Several ancient and medieval texts at McGill University Library and Archives are in the process of being deciphered and published by Brice Jones, a PhD student at Concordia University. Until now the texts had not been studied and few knew of their existence. Credit: Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University Library and Archives
This is meaningless without knowing the size of the underlying transaction. How much land was sold, and how much did the purchaser pay for it?
Yeah, but it was in a great location:
The tax on the purchase - not even the purchase price itself - equaled thirty times the annual wage of a commoner. Soak the rich!
It actually translates to “shared responsiblity payment”
A drachma was equivalent to a Roman denarius, which represented a good day's pay (see the parable of the laborers in the vineyard who agreed to work (Matt. 20). Maybe it should read 180 drachmas.
how much is that piece of pottery worth.
That's an error. A telent is a unit of weight, like a pound. The exact weight varied by region, but Wiki says that an Egyptian talent was 60lb.
In order to know how much money we are talking about, you would need to know whether it was a talent of bronze or silver or gold. Later in the article it suggests that it was Bronze, and says that the 15 talent "surcharge" was just a way of converting from silver to bronze.
If you want to guess how much it would be worth today, 75 talents x 60 lb = 4,500 pounds x 14.58 troy ounces per pound = 65,600 troy ounces of silver x $17 per ounce = $1.1 million.
However, if they paid in bronze, which today is a lot cheaper than silver, it would be 90 talents x 60lb x $2 per pound = $10,800
So, how much is that in today’s US dollars?
Sounds like a lot of money, but if the taxpayer was the Bill Gates of Ptolemaic Egypt maybe not so much.
Ha! They paid their taxes in pennies.
