Large amounts of silver, gold, and copper were dethesaurized, as the economic historians like to say; it was removed from the temples and houses of the rich and placed in the hands of ordinary people, was broken into tinier pieces, and began to be used in everyday transactions. How? Israeli Classicist David Schaps provides the most plausible suggestion: most of it was stolen. This was a period of generalized warfare, and it is in the nature of war that precious things are plundered.
