Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

DEPRECIATION OF MONEY 337the big markets, averages (I am informed) | lb., the conclusionof the whole matter is that in the era mentionedI lb., or two fish, cost ^q, or -45 of a penny.In pre-war days theaverage marketable price worked out at 2*954 pence per lb.,so the Eg3^tian Mugil in 1913 cost about 6| times more thanc. 1200 B.C., while the English Mugil in 1913, which (accordingto figures kindly furnished me by the Fishmongers Company)averaged 10 to 12 pence per lb., cost about 24 times more.The Egjrptian correlation of 6| to i cannot, it is true,be definitely established until we have data proving that thekite was exactly 9'i grammes, nor can it be accurately appliedto other commodities, but it may help us to a rough approximationof what some of their prices were in the XXth Dynasty. 1The depreciation of money between the XVIIIth and XXthDynasties, heavy as it seems, was as nothing to that which ensuedin subsequent centuries. Examples of this can be observedin the fall of the Gallienus tetradrachm from about half a crownto one halfpenny in less than a century. Again under Macrianus(260 A.D.) the coinage was so bad and so worthless that thebanks closed their doors, but were compelled by the king toopen and continue " his divine coinage." At the time ofDiocletian's Edict on maximum prices (301 a.d.) a denarius(4 drachmcB) was reckoned at 5^000 of a litra of gold, but inEgypt after Constantine's reign it fell much lower, e.g. 432,000denarii equalled i pound.From the Papyrus Oxyrh. 1223 we find the solidus computedat 2,020X10,000=20,200,000, (!) denarii at the end of thefourth century. 2Billon Denarii, i.e. made out of copper and very littlesilver, ceased to be coined at Alexandria after a.d. 297, and gotutterly depreciated.We get little farther in our quest of correlation of prices^ The information as to the average prices and weights of the Mugil capita,on which the above calculations were grounded, was obtained from the Departmentof Supplies in Egypt. " In the markets of Alexandria the weight of thegrey mullet varies from 8 to 3 to the oke (2-75 lbs.), say 5^ to 14^ oz. each.The pre-war retail price was for large fish, 3 or 4 to the oke, 8 Piastres ; for small,8 to the oke, 5 Piastres." The prices in August, 1920, had increased to 20 andi6 Piastres respectively, or nearly two-thirds more.^ Cf. Pap. Oxyrh. 1430, Introd.