HEBREW WEIGHTS AN I) MEASURES. 



289 



The Attic standard was adopted by Alexander the Great for his 

 international currency, and continued by his successors, the 

 Seleucid kings of Syria, under whose rule the Jews passed 

 from that of the Ptolemies in 198 B.C. From this date drachms 

 and tetradrachms on the Syrian- Attic standard were the legal 

 currency of Palestine ; the talents and drachms of the books of 

 Maccabees are those of the Syrian currency. It was probably 

 in this period that the practice which we found in Josephus 

 began of reckoning a Hebrew-Phoenician talent as the equivalent 

 of 10,000 Syrian-Attic drachms (rf. Jos., Antiq. XII, iii, 3 — 

 Antiochus' grant for the temple service of 20,000 drachms or 

 two talents). 



From the Seleucid town on the site of the modern 

 Sandahannah in South-west Palestine were recovered at least 

 two weights on this standard. The smaller of the two is 

 another leaden market-weight with the legend " Of Agathocles, 

 Controller of the market " (Bliss and Macalister, Excavations in 

 Palestine, 61, fig. 28). Its weight of 2,238 grs. shows it to be a 

 tritemorion, or third of an Attic mina with a drachm of the 

 normal value of 67 grs. The other weight is a large circular 

 bronze, 4 h inches in diameter, and weighing nearly 1J lbs. 

 avoir. It represents an Attic mina and a half, somewhat 

 over weight, and agrees remarkably with two of the larger 

 weights of the same period at Gezer, which work out at one 

 half and 1\ of the same mina. 



Let me now sum up in a single sentence the results of this 

 long investigation. Confining myself exclusively to the 

 evidence of inscribed weights, including coins, I have traced the 

 use of the following seven weight standards in Palestine in 

 Bible times : (1) at all periods, from the earliest to the latest, 

 the national Hebrciv-Phoenician shekel, — the " sacred " shekel of 

 the Priests' Code, required for all transactions with the balance 

 — of the theoretical value of 224 grains, but with an actual 

 range of 230-210 grs. ; (2) the early Eastern standard, best 

 known as the JEyinetan, or Attic commercial, standard, 

 originally of 100 grs. more or less ; (3) the perhaps equally 

 ancient Syrian standard — probably originally of Hittite origin 

 — of 160 grs., with a strong claim to be admitted as the 

 Hebrew gold shekel of pre-exilic times ; (4) the Babylono- 

 Persian light gold shekel of 130 grs., introduced by Darius, the 

 older form of which (126 or its double, 252 grs.) is currently 

 accepted, but without conclusive evidence, as the Hebrew gold 

 shekel ; (5) the Babylono-Persian silver shekel of 173 grs. — 

 the two last standards also in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah ; 



u 



