Identifier: mediababylonpers00ragouoft (find matches)
Title: Media, Babylon and Persia : including a study of the Zend-Avesta or religion of Zoroaster, from the fall of Nineveh to the Persian war
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: Ragozin, Zénaïde A. (Zénaïde Alexeïevna), 1835-1924
Subjects: Zoroastrianism Iran -- History Babylon (Extinct city) -- History
Publisher: London : T. Fisher Unwin New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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due, so simple in its principles, yet so portentousin its results. 13. Even so late as this, the seventh century 1;.C.,a vast proportion of the active trade between nationswas still carried on on the primitive basis of barter,i. e., exchange of one commodity for another, of rawmaterials for manufactured products, of art luxuriesfor tl>e necessaries of life, or other luxuries, etc.This must have necessarily been the case especiallyin the commercial transactions between civilized na-tions and savages or semi-civilized peoples, to whomdirect exchange was the only intelligible and safefinancial operation. )3ut in the transactions betweenmerchants of the same nation or of different equallyci\ilized nations, the need of some less cumbrousmeans of doing business had long been felt,—andsupplied. It consisted in substituting///rf//^?.?^ forbarter, i. c, exchanging merchandises, not againstother merchandise, but against something of equalvalue, convenient in shape and volume, which at any
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oo 7. w w HM XH <Q O H w </^ erfO 111 D HZM o<: a! CO COCI moment couUl bo in its turn cxrhanpfcd for wli.itcvcrwares the owncrncedcd. Of cinirsr llic intrinsic valueof such a nudium of cxcliangc must he a u!ii\crsall\acknowledi^ed one, determined b) general agreement.It has from limes immemorial been found expedientto invest with such standard value the so-called pre-cious metals, gold and silver. Once the positivevalue of a given weight of the metal had been settled,it only remained to divide masses of it into a greatmany smaller pieces, each weighing a certain fractionof the standard weight, and consequcntl) represent-ing a certain, well-defined fraction of the standard unitvalue. Henceforth the merchant who sold a rug, ora dagger, or a vessel of fine glass, was not forced totake in payment a number of live sheep, or of sheep-skins, or of measures of grain, or a wagon-load of hay,—or any other ponderous and cumbersome waresthat his customer might happen to have on hand ;

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