HKHKKW WKKJIITS AND MKASl'KKS. 



285 



mina of 7,580 grs. (GO light shekels of 126*4 grs.) on Lehmann- 

 Haupt's " raised Norm A," — i.e., raised 5 p.c. — or 7,%0 grs. 

 A weight is still in existence inscribed "Mina of King 

 Antiochus Theos Epiphanes," which weighs precisely this 

 amount, and other inscribed minus of Antioch range about 

 S,000 grs. In the West, I have suggested, tin's mina was 

 divided into the usual 50 shekels of 160 grs. nearly. This 

 derivation is not affected by the proposed identification of the 

 term nezeph with the Arabic nusf, meaning a half ; in this case 

 tbc former would be the light form of a corresponding heavy 

 shekel of 320 grs., derived as above from the heavy trade mina 

 of Babylonia. 



This 160-grain standard is very largely represented among 

 Mr. Macalister's Gezer weights, especially among those from the 

 older Semitic strata. This is what we should expect if I 

 am right in believing that the gold payments of the Princes 

 of Syria to their Egyptian overlords in the sixteenth century 

 B.C. were calculated on the nezeph standard (loc. ext., 904). 



Its special interest for us, in the light of the preceding- 

 section of my lecture, is that the nezeph has as good a claim as, 

 if not a better claim than, the Babylonian shekel to be regarded 

 as the Hebrew gold shekel of the pre-exilic period. In the first 

 place it is admittedly a gold standard, and is found on the spot ; 

 secondly, it stands in a most convenient relation to the Hebrew 

 silver shekel of 224 grs., since with gold to silver as 14 : 1 one 

 nezeph of gold was equal in value to 10 shekels of silver (160 x 14 

 = 224x10); thirdly, there is a curious tradition preserved by 

 the Jewish writer Maimonides that the Hebrew shekel was 

 originally the weight of 320 grains of barley, our Troy grains, 

 and so continued until the time of the second Temple, when it 

 was displaced by the sela, i.e., the heavy Phoenician shekel (see 

 table above). Is there not here a problem calling for further 

 investigation ? At any rate, no one can deny that the nezeph - 

 shekel was, if not the, at least a, gold shekel both before and 

 after the Hebrew conquest of Canaan. 



(iv) The Persian Silver Standard. 



With the fall of Babylon in 538 B.C., Palestine became a part 

 of the vast Persian Empire under Cyrus and his successors. Of 

 the latter Darius Hystaspis has a special claim on our attention, 

 since his famous gold coin, the daric, and its twentieth in value, 

 the " Median siglos " in silver, were the first coins to circulate 

 in Palestine. The daric weighed 130 grs. of pure gold, nearly 



