CHAPTER I.
The Ox and the Talent in Homer.
[Greek: ÊMOS D' OUT AR PÔ ÊÔS, ETI D' AMPHILYKÊ NYX.]
The object of this essay is to enquire into the origin of
Metallic Currency and Weight Standards. Since August Boeckh
in his metrological enquiries[1] put forth the idea that the weight
standards of antiquity had been obtained scientifically, all
subsequent writers with scarcely an exception have followed
in the same path. This theory was undoubtedly suggested by
the fact that the French Republic had established a new
scientific metric system. Yet reflection might have shown
scholars that even the French system was not a wholly independent
outcome of science, for beyond doubt the mètre and
litre and hectare were only varieties of older measures of length,
capacity and surface, then for the first time scientifically
adjusted. The discovery of certain weights of bronze and
stone in the ruins of Nineveh, Khorsabad and Babylon lent force
to the theory of Boeckh; the imaginations of scholars were
excited by the marvellous remains of Chaldaean and Assyrian
civilization which had just been brought to light by Sir A. H.
Layard, and they hastened to conclude that in the mathematical
science of Mesopotamia the source of all weight-standards
was to be found. Egypt however put in her claim
to priority, and standards based on the measurements of the
Great Pyramid, or on the weight of a given quantity of Nile-water,
have entered the lists against the astrologers of Chaldaea.
This battle still rages hotly, Assyriologists and Egyptologists
- ↑ Metrologische Untersuchungen über Gewichte, Münzfüsse und Masse des Alterthums in ihrem Zusammenhange. Berlin, 1838.
