1881.] 
A. Cunningham —Relics from Ancient Persia. 
163 
specific gravity of water at 252 45 grains per cubic inch and that of pure 
gold at 19‘258 times that of water, the weight of each of the 4 ingots of 
refined gold would have been 350 76 lbs., which makes the Lydian talent just 
1403 tbs. Now this was also the Assyrian talent, as we learn from the 
weights of the lions and ducks preserved in the British Museum, which 
give an Assyrian mina of 15,368 grains, and a Babylonian mina of 7,747 
grains, or just one half of the other. The same difference is still preserved 
at the present day as the man of Shiraz and Bagdad is just double that of 
Tabrez and Bushir, the average of the former being 1406 lbs. and that of 
the latter being only 6’985. # The weight corresponding to the ancient 
talent is the toman , or dah-man , that is 10 mans , of which the Bagdad! 
toman averages 140 6 lbs., and the Tabrezi toman 69'85 lbs., the former being 
the modern representative of the Assyrian, and the latter of the Babylonian 
talent. 
But these values are only approximations, as it is very unlikely that 
the Lydian ingots were made in exact whole numbers of Greek measures, 
and we know that all measures of weight suffer degradation in the lapse of 
time. To obtain more exact values we must refer to the statements of 
ancient authors, and compare them with the weights of the actual coins 
which have come down to us. 
The earliest fact bearing on this subject is the statement of Herodotus, 
in his account of the satrapies of Darius, that the value of gold in Persia 
was 13 times that of silver. But this is directly at variance with another 
statement that the Babylonian talent was equal to 70 Euboic minae, because 
as the silver payments were made in the Babylonian standard and the gold 
payments in the Euboic, this would reduce the rate of silver to gold from 
13 down to Ilf. The true number of mince in the Babylonian talent was 
78, and not 70, as we may deduce from the difference of the rates between 
silver and gold which prevailed in Eubaea and Persia. Thus, as the rate of 
10 is to 13, so are 60 minae to 78 minae. By applying this corrected value 
of the Babylonian talent to the text of Herodotus, all the discrepancies, 
which have hitherto puzzled commentators, disappear at once. He gives the 
total amount of the nineteen silver paying satrapies at 7,600 Babylonian 
talents, which his text says are equal to 9,540 Euboic talents, instead of 
9,8S0 which is the true value at 13 rates. And that this was the actual 
rate that he used in the reduction is proved by his final total, which after 
adding the quota of the 20th satrapy, namely, 360 talents of gold, or 360 x 
13 = 4,680 talents of silver, he makes 14,560 talents.f The sum of these 
* — Kelly’s Cambist—Prinsep’s Useful Tables. 
f Herodot., Hist., Ill, 96. I made this correction so long ago as 1858. The total 
of silver payments is said by Mr. Rawlinson (Herodotus, Yol. II, 486) to be 7,7401 
talents, but he has overlooked the fact that 140 talents of the 4th satrapy were not 
