of the relations existing between gold, electrum and silver at Carthage is not purely chimerical.
Lastly comes the question of the commercial weight-system. We have already spoken of the badly preserved weight from Jol, but we could not say whether it was used for the precious metals, or more ordinary merchandize. However, the great Phoenician inscription of Marseilles, already referred to, makes it plain that even in the weighing of meat they reckoned by the shekel and not by the mina; for we find in it mention of 300 [shekels] and 150 [shekels] of flesh from the victims. This completely accords with the 20 shekels of food mentioned by Ezekiel (iv. 10), and clearly indicates that even in what we may well believe to be the heavy commercial shekel, the ancient decimal system had not been superseded by the sexagesimal; and, further, that the mina had not succeeded in supplanting the more ancient fashion of counting by shekels; for had such been the case, the weight of the meat would have been expressed in 6 manehs, or 3 manehs. This piece of evidence confirms the results which we arrived at in the case of the Hebrews—that it was only at a later period that reckoning by manehs came into use. The Phoenician colonies of the West, including Carthage herself, had probably been planted before the influences of the Chaldaean system had obtained a solid footing in Palestine. We may however not unreasonably believe that the Carthaginians employed some such form of talent as we find in the Book of Exodus, 3000 shekels (50 × 60 = 3000) going to the talent, though as yet no record has revealed to us the actual existence of either talent or mina.