Note 305 — Chapter X · The Systems of Egypt, Babylon, and Palestine.

Is it possible that the so-called Ducks are only degraded forms of bull-head weights? The ears and horns were dropped as being inconvenient (see bull-head weight, p. 283), and at a later time when the tradition of their origin had been lost, the shapeless lump was adorned with a bird’s head to serve as a handle. All the large weights from Nineveh are without any head; and it is but very rarely even on the small haematite weights that the duck’s head is found fully formed.