the heavy Assyrian or Aramaic maneh. Now it is evident that if the heavy system had been the original one employed by the Hebrews, the maneh would simply have been reckoned at 50 (heavy) shekels. As the matter stands it is evident that on the contrary, the heavy mina was introduced into a system where the unit was simply the light shekel, and the Hebrews therefore clinging to their old unit, described the maneh as consisting of 100 shekels instead of 50. Further evidence to the same effect will be adduced later on. Finding thus the light shekel in Babylonia, in Palestine and in Egypt, and current even under the Assyrian Empire side by side with the heavy system even amongst people who used the Aramaic system of writing, we may without any hesitation regard it as the older. The process by which the gold Talent was arrived at was somewhat thus: The ox-unit of 130-135 grs. is the basis. Next the fivefold of this was taken, whether from five being the simplest multiple, since it was suggested from the primitive method of counting by the fingers of one hand, or far less likely from a slave being estimated at 5 oxen, somewhat as we find among the Homeric Greeks an ordinary slave-woman estimated at four cows, and in ancient Ireland at three cows. This weight is known as the Assyrian five-shekel standard, and from it Mr Petrie derives the 80-grain standard which he detects as the unit of a certain number of weights found at Naucratis (_Naukratis_, p. 86). Whilst the Egyptians contented themselves with the 5 ket and 10 ket, or uten, as their highest unit, the Chaldaeans advanced to the fifty-fold (5 × 10), and thus obtained that which probably for a long time formed their highest unit.