| associated with the payment of the priestly dues
from time immemorial, but also as being the speci- fically Hebrew shekel, just as the Hebrew language was distinguished from all others as ‘the sacred tongue (πραγ. Ὁ). Some epithet of the kind was required in early post-exilic times to distinguish this shekel from the Perso-Babylonic shekel of 168-173 grs. (see next paragraph), which may well have been the only shekel then officially recognized in Juda, a province of the Persian empire.
he date of the institution of the temple tax of half a shekel, above referred to, has been the subject of much discussion. It does not appear to have been contemplated by the original framers of the Priests’ Code,{ since we find the community, immediately after ratifying that code, charging themselves ‘ yearly with the third part of a shekel for the service of the house’ (Neh 10% Heb. 8), Since the Hebrew-Pheenician shekel is never divided otherwise than by halves and quarters, this must be the official Perso-Babylonian shekel (4=56-58 grs., worth c. 83d.). At a later date, certainly before the time of the Chronicler (c. 300 B.C.; οἵ. 2Ch 24°), the tax was raised by the
* The LXX gives the same rendering to the obscure DD N38 18 236 only (AV a piece of silver, LXX ὀβολοῦ ἀργυρίου). This word is probably to be restored in the Marseilles sacrificial tablet (crs i. 165; Lidzbarski, Nordsem. Epigraphik, 428), line 12, where Driver (Authority and aes Le 1899) renders *10 gferah] each.’ (In 2nd ed. ‘10 a{gorahs?],’ with note that perhaps same as the gerah). Lenormant (La monnaie, i. 107) thought he had discovered the word giru in an Egyp. papyrus.
t The effective weight of good specimens of the extant half- shekel lies between 108 and 110 grs.
τ Were Ex 3011-16 a late addition to the code, inserted with a view to legalizing the half-shekel tax, as some modern critics hold, the fact of its being an annual contribution would surely have been emphasized.
MONEY
MONEY 423
priestly authorities—appealing, no doubt, to the passage in Exodus—to half the native shekel (112 grs., worth c. 1s. 44d.).
The darie and siglos, we have said, were the first coins to have legal currency in Judea. But soon after Nehemiah’s time another silver coinage made its appearance. In the second half of the 5th cent. the wealthy commercial cities on the Mediterranean seaboard had begun to issue silver money under their native kings.* Aradus, Sidon, Tyre, and Gaza were among the greatest trade centres of the period. The ‘men of Tyre,’ we may be sure, were not the only traders that brought ‘all manner of ware’ to Jerusalem (Neh 137), and the coins followed the trade. One of the earliest of these is a fine double-shekel of Sidon (423 grs.) in the British Museum (see Plate No. 2).
Rev. A Pheenician galley with mast and sails.
Obv. King of Persia in his chariot, driven by his
charioteer. M. Wt. 423 grs.
Of no city or sovereign, however, are the coins of such importance to the student of Jewish numismatics as those of Tyre. Have we not seen that all the moneys mentioned in the Pentateuch were to be paid in Tyrian—rather, in a wider sense, Phenician—currency? The earliest coins of Tyre take us back to near the middle of the 5th cent. B.C., the latest date from the reign of Septimius Severus. No. 3 of our Plate shows an early, not perhaps the earliest, specimen of a tetra- drachm of Tyre (a shekel of c. 220 grs.), the real ‘shekel of the sanctua:
Obv. Melkarth (the
bow, and riding over the waves on or sea horse ; beneath, a dolphi
᾽
‘Pyrian Hercules) holding a hippocamp in.
Rev. Owl bearing over left shoulder the Egyptian
crook and flail (the symbols of Osiris).
The reverse is of great interest as showing the range of the mercantile relations of Tyre and the resulting influence of Athens on the one hand, and of Egypt on the other (cf. Babelon, op cit. Introd. celxxxix). The influence of Athens on Palestine at this early period is still more strikingly shown by the coins of Gaza, which not only imitate the type and legend of the coins of Athens, but are struck on the Attic standard.
§ 4. Coinage of the Ptolemies and Seleucids and ies semi-autonomous cities to the time of Simon
faccabeus.—At the date of his conquest of Asia, Alexander the Great introduced his international currency in the three metals, gold, silver, and bronze.t The Fractal coins are the gold stater or didrachm of 133 grs. actual weight; for silver the tetradrachm (266 grs.) and the drachm (664 grs.). These weights introduce us to a new standard, the Euboic-Attic,t on which the cur- rency of Athens was based—from this time on- wards to the 3rd cent. A.D. the most widely spread of ancient monetary standards. Coins with Alexander’s types were struck, even lon after his death, by various cities of Syria aad Palestine.
After years of varying fortune on the field of
*The brilliant sketch of M. Six, ‘Observations sur les monnaies phéniciennes,’ in the Numismatic Chronicle, 1877 p. 1771f., is still of value alongside of the more recent and exhaustive work of M. Babelon, Perses Achéménides, Cypre et Phénicie, 1893. Cf. Head’s résumé in Hist. Num. 665-676 ; and, of older works, Brandis, Das Minz- Maas- und Gewichts- wesen in Vorderasien, 1866 passim.