The talent (

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

: , ''talanton'', Latin: ,

Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...

: ''kikkar'' כִּכָּר, Ugaritic: ''kkr'' (𐎋𐎋𐎗), Phoenician: ''kkr'' (𐤒𐤒𐤓), Syriac: ''kakra'' (ܟܲܟܪܵܐ),, Akkadian: ''kakkaru'' or ''gaggaru'' in the Amarna tablets, later

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

: ()) was a unit of weight used in the ancient world, often used for weighing

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

and

silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

. In the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' tabernacle According to the Hebrew Bible, the tabernacle (), also known as the Tent of the Congregation (, also Tent of Meeting), was the portable earthly dwelling of God used by the Israelites from the Exodus until the conquest of Canaan. Moses was instru ...

), where the

Ark of the Covenant The Ark of the Covenant, also known as the Ark of the Testimony or the Ark of God, was a religious storage chest and relic held to be the most sacred object by the Israelites. Religious tradition describes it as a wooden storage chest decorat ...

was, weighed 29 talents and 730 shekels , and silver 100 talents and 1775 shekels. (1 talent=3000 shekels. ) The enormous wealth of King

Solomon Solomon (), also called Jedidiah, was the fourth monarch of the Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy), Kingdom of Israel and Judah, according to the Hebrew Bible. The successor of his father David, he is described as having been the penultimate ...

is described as receiving 666 gold talents a year. The talent is also mentioned in connection with other metals, ivory, and

frankincense Frankincense, also known as olibanum (), is an Aroma compound, aromatic resin used in incense and perfumes, obtained from trees of the genus ''Boswellia'' in the family (biology), family Burseraceae. The word is from Old French ('high-quality in ...

. In

Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...

's poems, it is always used of gold and is thought to have been quite a small weight of about , approximately the same as the later gold

stater The stater (; ) was an ancient coin used in various regions of Greece. The term is also used for similar coins, imitating Greek staters, minted elsewhere in ancient Europe. History The stater, as a Greek silver currency, first as ingots, and ...

coin or Persian daric. In later times in Greece, it represented a much larger weight, approximately 3,000 times as much: an

Attic An attic (sometimes referred to as a '' loft'') is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building. It is also known as a ''sky parlor'' or a garret. Because they fill the space between the ceiling of a building's t ...

talent was approximately .John William Humphrey,

John Peter Oleson John Peter Oleson (born 1946) is a Canadian classical archaeologist and historian of ancient technology. His main interests are the Roman Near East, maritime archaeology (particularly Roman harbours), and ancient technology, especially hydraul ...

, Andrew Neil Sherwood, ''Greek and Roman technology'', p. 487. The word also came to be used as the equivalent of the Middle Eastern ''kakkaru'' or ''kikkar''. A Babylonian talent was . 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 or pounds) 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 The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

, 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 ''kakkaru'' or talent weight 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. The talent was divided into 60 minas, each of which was subdivided into 60

shekel A shekel or sheqel (; , , plural , ) is an ancient Mesopotamian coin, usually of silver. A shekel was first a unit of weight—very roughly 11 grams (0.35 ozt)—and became currency in ancient Tyre, Carthage and Hasmonean Judea. Name The wo ...

s (following the common Mesopotamian

sexagesimal Sexagesimal, also known as base 60, is a numeral system with 60 (number), sixty as its radix, base. It originated with the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, was passed down to the ancient Babylonians, and is still used—in a modified fo ...

number system). These weights were used subsequently by the Babylonians,

Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. ...

ians and

Phoenicians Phoenicians were an ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syrian coast. They developed a maritime civi ...

, and later by the

Hebrews The Hebrews (; ) were an ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic-speaking people. Historians mostly consider the Hebrews as synonymous with the Israelites, with the term "Hebrew" denoting an Israelite from the nomadic era, which pre ...

. The Babylonian weights are approximately: shekel (), mina () and talent (). The Greeks adopted these weights through their trade with the Phoenicians along with the

ratio In mathematics, a ratio () shows how many times one number contains another. For example, if there are eight oranges and six lemons in a bowl of fruit, then the ratio of oranges to lemons is eight to six (that is, 8:6, which is equivalent to the ...

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.

Origin

William Ridgeway speculates that the ''kakkaru''/''kikkar'' was originally the weight of a load which could be carried by a man. Thus in the Book of Kings we read that Naaman “bound two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of garments, and laid them upon two of his servants; and they bare them before him”. He notes that in Assyrian cuneiform, the same ideogram or sign was used for both "tribute" and "talent", which might be explained if a load of corn was the regular unit of tribute.

Homeric talent

In Homer, the word in the plural is sometimes used of a pair of scales or a balance; it is used especially of the scales in which Zeus weighed the fortunes of men (''Iliad'' 8.69, 19.223, 22.209). The word is also used as a measurement, always of gold. "From the order of the prizes in Il. 23.262 sq. and other passages its weight was probably not great".Liddell, Scott, Jones, ''Greek Lexicon'', s.v
τάλαντον
According to Seltman, 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.

describes how

Achilles In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus () was a hero of the Trojan War who was known as being the greatest of all the Greek warriors. The central character in Homer's ''Iliad'', he was the son of the Nereids, Nereid Thetis and Peleus, ...

set an ox as 2nd prize in a foot race, and a half-talent of gold as the third prize, suggesting that the ox was worth a talent. 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

drachma Drachma may refer to: * Ancient drachma, an ancient Greek currency * Modern drachma The drachma ( ) was the official currency of modern Greece from 1832 until the launch of the euro in 2001. First modern drachma The drachma was reintroduce ...

s" and analysis of finds from a Mycenaean grave-shaft, a weight of about can be established for this original talent. 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 The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

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 A trireme ( ; ; cf. ) was an ancient navies and vessels, ancient vessel and a type of galley that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greece, ancient Greeks and ancient R ...

crew.

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

mercenaries A mercenary is a private individual who joins an War, armed conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military. Mercenaries fight for money or other forms of payment rath ...

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 (, ''kikkar'';

: , ) 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 The Jerusalem Talmud (, often for short) or Palestinian Talmud, also known as the Talmud of the Land of Israel, is a collection of rabbinic notes on the second-century Jewish oral tradition known as the Mishnah. Naming this version of the Talm ...

(''Sanhedrin'' 9a, '' Pnei Moshe Commentary'', s.v. ), the weight of the talent at the time of

Moses In Abrahamic religions, Moses was the Hebrews, Hebrew prophet who led the Israelites out of slavery in the The Exodus, Exodus from ancient Egypt, Egypt. He is considered the most important Prophets in Judaism, prophet in Judaism and Samaritani ...

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 The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years (516 BCE – 70 CE) during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstructio ...

was the talent consisting of 60 ''maneh''. According to

Talmudic The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewi ...

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 The ''denarius'' (; : ''dēnāriī'', ) was the standard Ancient Rome, Roman silver coin from its introduction in the Second Punic War to the reign of Gordian III (AD 238–244), when it was gradually replaced by the ''antoninianus''. It cont ...

'' also being known in Hebrew as ''zuz''), had a weight of 150 ''

dirham The dirham, dirhem or drahm is a unit of currency and of mass. It is the name of the currencies of Moroccan dirham, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates dirham, United Arab Emirates and Armenian dram, Armenia, and is the name of a currency subdivisi ...

'' 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

gram The gram (originally gramme; SI unit symbol g) is a Physical unit, unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one thousandth of a kilogram. Originally defined in 1795 as "the absolute Mass versus weight, weight of a volume ...

mes (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).

Talent in New Testament

The talent as a unit of value is mentioned in the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

Jesus Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...

Parable of the Talents The Parable of the Talents (also the Parable of the Minas) is one of the parables of Jesus. It appears in two of the Synoptic Gospels, synoptic, Canonical Gospels, canonical gospels of the New Testament: * * Although the basic theme of each ...

(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. 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." (KJV) 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

* *

References

External links

* * {{Cite NSRW, wstitle=Talent , short=x Coins of ancient Greece Coins of ancient Rome Obsolete units of measurement Units of mass