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

that the Semitic peoples used gourds in primitive times for vessels, not simply from à priori considerations, but from the fact that the most archaic pottery obtained by Mr Petrie from his excavations on the site of the ancient city of Lachish in 1890 show unmistakable signs of being modelled after the shape of a gourd. Although the Chinese never have employed their ching (catty) for the precious metals, yet the Cambodians have advanced to counting silver not only by the catty but also by the picul. Did then the Babylonians make 50 shekels of gold or silver roundly equal to their maneh or measure of capacity? This is of course pure speculation, but it is at least supported by the comparison of what has actually taken place elsewhere; and even from the empire of the Great King himself can we get an insight into the method by which the maneh (and likewise the Talent) may have been brought into the weight system. Herodotus²⁵ tells us that when the tribute of gold (largely in gold dust) and silver was brought to the King he stored it thus: “he melts it and pours it into earthenware jars, and when he has filled the vessels he strips off the earthenware, and whenever he wants money, he cuts off as much as he needs on each occasion.” We saw above that the Cambodian catty of silver is twice the weight of the catty of rice, the Cambodian catty being simply the cocoanut, the ordinary unit of capacity, which after being filled with rice or silver and then weighed has given two different catties. The Great King no doubt poured his gold into jars of known capacity, and the weight of such a jar when filled with gold was well known. It seems then not unlikely that in this way from either a jar, or from the gourd which preceded the jar, the mina was derived. However the maneh may have been determined, it is fairly certain that the Babylonians fixed upon 50 as a convenient multiple of the gold unit when silver first came into use; as we have seen above it was probably equal if not superior in value to gold and it was naturally weighed by the same unit. But in the course of time as it became more plentiful, and at the same time if likewise the art of weighing began to be employed by merchants in the traffic in the costly spices and balsams of