Akkadian Addenda · Signs

shekel

Name	GIN₂
Reads	[šiqlum]
Means	the shekel-sign — written GIN₂, spoken šiqlum: the weight silver moves in
Taught in	17 · Silver changes hands

Where it comes from

The shekel-sign — about eight grams, a hired worker’s month (stated). There are no coins in Babylon: silver is money by weight alone, and this sign is the unit the balance-pan thinks in. Written GIN₂, spoken as the Akkadian word šiqlum — from the same weighing-verb as the laws’ išaqqal.

How to remember it

The shekel: the small weight that prices a month of a man’s work. Sixty of them make the mina; one of them, on this shelf’s loan, is what a mina of silver breeds.

In the wild

𒈧 𒁹 𒈠 𒈾 ▢ 𒂆MAŠ₂ 1(diš) ma-na ▢ GIN₂"its interest: on the mina, a third of a shekel" — a Sippar rate

An Old Babylonian loan (PBS 8/2, 195), obverse 2. urn:nabu:cdli:p257793:obverse:2 · license: attribution.

Akkadian reading taught in 103’s chapter 17.