“About 1300 years before our era the Assyrian empire came to surpass in importance that of the Babylonians, but the learning and science of Chaldaea were not lost, but rather transmitted through Nineveh by means of the Assyrian conquests and commerce to the north and west as far as the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Let us now turn to the actual monuments. Some thirty years ago Mr Layard discovered and brought home from the ruins of ancient Nineveh a number of bronze lions of various sizes which may now be seen in the British Museum. With them were also a number of stone objects in the form of ducks[252].” From this double series of weights Mr Head infers that there were two distinct minae simultaneously in use during the long period of time which elapsed between about B.C. 2000, and B.C. 625. “The heavier of these two minae appears to have been just the double of the lighter. Brandis is probably not far from the mark in fixing the weight of the heavy mina at 1010 grammes, and that of the light at 505 grammes. “It has been suggested that the lighter of these two minae may have been peculiar to the Babylonian, and the heavier to the Assyrian empire; but this cannot be proved. But nevertheless it would seem that the use of the heavy mina was more extended in Syria than that of the lighter, if we may judge from the fact that most of the weights belonging to the system of the heavy mina have in addition to the cuneiform inscription an Aramaic one. “The purpose which this Aramaic inscription served must clearly have been to render the weight acceptable to the Syrian and Phoenician merchants who traded backwards and forwards between Assyria and Mesopotamia on the one hand, and the Phoenician emporia on the other. “_The Phoenician traders._ “The Phoenician commerce was chiefly a carrying trade. The richly embroidered stuffs of Babylonia and other products of the East were brought down to the coasts, and then carefully packed in chests of cedarwood in the markets of Tyre and Sidon, whence they were shipped by the enterprising Phoenician mariners to Cyprus, to the coasts of the Aegean, or even to the extreme West. “Hence the Phoenician city of Tyre was called by Ezekiel (xxvii.) ‘a merchant of the people for many isles.’ “But the Phoenicians in common with the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Hebrews etc. with whom they dealt were at no time without their own peculiar weights and measures upon which they appear to have grafted the Assyrio-Babylonian principal unit of account or the weight in which it was customary to estimate values. This weight was the 60th part of the _manah_ or mina.