VIL] INSTITUTE OF BANKERS. 199 



the SuDg and Yuen dynasties paper money was made 

 use of. It was uncommonly inconvenient. When in 

 the rain it got soaked and the mice gnawed at it, it 

 became as if one possessed a raven. When carried in the 

 breast pocket or the money belt, the consequence was 

 that it was destroyed by abrasion." 



Money seems to us now so obvious a convenience, 

 and so much a necessity of commerce, that it appears 

 almost inconceivable that a people who created the 

 Sphinx and the Pyramids, the temples of Ipsamboul and 

 Karnac, should have been entirely ignorant of coins. 

 Yet it appears from the statements of Herodotus, and 

 the evidence of the monuments themselves, that this 

 was really the case. As regards the commercial and 

 banking systems of ancient Egypt, we are almost 

 entirely without information. Their standard of value 

 seems to have been the " outen " or " ten " of copper 

 (94-96 grammes), which circulated like the ses rude 

 of the Eomans by weight, and in the form of bricks, 

 being measured by the balance : it was obtained from the 

 mines of Mount Sinai, which were worked as early as 

 the fourth dynasty. Gold and Silver appear to have 

 been also used, though less frequently ; like copper, 

 they were sometimes in the form of bricks, but generally 

 in rings, resembling the ring money of the ancient 

 Celts, which is said to have been employed in Ireland 

 down to the twelfth century, and still holds its own in 

 the interior of Africa. This approximated very nearly to 

 the possession of money, but it wanted what the Eoman 

 lawyers called " the law " and " the form." Neither 

 the weight nor the pureness was guaranteed by any 

 public authority. Such a state of things seems to 



