A Judean Gold ring weighing 7.61 grams next to a Judean Limestone weight inscribed in Hebrew “PYM” of equal weight, flanked by Judean Hacksilber
It is so beautiful. Was that limestone ball used as a weight against which the currency could be checked? And, @Moishi Cohen, I clicked on the link and I saw again those things that look like tiny bunches of grapes. Could each of those round grape pieces be broken off to be used as a smaller denomination of currency? I want to call the attention of our @Deacon Ray to this thread for when he gets time to take a look at it.
Thank you @LaCointessa , yes, The limestone is the counter balance weight against the hacked silver. Tiny bunches of grapes? I’m not sure which picture you’re referring to
@Nemo would be great if you could re-post in this thread your very informative historical write up regarding Judean Hacksilber
Sure, here it is. Hacksilber Fragment, Earliest Coinage Period, Holy Land Hacksilber Ingot, c. 8-6 centuries BC, Israel. 21 x 14 x 5 mm, 8.4 grams. Cut in antiquity from a larger piece. Possibly an overweight Pym or underweight Nezef? Similar ingots were found at Ein Gedi, Israel in a terra cotta cooking pot, hidden in a building destroyed near the end of Iron Age II, early 6th century BC (Avi-Yonah Encylcopedia of the Holy Land, volume 2, p. 374.) The basic weight in use was the shekel, weighing 11.4 g on average. Other weight groups include, but are not limited to, the following: (1) Beqa, a half shekel (Ex. 38:26), 5.7 g. (2) Nezef, averaging 9.12 g. The Judaean equivalent to an Egyptian qedet. (3) Pym, 7.6 g. (1 Samuel 13:21) The Judaean equivalent to the Phoenician shekel. The weight of this ingot is identical to the Mesopotamian shekel. During the 9th to 6th centuries BCE in the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, the common form of expressing prices was in quantities equivalent to one shekel (8.4 g) of silver. In ancient times, livestock were often used in barter. Indicative of this is the fact that the Latin word for money (pecunia) is drawn from pecus, meaning “cattle.” However, livestock (Ge 47:17) and foodstuffs (1Ki 5:10, 11) were obviously not a convenient medium of exchange. Instead, pieces of precious metals began to be used, the weight being checked at the time the transaction was made. Ge 23:16 "Abraham weighed out to E′phron the amount of silver that he had spoken in the hearing of the sons of Heth, four hundred silver shekels current with the merchants."; Jer 32:10 "Then I wrote in a deed and affixed the seal and took witnesses as I went weighing the money in the scales." The usual Hebrew term translated as “money,” keseph, literally means “silver.” (Ge 17:12) There was no coined money in Israel during the First Temple Period (1006-586 BCE). Rather, it consisted of cut pieces of silver and gold, or molded for convenience into bars, rings, bracelets, having a specific weight. - Ge 24:22 At Judges 5:19, bâtsa‛ keseph, which is commonly rendered as, “No gain of silver did they take,” literally means to break off or cut off silver.
This @Moishi Cohen, is what I was describing as tiny bunches of grapes: https://www.cointalk.com/media/3-gerah.7678/ Thanks.
@LaCointessa oh, this was part of an earring that has been hacked in ancient times with the upper part folded back for convenience weighing in at 1.73 g which is 3 Gerah. This type dates to Circa 7th century BCE, here is what a complete earring of the same type looks like.
How do you authenticate those pieces of silver? Do they have a complete provenance from the original find? Will a complete spectroscopic chemical scan reveal components that determines them to be genuine?
Both of the above and, like everything else, over time and after handling many different varieties you develop a feeling and you can tell
