standard employed in early days in Egypt for gold (and also electrum and silver) was this unit of 128 grains, which is of course almost identical with an ox-unit. Silver, according to Erman7, was in the time of the oldest Egyptian records more valuable than gold, for in enumeration it is always named before gold, whereas under the later dynasties it is named as with us always after gold, shewing that a great change had taken place in the relations between these metals. It is then clearly conceivable that at the outset one and the same unit of about 128-30 grains, under the name of kat, served as the unit for both gold and silver (which explains perfectly the fact that an ox is valued at a kat of silver), but that in after days when the change in the relative values of the metals came, there was found a need for a new silver unit, just as the Greeks in certain places found it necessary to form the Aeginetan and other standards, and the Babylonians found themselves compelled to form that standard which alone can with truth be termed the Babylonian, the silver unit of 172 grains.
We have now before us the data for the early Egyptian weight system8. It is simple; the unit is the kat probably based on the ox as we have seen already. The fact that weights formed in the shape of cows and cows’ heads are represented in Egyptian paintings as employed in the weighing of rings, indicates that in the mind of the first manufacturer of such weights there was a distinct connection between the shape given to the weight and the object whose value in gold (or silver) it expressed. Specimens of such weights are known, and are always of small size, a sure indication that the commodity for which they were employed was very precious. The fact that we find weights in the shape of lions can be readily accounted for by the supposition that in the course of time when the connection between the ox and the original weight-unit became forgotten, and different standards had been evolved, some distinctive animal form was adopted to distinguish the weights of a particular standard. The original unit being thus obtained, the higher unit, the uten, was formed by the method most familiar to all races of men. The