I've followed Dr. Silver's posts for years and I tend to agree strongly with him that there were coins in the ancient Levant. For instance in the Amarna letters (among others) Miliklu asks Akhenaten for 2000 shekels of silver. In addition to that he demands that that Miliklu also hand over his wife and sons. Or else he'll kill Miliklu. Anyhow I beleive that Moran considers a "shekel" to be merely a weight and not a coin (again not to be confused with the modern Israeli and ancient israeli "shekel" too). It would be like asking for 2,000 troy ounces of silver or some such measurement. Other Amarna scholars believe that the word "silver" does not mean the metal "silver" but "goods and wares". In addition I've always wondered what the enigmatic "holding a pot in pledge" meant in the Amarna letters. It was clearly some variation of our modern "escrow", but nobody says what kind of pot or what was in the pot that made it such a valuable commodity. Anyhow I think that Dr. Silver is right on the "money" (pun intended) on his thesis and that it deserves the most careful attention.