cube of the maris, they are represented as following their old decimal system with invincible obstinacy by taking one-fifth of the maris as their point of departure; lastly, it is astonishing that the Chaldaeans did not employ their new discovery in the weighing of the precious metals, the thing which above all others ought to have called for the most scientific accuracy.
The fact is, that just as children find some difficulty in realising that their parents were ever children, so when we stand in the presence of the remains of the great cities of Egypt and Babylonia, those ancients of the earth, we are too prone to forget that Thebes, Babylon or Nineveh had ever their day of small things. The familiar tale of Romulus and Remus with their band of outlaws dwelling in their hovels beside the Tiber has kept people in mind that “Rome was not built in a day.” If we can but just approach the question of the first beginnings of Egyptian or Chaldaean civilization with the same idea, it will be far easier to project ourselves into the past of those great races, and thus to realize far better the conditions under which they grew and lived.
There can be little doubt that the unit of the Babylonian system was the light shekel (Daric or ox-unit) of 130-5 grs. Troy. But I have shown that the Chaldaeans were aware of and made use of the method of fixing weight-units by means of grains of corn such as we have found to be the universal practice from Ireland to China, and we have at once removed all need for supposing that it was only when they had discovered a scientific method of metrology that the Chaldaeans constructed their weight-unit.
After what we have shown upon p. 115 concerning the methods employed in the buying and selling of corn, where it has been made clear that of all commodities corn is one of the very last to be weighed because of its bulkiness in proportion to its cheapness, I think no one will readily accept M. Aurè’s ingenious hypothesis21.