CHAPTER X. The Systems of Egypt, Babylon, and Palestine.

fingers of one hand suggested to mankind a simple means of counting; and the combined fingers of both hands gave them the decimal system. The Egyptians accordingly simply took the tenfold of the ox-unit as their highest unit. As weighing in the earliest stage was confined to the precious metals, this unit was sufficient for all practical needs⁹. It will be noticed that the process employed in forming this weight-system is exactly that which we have found in the Chinese and its related systems. The Chinese liang (tael or ounce) corresponds to the Egyptian kat (or shekel). Under its name of tical or bat we found it as the unit of gold in South-Eastern Asia, and for the weighing of precious metals we found that the highest unit employed was the nên, the tenfold of the original unit, (the tael) itself still the only unit in use in China for the precious metals. In process of time when ordinary commodities of life began to be reckoned by weight, the Chinese made use of the pical (which originally simply meant a man’s load) as their highest commercial unit. Much the same process seems to have taken place in Egypt, for in later times we find talents of various kinds in use. Thus the Alexandrine talent which was employed for wood contained 360 utens. Was this talent originally nothing more than a man’s load, which in a later and more scientific age was adjusted to the weight standard time out of mind employed for metals? In this talent of 360 utens we can see the influence of the sexagesimal systems of Asia Minor, which, as we shall presently see, was really a commercial standard of comparatively late development and never at any time was employed for the precious metals. The Alexandrine talent of 360 utens contained 3600 kats, just as the royal Babylonian talent contained 3600 shekels.