Elementary arithmetic, with brief notices of its history... by Robert Potts.

MONEY.

a

defective coinage, and in favour of those countries whose coinage is
abundant, pure, and in full weight.
Mr. Greaves more than two centuries ago, wrote the following
judicious remark on that subject: "If those advantages which one
country may make upon another in the mystery of exchanges and
valuation of coins be not thoroughly discovered and prevented bysuch as sit at the helm of the State, it may fare with them after
much commerce as with some bodies after much food, that instead
of growing full and fat, they may pine away, and fall into irrecoverable consumption." 1
In the early ages of the world, the exchange of one commodity
for another, is generally admitted to have been the primitive mode
of traffic. In the course of time when such exchanges became inconvenient, necessity, the mother of invention, devised the use of money
as a common measure of all commodities. Among the oldest records.
contained in the Book of Genesis no intimations are found of the use
of money before the deluge. When, and by whom, the use of money
was invented as a medium of exchange is unknown. There could beno want of it until mankind had multiplied and formed themselves into,
communities. Silver at a very early period of the world's history
became a general representative of value, and was employed as a
medium of traffic in the transactions recorded.
The first mention of money, a thousand pieces of silver, occurs in the twentieth chapter of Genesis. The second, in the twenty-third
chapter where Abraham is stated to have weighed four hundred
shekels of silver, "current money with the merchant," which he paid
to Ephron for a place of burial. A third mention is that in the thirtyseventh chapter, where Joseph is sold into slavery for twenty pieces;
of silver by his brothers to some merchants who were trading with
Egypt. And that money was measured by weight is again noticed in
the forty-third chapter, when Jacob's sons carried money into Egypt
to buy corn. All these instances sufficiently shew that the use of
money existed at that early period of the world's history in Egypt
and in the country which was afterwards called Palestine. And it is
to be noted that though this money was sometimes called " pieces of
silver," Abraham paid his four-hundred shekels by weight. The word
shekel itself, from the Hebrew word to 'weigh,' implies as much; for
money at the first seems to have been a merchandize exchanged for
other commodities.
There are no traces of the existence of coined money to be found
in any ancient Hebrew records. Their current money was generally in
silver, and its relative value to gold is unknown in the early periods
of their history. And it is now almost universally agreed that they
had not any coined money before the time of the 1Maccabees.2
1 The little work entitled "Easy Lessons on Money Matters for the use of
Young People," written by the late Archbishop Whately, is worthy of the attention of older people, as it contains excellent suggestions on some of the
perplexing problems of the present time for adjusting equitably the claims of
capital and labour.
2 Morell, one of the best judges of ancient coins, allowed that all the Jewish
shekels he had seen were coined after the time of the Maccabees. The Jews
had no coined money till the reign of Antiochus Sidetes. Before that time, their
money consisted of small laminae or plates of silver, called (Gen. xlii., 27-35,
Prov. vii., 20), sa-,ol and 'Lv8a~eol dpyuptov "bundles of money," such as might
be tied together. Hence the 6paXti or half shekel was called beka, signifying
B2