Talent (weight)

The talent was a unit of weight that 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, divided into 60 minas or 3,600 shekels. In classical antiquity, the talent ( la, talentum, from Ancient Greek: , ''talanton'' "scale, balance, sum") was the heaviest of common weight units for commercial transactions. An Attic weight talent was approximately John William Humphrey, John Peter Oleson, Andrew Neil Sherwood, ''Greek and Roman technology'', p. 487. (approximately the mass of water of an amphora), and a Babylonian talent was .Herodotus, Robin Waterfield and Carolyn Dewald, ''The Histories'' (1998), p. 593. Ancient Israel adopted the Babylonian weight talent, but later revised it.III. Measures of Weight:
, ''Jewish Encyclopedia''. The heavy common talent, used in New Testament times, was . A Roman talent (divided into 100 librae) was Attic talents, approximately ; an Egyptian talent was 80 librae, approximately .

Akkadian talent

The Akkadian talent was called ''kakkaru'' in the Akkadian language, corresponding to Biblical Hebrew ''kikkar'' כִּכָּר (translated as Greek τάλαντον 'talanton' in the Septuagint, English 'talent'), Ugaritic ''kkr'' (𐎋𐎋𐎗), Phoenician ''kkr'' (𐤒𐤒𐤓), Syriac ''kakra'' (ܟܲܟܪܵܐ), and apparently to ''gaggaru'' in the Amarna Tablets. The name comes from the Semitic root ''KKR'' meaning 'to be circular', referring to round masses of gold or silver. The talent was divided into 60 minas, each of which was subdivided into 60 shekels (following the common Mesopotamian sexagesimal number system). These weights were used subsequently by the Babylonians, Sumerians, and Phoenicians, and later by the Hebrews. The Babylonian weights are approximately: shekel (), mina (), and talent (). The Greeks adopted these weights through their trade with the Phoenicians along with the ratio of 60 minas to one talent. A Greek mina in Euboea around 800 BC weighed 504 g; other minas in the Mediterranean basin, and even other Greek minas, varied in some small measure from the Babylonian values, and from one to another. The Bible mentions the unit in various contexts, like Hiram king of Tyre sending 120 talents of gold to King Solomon as part of an alliance, or the building of the candelabrum necessitating a talent of pure gold.

Homeric talent

The original Homeric talent was probably the gold equivalent of the value of an ox or a cow.Charles Theodore Seltman (1924) ''Athens, Its History and Coinage Before the Persian Invasion'', pp. 112–114. Based on a statement from a later Greek source that "the talent of Homer was equal in amount to the later Daric .. i.e.two Attic drachmas" and analysis of finds from a Mycenaean grave-shaft, a weight of about can be established for this original talent. Homer describes how Achilles gave a half-talent of gold to Antilochus as a prize. The later Attic talent was of a different weight than the Homeric, but represented the same value in copper as the Homeric did in gold, with the price ratio of gold to copper in Bronze Age Greece being 1:3000.

Attic talent

An Attic talent was the equivalent of 60 minae or 6,000 drachmae.

An Attic weight talent was about . Friedrich Hultsch estimated a weight of 26.2 kg, and offers an estimate of 26.0 kg.
An Attic talent of silver was the value of nine man-years of skilled work, according to known wage rates from 377 BC. In 415 BC, an Attic talent was a month's pay for a trireme crew, Hellenistic mercenaries were commonly paid one drachma per day of military service.

Aeginetan talent

The Aeginetan talent weighed about 37 kg. The German historian Friedrich Hultsch calculated a range of 36.15 to 37.2 kg based on such estimates as the weight of one full Aeginetan ''metretes'' of coins, and concluded that the Aeginetan talent represented the water weight of a Babylonian '' ephah'': 36.29 kg by his reckoning (the ''metretes'' and the ''ephah'' were units of volume). Percy Gardner estimated a weight of 37.32 kg, based on extant weights and coins.

An Aeginetan talent was worth 60 Aeginetan minae, or 6,000 Aeginetan drachmae.

Talent in late Hebrew antiquity

The talent ( he, ככר, ''kikkar''; Aramaic: , ) in late Hebrew antiquity (c. 500 CE) was the greatest unit of weight in use at the time, and which weight varied depending on the era. According to the Jerusalem Talmud (''Sanhedrin'' 9a, ''Pnei Moshe Commentary'', s.v. ), the weight of the talent at the time of Moses was double that of the Roman era talent, which latter had the weight of either 100 ''maneh'' (), or 60 ''maneh'' (Roman ), each ''maneh'' (''libra'') having the weight of 25 ''sela''s (reprinted from Jerusalem editions, 1907, 1917 and 1988) (''sela'' being a term used for the biblical Shekel of Tyrian coinage, or 'shekel of the Sanctuary', and where there were 4 provincial ''denarii'' or ''zuz'' to each ''sela''; 25 ''sela''s being equivalent to 100 ''denaria'').

The standard talent during the late Second Temple period was the talent consisting of 60 ''maneh''. According to Talmudic scholars, the talent (''kikkar'') of 60 ''maneh'' (and which sum total of 60 ''maneh'' equals 1,500 ''sela''s, or 6,000 ''denarii'' (the ''denarius'' also being known in Hebrew as ''zuz''), had a weight of 150 ''dirham'' for every 25 ''sela''s. The anatomic weight of each ''dirham'' at that time was put at 3.20 grammes, with every ''sela'' or 'shekel of the sanctuary' weighing-in at 20.16 grammes. The sum aggregate of the 60 ''maneh'' talent (or 1,500 ''sela''s) came to c. . According to Adani, in the silver coinage known as the Mughal India '' rupaiya'', minted during British colonial rule (each with a weight of grammes (1 tola), of which weight only 91.7% was of fine silver), one talent (Heb. ''kikkar'') would have amounted to 2,343 of these silver coins in specie (), in addition to the minuscule weight of 12 ''ma’in'' (10.08 grammes).

Other talents

The talent as a unit of value is mentioned in the New Testament in Jesus' parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30). The use of the word "talent" to mean "gift or skill" in English and other languages originated from an interpretation of this parable sometime late in the 13th century. Luke includes a different parable involving the mina. According to Epiphanius, the talent is called ''mina'' (''maneh'') among the Hebrews, and was the equivalent in weight to one-hundred denarii. The talent is found in another parable of Jesus where a servant who is forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents refuses to forgive another servant who owes him only one hundred silver denarii. The talent is also used elsewhere in the Bible, as when describing the material invested in the Ark of the Covenant. Solomon received 666 gold talents a year.

In Revelation 16:21, the talent is used as a weight for hail being poured forth from heaven and dropping on mankind as punishment in the end times: "And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great." (NIV) Various definitions are provided in different translations:
*NIV: a footnote says "Talent: 75 or 100 pounds."
* NLT: text reads "weighing as much as seventy-five pounds".
*ESV: text reads "about one hundred pounds each".

Bibliography

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References

External links

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* {{Cite NSRW, wstitle=Talent , short=x

Coins of ancient Greece
Coins of ancient Rome
Obsolete units of measurement
Units of mass