of him to divide it justly; or the eldest brother perhaps
anticipated the apportionment, and the priest had merely to sanction
the result, or settle the differences which might arise among the lawful
recipients in the course of the operation. When this was accomplished,
the legatees had to declare themselves satisfied; and when no further
claims arose, they had to sign an engagement before the priestly
arbitrator that they would henceforth refrain from all quarrelling on
the subject, and that they would never make a complaint one against the
other. By dint of these continual redistributions from one generation
to another, the largest fortunes soon became dispersed: the individual
shares became smaller and smaller, and scarcely sufficed to keep a
family, so that the slightest reverse obliged the possessor to
have recourse to usurers. The Chaldaeans, like the Egyptians, were
unacquainted with the use of money, but from the earliest times the
employment of precious metals for purposes of exchange was practised
among them to an enormous extent. Though copper and gold were both used,
silver was the principal medium in these transactions, and formed the
standard value of all purchaseable objects. It was never cut into flat
rings or twists of wire, as was the case with the Egyptian "tabnu;" it
was melted into small unstamped ingots, which were passed from hand
to hand by weight, being tested in the scales at each transaction.
"To weigh" was in the ordinary language the equivalent for "payment in
metal," whereas "to measure" denoted that the payment was in grain.
The ingots for exchange were, therefore, designated by the name of
the weights to which they corresponded. The lowest unit was a shekel,
weighing on an average nearly half an ounce, sixty shekels making a
mina, and sixty minas a talent. It is a question whether the Chaldaeanns
possessed in early times, as did the Assyrians of a later period, two
kinds of shekels and minas, one heavy and the other light. Whether the
loan were in metal, grain, or any other substance, the interest was very
high.* A very ancient law fixed it in certain cases at twelve drachmas
per mina, per annum--that is to say, at twenty per cent.--and more
recent texts show us that, when raised to twenty-five per cent., it did
not appear to them abnormal.

* We find several different examples, during the Second
Chaldaeann Empire, of an exchange of corn for provisions and
liquids, or of be