Thus was obtained the famous Babylonian Sexagesimal system. Although the French metric system of modern days has returned to the decimal system, which was the first employed by primitive men, being probably suggested to them by those natural counters, the fingers, the sexagesimal had a considerable superiority over the older decimal system (which the Egyptians had clung to) for certain practical purposes, as the number on which it was based could be resolved into fractions far more conveniently than the number 10. Dr Hultsch (_Metrologie_², p. 393) arrives at the Babylonian weight-unit thus: the Babylonian _maris_ is equal to one-fifth of the cube of the Royal Babylonian Ell, which is itself obtained from the sun’s apparent diameter. The weight in water corresponding to this measure of capacity gave the _light_ Royal Babylonian Talent; this Talent was divided into 60 Minae, and each Mina into sixty parts or _Shekels_. Their _gold_ Talent was derived from the _sixtieth_ of this Royal Mina, with the modification that now _fifty_ sixtieths of the Royal Mina made a _Mina of gold_ and sixty Minae made a Talent[313]. It seems strange that the framers of this theory did not consider that just as undoubtedly the Chaldaeans must have reckoned their time by the primitive methods of sunrise, noon and sunset, “full market,” or ox-loosing time for centuries before they arrived at their scientific division of time, and just as the Chaldaean artificer employed his fingers or palm, or span or foot, as a measure of length ages before the Royal Cubit was equated to the sun’s apparent diameter, so in all probability they employed as measures of capacity, gourds or eggshells (as did the Hebrews) and for weights the seeds of plants.