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". According to Seltman, the original Homeric talent was probably the gold equivalent of the value of an ox or a cow. Homer describes how Achilles 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 drachmas" 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 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 crew. Hellenistic mercenaries 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