the sun’s apparent diameter. The weight in water corresponding to this measure of capacity gave the light Royal Babylonian Talent; this Talent was divided into 60 Minae, and each Mina into sixty parts or Shekels. Their gold Talent was derived from the sixtieth of this Royal Mina, with the modification that now fifty sixtieths of the Royal Mina made a Mina of gold and sixty Minae made a Talent20.
It seems strange that the framers of this theory did not consider that just as undoubtedly the Chaldaeans must have reckoned their time by the primitive methods of sunrise, noon and sunset, “full market,” or ox-loosing time for centuries before they arrived at their scientific division of time, and just as the Chaldaean artificer employed his fingers or palm, or span or foot, as a measure of length ages before the Royal Cubit was equated to the sun’s apparent diameter, so in all probability they employed as measures of capacity, gourds or eggshells (as did the Hebrews) and for weights the seeds of plants.
But since, after what we have already seen, it is perfectly clear that the first of articles to be weighed is gold, and that the unit of weight is consequently small, we at once join issue with several points in the theory of Brandis and his school. First they start with the Talent as the unit, and only arrive at the shekel (the weight par excellence) by a twofold process of subdivision; secondly, it is assumed that the Royal Talent which we have had reason to believe was a purely commercial Talent, seeing that it was employed neither for gold or silver, was the first to be invented, and that it was only at a later stage that the mina and talent specially employed for gold were developed, not out of the primal unit obtained originally from the one-fifth of the cube of the maris, but from the sixtieth of the mina of that Royal Talent; thirdly one asks in wonder why did the Chaldaeans, who only achieved their famous Sexagesimal system after gazing at the stars through unnumbered generations, abandon this precious discovery the very moment they set about the construction of a weight-unit for gold, for instead of taking one-sixth of the