The Hebrew Weight - System. —ii. (a) The Babijloniitn or 252-grain unit. — Just as the natural proportions of the human body furnished the earliest measures of length (see "below, § vi.), so man in all probability ' made his earliest es.says in weighing by means of the seeds of plants, which nature had placed ready to his hand as counters and weights' (Ridgeway, Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards, 387). By the beginning of the third millennium n.c, however, both the Babylonians and the Egyi>tians had left this primitive system far behind them. The former, in particular, as early as li.c. 3000, and prolialily long before, had elaborated a metro- logical system which, in its scientific basis and inter-relation of standards, bears a striking resem- blance to the metric system of the Continent (see art. Bauylonia, vol. i. p. 218 f.). The importance of the Babylonian system for our present study la due to the fact, "first clearly revealed in the
Tel el -Amarna correspondence, that the early civilization of Canaan was, in all essentials, of Batiylonian origin. The grounds on which the older metrologists, such as Boeckh and Brandis, had long before inferred that the Babylonian weight-system had penetrated to Syria and Pales- tine, and the conclusive proof of the accuracy of this inference attbrded by the Amarna tablets, have been given in the opening section of the article MONEY (vol. iii. p. 418), and need not be re- peated here. It is essential, therefore, to under- stand the principle upon which this system waa constructed. This was the now f.amiliar sexa- gesimal principle, characteristic of the Babylonian scheme of numeration, the number 60 holding in this scheme the place of 10 in our decimal system. Thus 111 is not, as with us, 10- -t- 10-1- 1, but 60- -f 60 H- 1, or 3661. Our division of the hour into 60 minutes, each of 60 seconds, it need hardly be said, is a direct legacy from the banks of the Euphrates. The unit of weight in the developed system was the mina (\\Titten ideograph ically MA.NA, and therefore presumably of Sumerian origin, though possibly Semitic), the Heb. njp maneh (so AV Ezk 45'-, elsewhere ' pound ') and the Gr. fivd. The next higher denomination, its sixty-fold, was the talent (Heb. "1J3, apparently the gaggaru of the Amarna letters, in Greek riXavrov), whUe below the mina was its s'jth, the shekel (shiklu, Heb. h-p^, from shakalu, ' to weigh,' hence rendered in Greek by (TTarrip from tuTrifn in the same sense, and trans- literated by (Tiy\oi). The scale may be graphically represented thus—
1 talent =60 minas = 3600 shekels. 1 mina =60 ,, In the early temple-accounts, dating from B.C. 2000, recently recovered from Telloh in Southern Babylonia, there occurs a subdivision of the shekel into 180 shi or grains of wheat, which was after- wards discarded. This subdivision into 60 x 3 parta is of course an adaptation to the sexagesimal system ; but it is worth noting that the prehistorical or natural Babylonian shekel, as it may be called, cannot have been far off the weight of 180 wheat- grains. If the weight of a grain of wheat be taken at the usual estimate of •70--72 of a grain Troy (originally a grain of barley, according to Ridge- way, op. cit. 180 ff.), ISO such giains come to 126- 130 Troy grains, which is precisely the weight of the shekel as given by the existing stone weights (see below). As there can be little doubt that the use of the balance was first employed for the precious metals, the shekel, as its name denotes, was almost certainly the earliest unit of weight, as it continued to be, to the exclusion of the mina, in the earlier Hebrew literature (cf. MONEY, vol. iii. p. 420'' for illustrations).
\\ hen we pass to the determination of the value of the shekel and the higher denominations in the Babylonian system, we find that this branch of metrology has been almost revolutionized by the discovery in recent years of a few very ancient inscribed stone weights from the earliest centres of civilization in Southern Babylonia. The evidence of these weights may best be represented in tabular form. For full description (with illustrations) refer- ence must be made to the numerous essays of the discoverer, Dr. C. F. Lehmann (see Literature at end of article), esp. to Das altbahylonische Mass- und Geu-ic/Ussystcm, etc., Leiden, 1893.
Here we have unexpected evidence that the double standard, familiar enough in the weights of the Assyrian period, in which each denomination (mina, shekel, etc.) of the one set weighed waa twice the weight of the same denomination of the other set, was in existence at a very early period, for the weights in question date from B.C. 3000- 2500. Weights of tlie former class are said to be
WKlGliXS ASD MEASURES
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES 903
on the heairy standard, those of the latter on the light standard. Weight B, it will be found, repre-
DeacriptioD of Weight
Actual weight in grammes.
Weight of
resultant
mina in
grammes.
A B 0
D
Oval Ptone, about 4 tn. long, with inscription in Sum* erian, ' ^ mina, true weight,' etc
Similar to A in form and ma- terial. Inscription uncer- tain. Clearly i of the fore- goinp, or i^ niina .
Lon(;ish barrel -shaped stone of same hard urteiistone as A and B. *\ mina, true weipht; palace of Nabusu- nit-sir, pnest of Marduk ' .