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A shekel or sheqel (Akkadian: ... Phoenician: 𐤔𐤒𐤋) is an ancient Mesopotamian coin, usually of silver. A shekel was first a unit of weight—very roughly 11 ...
Ancient Mesopotamian units of measurement originated in the loosely organized city-states of Early Dynastic Sumer. Each city , kingdom and trade guild had its own standards until the formation of the Akkadian Empire when Sargon of Akkad issued a common standard.
Articles relating to the shekel, an ancient Mesopotamian coin, usually of silver. A shekel was first a unit of weight—very roughly 11 grams (0.39 oz)—and became currency in ancient Tyre and ancient Carthage, and then in ancient Israel under the Maccabees.
Around 5,000 years ago, the Mesopotamian shekel emerged as the first known form of currency. See: Water Joins Gold and Oil as Wall Street’s Next Precious Commodity. Roman Empire.
The kakkaru or talent weight was introduced in Mesopotamia at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and was normalized at the end of the 3rd millennium during the Akkadian-Sumer phase. The talent was divided into 60 minas, each of which was subdivided into 60 shekels (following the common Mesopotamian sexagesimal number system).
The Mesopotamian civilization developed a large-scale economy based on commodity money. The shekel was the unit of weight and currency, first recorded c. 2150 BC, which was nominally equivalent to a specific weight of barley that was the preexisting and parallel form of currency.
From earliest Sumerian times, a mina was a unit of weight. At first, talents and shekels had not yet been introduced. By the time of Ur-Nammu (shortly before 2000 BCE), the mina had a value of 1 ⁄ 60 talent as well as 60 shekels.
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