appearance of pewter by the side of that rich metal; and to its taking the place of some of our paltry imitations.

If the use of gold preceded that of silver, the latter was not long in following it; and the earliest authority, the Bible, mentions both at a remote age. Abraham was said to have been "very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold;" Abimelech gave him a thousand pieces of the former; and the use of silver as money is distinctly pointed out in the purchase of the field of Ephron, with its cave, which Abraham bought for " four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant." On this occasion, as usual, the price paid was settled by weight, which was the origin and meaning of the name shekel; and the custom of weighing money was retained among the Egyptians, Hebrews, and other Eastern people, till a late period. Indeed, until a government stamp, or some fixed value, was given to money, this could be the only method of ascertaining the price paid, and of giving satisfaction to both parties. Thus Joseph's brethren,

when they discovered the money returned into their sacks, brought it back to Egypt, observing that it was "in full weight;" and the paintings of Thebes frequently represent persons in the act of weighing gold, on the purchase of articles in the market.

Egyptian money was in rings of gold and silver, a kind of currency that continues to this day in Sennaar and the neighbouring countries; but it is uncertain whether any of them had a government stamp to denote their purity or their value; and though so commonly represented, none have yet been found in the ruins or tombs of Thebes. They remind us of the "ring (nuzm) of gold" in Job (xlii. 11), given him with "a piece of money" by his friends.

Gold when brought as tribute was often in bags, which were deposited in the royal treasury. These doubtless contained gold dust, which is mentioned by Job (xxviii. 6) as a well known form of that metal; and this is confirmed by "pure gold" being written over them. Though sealed, and warranted to contain a certain quantity, they were subjected to the usual ordeal of the scales by the cautious Egyptians. Money was sometimes kept ready weighed in known quantities for certain occasions, which, when intended as a present, or when the honesty of the person was beyond suspicion, did not require to be weighed; as when

Naaman gave "two talents of silver in two bags” to Gehazi (2 Kings v. 23; see Tobit ix. 5). The Egyptians had also unstamped copper money, called in the papyri " pieces of brass;" which, like the gold and silver, continued to be taken by weight even in the time of the Ptolemies; and it was only by degrees that the Greek coinage did away with the old imperfect system of weighing the price paid for every commodity.

But these princes were not the first who introduced coined money into Egypt: it had been current there during the Persian occupation of the country; and Aryandes, who was governor of Egypt under Cambyses and Darius, struck silver coins, in imitation of the gold Darics of his sovereign, for which act of presumption he was condemned to death.

They are supposed to be those with an owl, and the Egyptian sceptres of Osiris, the crook and flail, on the obverse; and an archer on a hippocampus, with a dolphin, on the reverse.

The art of stamping money in Asia began in the dominions of Lydia. Herodotus says the Lydians were "the first people who coined gold and silver for their use;" and if Ægina also claims the earliest coinage, this does not contradict Herodotus, as it was only the earliest in relation to Greece. The oldest coins that have been found are the staters of Lydia, which date even a little before the very ancient ones of Cyzicus. They are not of pure gold, but of Electrum, or three parts gold and one of silver: probably owing to the two metals having been found together, and first stamped in that state. They were mere lumps, or dumps, of a certain weight; often cracked at the edge from being suddenly flattened by the blow. They were impressed with a lion's head, or other emblem, on one side only. Similarly rude were the old Æginetan coins, with a tortoise on one side, and on the other the mark of the block on which the lump of metal was fixed while struck. These last were all of silver, none of gold; and the oldest coins of real gold were those of Darius.

Phidon, king of Argos, is said to have invented weights and measures (that is, in Greece), and to have established the silver coinage of Ægina B.c. 895: and though Pausanias thinks gold and silver money were unknown in the age of Polydorus, king of

Sparta (who died B.C. 724), the authority of the Parian Chronicle, and of Elian, favour the earlier claims of Ægina. The coins of Syracuse and Magna Græcia date from 700 B.C.; having, like all others before 500 B.C., only a figure on one side; and the first silver coins of Athens were struck in 512 B.C. The gold Darics had only a figure on the obverse, representing an archer. They were coined about 500 B.C., and had not yet the round shape of later pieces, nor of the silver Darics, being 5-8ths of an inch long by 7-16ths. They were worth about 17. 1s. 10d. each. These and other early coins therefore do not borrow their form from ring money, which may perhaps be traced in those of China.

Habit would naturally retain an original type for a long time; and sometimes even in Greece the archaic character of a coin was continued long after art had improved. Thus the old head of Minerva was repeated on the late Athenian drachm and tetradrachm, because strangers were accustomed to it in commerce, and the Athenians were satisfied to use the well-known Corinthian didrachm for the same reason, as all people on the Mediterranean still welcome the pillar dollar of Spain.

The tradition of pecunia being called from pecus, and of the ox or sheep having been at first a substitute for money, as in Greece and Rome, accords with a custom still common among some people, of making them the standard of valuation; in Darfoor and Kordofan a piece of cotton cloth is reckoned equal to a sheep; and in Job (xlii. 11), the name Kesiteh (or “lamb”) is employed to signify a "piece of money." Homer also reckons the value of certain things as equal to an ox; and in Solon's time a sheep was equivalent "to a bushel and a half of corn.”

If stamped money was not used by the ancient Egyptians, we have evidence of weights and measures having been invented by them long before the Greeks existed as a nation: and it is probable that they were known even in Greece previous to the time of Phidon. (See below, p. 239, on the use of the precious metals.)

One kind of balance used for weighing gold differed slightly from those of ordinary construction, and was probably more delicately formed. It was made, as usual, with an upright pole, rising from a broad base or stand, and a cross beam turning on

a pin at its summit; but instead of strings suspending the scales, was an arm on either side, terminating in a hook, to which the gold was attached in small bags.*

Large scales were generally a flat wooden board, with four ropes attached to a ring at the extremity of the beam; and those of smaller size were of bronze, one and a half inch in diameter, pierced near the edge in three places for the strings.

The principle of the common balance was simple and ingenious; the beam passed through a ring suspended from a horizontal rod, immediately above and parallel to it, and when equally balanced, the ring, which was large enough to allow the beam to play freely, showed when the scales were equally poised, and had the additional effect of preventing the beam tilting, when the goods were taken out of one, and the weights suffered to remain in the other scale. To the lower part of the ring a small plummet was fixed, and this being touched by the hand, and found to hang freely, indicated, without the necessity of looking at the beam, that the weight was just. The figure of a baboon was sometimes placed upon the top, as the emblem of the god Thoth, the regulator of measures, of time, and of writing, in his character of the moon; but there is no appearance of the goddess of Justice being connected with the balance, except in the judgment scenes of the dead.

The pair of scales was the ordinary and, apparently, only kind of balance used by the Egyptians; no instance of the steel-yard being met with in the paintings of Thebes, or of Beni Hassan : and the introduction of the latter is confined to a Roman era.

The Egyptians had another kind of balance, in which the equalization of the opposite weights was ascertained by the plummet; and this last, whose invention has been ascribed by Pliny to Dædalus, is shown to have been known and applied in Egypt at least as early as the time of the Osirtasens.

For ordinary purposes copper was most commonly used; arms, vases, statues, instruments, and implements of every kind, articles of furniture, and numerous other objects, were made of this metal hardened by an alloy of tin, and even chisels for cutting * See woodcut 403, See woodcut 407, p. 148.

p. 136.