong ‘ incuse. The type of the sig/os closely resembles that of tha daric, but is less constant. In sterling money the daric (130 grs. of pure gold), on the basis of caleula- tion adopted in § 1, was worth £1, 18, ld., say one guinea, and, since the gold unit was equal to twent; of the silver unit* (on the basis of 13°3:1; ef. Xen. Anab. i. 7. 18), the sig/os was worth a fraction more than a shilling.
The daric and siglos, we have said, are the first coins that can possibly have circulated in Pales- tine, which formed part of the fifth satrapy (Babelon, op. cit. xxf.). Is there any reference to either in the Hebrew literature of the period? Our Revisers zeply in the affirmative, since in six pees of the historical work Chronicles-Ezra-
ehemiah (see Driver, LOT® 516) they have sub- stituted ‘darics’ for the ‘drams’ (i.e. drachms) of AV (1Ch 297, Ezr 2° 877, Neh 77-71-72), The original has 7231 except in 1 Ch 29’, Ezr 857, where we find jia71x.t The first passage must be set aside as a pure anachronism. Of the remainder, Neh 7% and its parallel Ezr 2° bring extracts from an earlier document recording the contribu- tions for religious purposes given on the occasion of the return under Cyrus, i.e. nearly twenty years before the introduction of the daric, while ἘΠ 877 refers not to money but to the weight (1000 *adarkénim) Ὁ of ‘twenty basins of gold.’ Since, then, the darkemon is clearly a weight and not a coin, it scarcely can be anything but the word δραχμή, the ἘΣ ΕΣ designation among the Greeks for the yjsth part of the mina. This conclusion is confirmed by the following considerations: (1) Lucian’s Greek text has δραχμάς throughout ; (2) darkemon was the recognized Semitic transcrip- tion of δραχμή, as is proved by a Phoenician in- scription from the Pirus, in which a colony of Sidonians there (prob. in the 3rd cent. B.C.) vote two sums of twenty darkemonim (020277) ὃ each to defray the expense of a gold crown and a gilded stele in honour of a countryman, ‘ Shemabaal, son of Magon.’
In attempting to estimate the value of the darkemon or drachm as the weight in terms of which the contributions are entered in Nehemiah’s lists, we would lay stress on the fact above indi- eated, that the drachm is essentially the hundredth
art of the mina—in other words, a half-shekel.
ow if, as we believe, the Hebrew gold shekel par excellence was the heavy shekel of 252-260 grains, and if, as is most probable, the original entries were made on the Persian or light Babylonian royal standard, of which the shekel was 130 grs, (the weight of the later daric), we can understand why a Jewish author—or, it may be, editor—to avoid ssible ambiguity, should have altered the original light shekels into the equivalent drachms (either being y}sth of the Hebrew gold mina). If this be so, the total amount of gold contributed by ‘ the Tirshatha (1000 drachms), the
* This proportion of 20 to 1, first adopted by Darius, is stil! maintained in most currencies at the present day (cf. sovereign and shilling, ‘ Napoleon’ and franc, etc.).
+ For the conflicting views of scholars as to the etymology of these words, see sub pDIN7 in Oxf. Lex. (Brown-Brizys-Driver) and reff. there. Also Madden, Coins of the Jews, 46; Hultsch, Metrol.2 485 n, 2.
t Theinteresting corruptions inthe Greek text of A and B(i«- Spay usr tir—sdorxeuxvu) seem to prove that the original here was 0°}1D)77 darkéménim, as in the other passages just cited.
§ In line 8, owing probably to a slip of the engraver, the word is written 02377, On the strength of this, Ed. Meyer in his detailed discussion of Neh 77 in his Entstehung d. Judenthuma, 106 ff., takes 0°3375 as= gold darics and 0.30377 as = Attic (silver) drachms; but it is much more likely that the same denomina tion, viz. Attic gold drachms, is intended throughout (cf. the interesting parallels from the Greek Corpus given by Lidzbarski, Handb. ἃ. nordsemit, Epigraphik (1898), pp. 124 and 160. The inscription itself, ἐδ. pl. vill. 6, in square characters, p. 425 Other literature apud Bloch, Phin. Glossar. p. 0).
423
MONEY
chief of the fathers (20,000), and the rest of the people (20,000),’ is equal to 41,000 drachms, dariecs, or guineas.* In the same way the mina (EV pound), by which the silver contributions are reckoned, can hardly be other than the Perso- ΒΕΜΥΙΟΣΙΟ royal mina, of which the later sig/os was the hundredth part. Since the latter was in value Asth of the daric, its mina was equal to five darics, and the total contributions (4200 minas, Neh 77-7) to 21,000 darics, that is, to circa as many