Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie.

  • Flinders Petrie
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    could be wielded to attack Persia. The union of that great kingdom, the mightiest known in the world till then, from the Balkans to Lahore, rested upon a vast gold basis, the central store being 200 tons of gold, worth ^28,000,000. This capital, immense for the ancient world, was five times as much as the modern reserve of Germany, and was kept in the Julius tower ; when it was scattered over the Greek world it gave the Greek the power of welding the later kingdoms, that were each far larger than the Greece which bounded the race a century before. The growth of Roman power similarly expanded on transfer to a silver and then to a gold basis. England, on a silver currency, could only hold itself together ; but when the gold currency begins to be effective, the battle of Sluys started the career of expan¬ sion, which, after attempting to conquer France, finally found its scope overseas. Lastly, we have gone a step further. International trade can hardly shift all its payments in gold about the world ; it has on a credit basis resorted to paper, and so obtained a still more portable system of bills of exchange. The limit, then, of political union and extensive trade depends on the transmissibility of pay¬ ments. Corn suffices for a city-state, copper for a small group of cities, silver for an isolated country, gold for an empire, paper for the
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