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

fact that neither in their own country nor in the greatest of their colonies, Carthage, did they employ coined money until a comparatively late period, make the task of restoring their weight system very difficult if not hopeless. The silver standard called Phoenician or Graeco-Asiatic is the sole evidence to show that they employed as their unit for gold the heavy Babylonian shekel of 260 grs. On the other hand we have just seen that their close neighbours, the Hebrews, from first to last, and the ancient people of the Nile with whom the Phoenicians were in the closest trade relations (having large trading communities settled in the Delta, and from whom they had borrowed the hieroglyphic syllabic symbols, which with them became the Alphabet), had employed the light shekel, the only gold unit that likewise from first to last prevailed throughout the vast regions of Central Asia Minor, and as we have seen, was the unit of Greece even in the early days when the great cities of Mycenae and Tiryns were in direct contact with, and deriving their arts and civilization from Asia or from Egypt.