give him, said he, for both me and thee.” As the stater evidently sufficed to pay a didrachm for each, there can be no doubt that the shekel or stater was considered by the Jews to be a tetradrachm.
It is very uncertain whether the Hebrews at any time employed a maneh of 60 shekels. They most certainly did not do so for gold and silver, and probably not even for copper and other cheap commodities. Very unfortunately the famous passage in Ezekiel (xlv. 12), which deals with weights and measures, is so confused in the description of the maneh that we cannot employ it as evidence. The one element of certainty is that the gold shekel never varied from first to last. It is likewise probable that, whilst the heavy maneh was introduced for gold silver and copper alike, the shekel always remained the same, 100 shekels being counted to the mina of gold and silver in the royal system, whilst 50 shekels always continued to be regarded as composing the maneh of the Sanctuary, such as we found it in the Book of Exodus. To confirm this view of the shekel we can cite the Bull’s-head weight (fig. 27), which came from Jerusalem, and weighs 36·800 grammes, which represents the amount of 5 light shekels (making allowance for a small fracture), the light shekel being 8·4 grams. (130 grs.). It is plain that this is a multiple of the light and not of the heavy shekel, for it is not likely that such a multiple as 2½ would be employed. On the other hand, we found the five-fold multiple of the light shekel appearing in the Assyrian system, and also the Egyptian.