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Missing Link In Auction
We often associate the term “missing link” with some Neanderthal-type ape, but what do you envision when someone suggests they’ve found a missing link between primitive money and coins as money?
What if rather than that missing link being gold rings, something resembling a knife, or a stone with a hole drilled through it, the object was a drop- or jug-shaped 0.9854 silver 41.55 g weight ingot on which a hieroglyphic cartouche reads: “Tutankhamen, ruler of Heliopolis in Upper Egypt.”
This object was offered as lot number 101 in the Nov. 18-19 Numismatica Genevensis SA auction held in Geneva, Switzerland.
The so-called ‘boy king’ Tutankhamen ruled Egypt in 1345-1327 BCE towards the end of the 18th dynasty. About that time 45.5 g was expressed as either a half deben or five kites. An ingot of 41.55 g would have been within the accepted weight tolerance for that time. Similar deviations are known from related numismatic periods. The fact that the ingot is of such a fine purity acknowledges the ingot was meant to be of the highest purity able to be refined with the technology of that time.
Stone weights in deben units are known from the Old, Middle, and New Kingdom periods. The New Kingdom began about 1700 BCE. The deben was the weight of account for currency in ancient Egypt. During the New Kingdom period it is understood a deben of about 91 g (regardless of its metal content) was divided into 10 kidet (kite, qedet, qdt or ‘pieces’), with one-twelfth of a deben weighing 7.6 g. The deben was used to denote a value of goods in comparison to the value and weight of those goods in various metals.
It is understood metal was a measure of value, not something to be exchanged. The deben had a set value. The weight of the goods were weighed and compared to the weight and value of this deben in gold, silver, or copper. Silver deben are seldom mentioned on ostraca (a potsherd used as a writing surface), yet silver deben are commonly mentioned on papyrus. Papyrus was used to record official and expensive transactions, while ostraca were used by villagers to record private small-value transactions.
Deben have been suggested to be a proto currency used as a means of exchange. Gold and silver ingots have been found at the Temple of El Tod, dating from the Fifth Dynasty until the time of Ptolemaic Egypt. The Genesis 37:28 account of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers for 20 ‘pieces of silver’ likely dates from 1450 to 1410 BCE. The silver was expressed by number of pieces, suggesting the weight of a ‘piece of silver’ was established.
During the reign of Ramses III (1188-1156 BCE) the tax inventory valued debens of copper, linen, incense, honey, oil, grain, flax, and water fowl. An account survives of a contemporary woman named Erenofre purchasing a female slave for five debens of silver.
Archaeologists have encountered ostraca in the ruins of a workers’ village on the West Bank of the Thebes recording currency calculations in weights of gold, silver, copper, and grain. The largest deben values are expressed in gold, then silver, or in descending
