MI NO AN 'SHILLINGS'

66s

of about 8-7 grammes (135 grains),1 which looks like a slight reduction of
the Egyptian kedet system.- That gold bars were in use is demonstrated
by a complete example found in a Cypro-Minoan tomb at Old Salamis,3
weighing" 72-12 grammes (1,113 grains) corresponding
to 8 Egyptian kedeis of 9-025 grammes (139-125 grains).4
A cut section, representing a fraction of such a bar
of pale gold or electrum (two and a half kedets) was
found at Mycenae (Fig. 653)/"' Similar sections of the
silver bars of Saxon treasure hoards were known as
shillings. The Mycenae specimen is in fact a true
1 skilling* or 'shilling'.

That, however, the older standard in Crete was the
Egyptian has received fresh and striking confirmation
from a quite recent find made on or near the site of
Knossos.0 This is a 'weight-seal' of solid gold and
scaling 12^25 grammes (189 grains), which brings it
within the normal limits of the Egyptian gold unit.7 Its
shape, with two small upright bars at three points of its
circumference, is unique, but the coiling double sprays
engraved below find a parallel in the design in the field
of an ivory seal from the primitive tholos B of Platanos,3
where also occurred a haematite cylinder of the Age of Hammurabi.0 The
coils with their leaf-like ends are so devised as to prevent its being cut
down. The fact that it is of solid gold itself points to Nubia—the 'Land
of Gold'—the Egyptian nub-—-as its original source.

A Minoan
'shilling'
from
Mycenae.

Discovery
of gold
' weight-
seal ' -
Egyptian
"old unit.

Fig. 654. Gold

Weight-seal :
Knossos. (f).

1 W. Ridgeway, Meirological Notes \ Had

the People of Mycenae a Weight Standard?
{J. H. S., x, p. 90 seqq.). Professor Ridge-
way considered this to represent a slight
increase of the light Babylonian shekel of
about 8-4 grammes (130 grains). But as
observed by me, Minoan Weights, &c, p. 338,
it was more in accordance with precedent in

Soc. Bibl. Arch., xxiii, igor, p. 37S seqq.

s G. F. Hill. B.M. Coin Cat. {Cyprus), p. xxi.

1 Minoan Weights, c>v., op. a't., p. 355.

5 It was obtained there by Mr. C. H. Hawes,
thanks to whose kindness I was able to publish
it, op. cil., p. 354, Fig. 10. Its weight is 22-66
grammes (c. 350 grains).

0 The object had migrated to Athens to-

the case of a commercial people slightly to gether with Cretan bead-seals, but the approxi-

reduce a borrowed standard. The kedet
units of Minoan weights descend to about
9 grammes (c. 138 grains).

2 The Uedet weights in the Petrie Collection
range from 8-812 grammes (136 grains) to
io-ioS grammes (156 grains), giving an average
of 9.160 grammes (146 grains). Weigall, Proc.

mate record preserved by its owner of its
provenance seems to hold good.

7 See p. 654. A. E., op. cit., pp. 345, 346.

s Xanthudides, Vaulted Tombs of Mesara
(ed. Droop), PI. XIV, No. 1059, and p. 116.

? P.ofM., i, p. 198, Fig, 146.