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

Long ago Prof. R. S. Poole, speaking of this word, said: “The sanction of the LXX, and the use of weights bearing the forms of lions, bulls, and geese by the Egyptians, Assyrians, and probably Persians, must make us hesitate before we abandon a rendering [lamb] so singularly confirmed by the relation of the Latin pecunia and pecus³³.” The connection between weights and units of currency is especially close at a time when coined money is as yet unknown, and hence when we find weights in the form of sheep coming from Syria, and also recollect that sheep were employed as a regular unit in Palestine for the paying of tribute, and with the light obtained from primitive systems of currency, we may well conclude that the qesitah was an old unit of barter, like the Homeric ox, and as the latter was transformed into a gold unit, so the former was superseded by an equivalent of silver. We read (2 Kings iii. 4) that Mesha, king of Moab (now so famous from the inscription which bears his name), was a sheep-master, and he rendered unto the king of Israel one hundred thousand lambs, and one hundred thousand rams with the wool. When payment in metal came more and more into use silver served as the sub-multiple of gold, just as sheep formed that of the ox, and it is not surprising that in later times when coins were struck by the Phoenicians, as at Salamis in Cyprus and many other places, bearing a sheep or a sheep’s head, there arose some doubt as to whether the qesitah was a sheep, a piece of uncoined silver,