94 On the Ring Money of the Celte. 
«‘ You ask me for a note on the ring money of Africa—here it is. So little has the 
interior of that country changed, in that particular, since the days of the Pharaohs, 
that to this day, among the inhabitants of Sennaar, pieces of gold, in the form of 
rings, pass current. ‘The rings of gold have a cut in them, 
O 
for the convenience of keeping them together, the gold being so pure you easily bind 
them and unite them in the manner of a chain. The money is weighed, as in the 
days of Joseph. ; 
«‘T shall soon be able to show you a cast from an Egyptian basso-relievo, where 
occurs an example of the money in the form of a chain; and you may see, in 
Heskyn’s work, plenty of rings of gold. 
“‘ Yours, very truly, 
«J. Bonomi.” 
These gold rings are identically the same, as to shape and character, with those 
found in Ireland ; the sketch of one most accurately represents the other. 
The manillas are still more interesting, in as much as they give the name by which 
they are known among the Africans; a name, no doubt, the same which they 
bore when they were first introduced among these people so many centuries, aye, it 
may be said, thousands of years ago, by the Phenicians, the same commercial people 
who introduced them into Ireland. So little has the customs of the negro race of 
Western Africa, like those of Sennaar, changed since the period of their intercourse 
with the Phenicians, that these manillas pass current as money among them as they 
did two or three thousand years ago. Africa seems to have stood still, while the rest 
of the world progressed in civilization ; her deadly unwholesome climate forbade in- 
tercourse beyond the exchange of manufactured goods for her raw materials. 
This name maniila is in itself a powerful testimony ; it is no doubt the name the 
articles bore in Phenicia, and by which they were known when first introduced to the 
knowledge of the African negro nations, who have preserved it to our day. In the 
Celto-Phenician it literally means the value or representation of property. ayn, 
riches, patrimony, goods, value, and eallac, cattle, or any description of property ; 
the word chattles rightly expresses it. Thus it appears that as pecunia had its name 
from pecus, cattle, because flocks and herds were the first riches, and a number of cattle 
were the standard of value before money existed, and where it was not to be had; so 
manilla means literally the value of cattle or goods, or the representative of the value 
of cattle, or any chattle property. 
Money was so scarce in Ireland, in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, that the 
fines and amerciaments, mentioned on the rolls as imposed by the courts, were pigs, 
sheep, and cattle ; but it is not necessary to use arguments in support of so self- 
evident a proposition. 
