And how do they verify the weight of these 10,000 coins? they certainly could not load them on a truck and take it to the weighbridge...
This indicates how intellectually and logically bereft the numeric proponent's arguments have become.
Answer to the question: a set of balance
scales and a balance
weights, both of which are attested to in the
ancient Greek world.
60 Mina to the
Talent ( again sexaguesimal base numbering) and you weigh the 10,000 coins in tranches and sum the total.
But the problem is even simpler. Daily reconciliation of input and output would be required to prevent malfeasance in the
mint. It would be inadequate identifying pilferage through a
mint control process days or weeks after it happened and the
king would be pretty pissed with this outcome, no doubt demanding
mint overseer's
head on a platter!.
Daily striking rates on a single anvil are the paramount consideration in this regard. All the evidence based on very significant die study of the monthly dated issues of Mithradates VI points to a maximum sustainable
average rate of 3,000 coins/day
per anvil in a high-volume
mint operation. Refer : Callataÿ, F. de.
L’histoire des guerres mithridatiques vue par les monnaies. Numismatica Lovaniensia 18, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1997.
From extensive die studies at other mints with dated coinage such
Sidon and Tyre in the late 4th century BC far lower striking rates, less than 1,000 coins/day
per anvil are the norm.
So the problem of weighing the coinage output
per striking team (which is identified by a specific
mint mark) on a daily basis and reconciling this to the
weight of bullion delivered to that team/anvil is far simpler than the confected problem with which the numeric
monogram proponent seeks to blow smoke over the counter argument.
It is only necessary to weigh a few hundred to few thousand coins at the end of the day and reconcile this back to the amount of bullion delivered to the anvil for striking. Any shortcoming is thus identified before the culprit even leaves the
mint!
3,000 drachms struck at the Attic
weight standard is half a
talent = 30 Mina = 13 kg at the Attic
weight standard. This hardly requires a weigh bridge or advanced technology to achieve such an enormous feat of measurement!
And don't believe for one moment that talents of bullion were delivered to the anvil for striking in one go and that only at the end of days/weeks/months of striking was a reconciliation undertaken as implied in the paper and by the numeric proponent.
Rather, at most a few Mina at a time would have been provided to each anvil at any one time and then immediately after striking into coin it would reconciled to the
weight of coined output, so as to expose pilferage in real-time.
To repeat:
(1) The
monograms in the case of multiple
mint controls on a single coin exist in a hierarchy and serve to identify successively the
mint of origin and/or the king's instruction on which the coinage was undertaken, the
mint overseer, and the striking team (i.e. anvil specific in the event of a multi-anvil striking operation).
(2) This structure and hierarchy of
mint controls served to identify unequivocally those engaged in the production coinage down to the level of a specific coin and served to facilitate the mint's control and reconciliation process.
(3) Unequivocal
identification of those engaged in the production of a coinage accompanied by a process of continuous
weight reconciliation (input
weight versus output weigh) served to
act as the primary deterrent against pilferage of the king's bullion.
(4) The reconciliation process (
weight for
weight) was undertaken in real-time i.e. daily, or potentially more frequently with each batch of bullion delivered to the anvil. This only required the weighing of a few hundred to at most a few thousand coins at a time on balance
scales using Mina and fractional Mina balance
weights.
(5) The
identification by a hierarchy of
monograms of those involved also served to deter the risk of debasement of metal in the
mint, for even after the coin left the
mint if was found to be debased those responsible could be identified via the
mint marks (
monograms). Retribution in such a circumstance would be
swift.
(6) In all of this decimal base mathematical gymnastics with numbers played no useful (dare I say conceivable) role.
So please don't bleat anymore about not understanding what these ligatures of Greek letter mean. They are
mint controls that served an identifying purpose in a mint's control process aimed at insuring the king's instructions were fulfilled in the most efficient manner possible. They served to identify those involved and through that very fact to
act as a deterrent to trying to screw over the
king by
mint workers and administrators. This all accords with conventional numismatic understanding and is at the heart of numismatic typology of any coin series, in many instances fully supported by rigorous die analysis.