Black and grey hourglass tattoo with ornate Time Is Money lettering on a forearm, in lettering style with shading.

Hourglass and Time is Money lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

An hourglass sits above ornate block lettering reading TIME IS MONEY, with a faint skull-like shape in the lower bulb. The linework is bold and the shading is soft grey, with swirling flourishes around the letters. The photo is taken straight on with a strong highlight across the forearm skin.

Lettering Forearm Hourglass Lettering Skull Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Shift along the bench and mind the lamp, for it is nearly out and I will not tell this twice before the sand runs down. You have heard that time is money. Hear now who first said it aloud in the market at Sidon, and what it cost him.

Keep reading

A moneylender named Ezrel kept a glass on his stall, two green bulbs joined at the waist and filled with fine white sand from the riverbank. He lent by the hour. A boatwright who owed him a silver ring could have a week of days if he gave Ezrel one more season of his labour, and the sand would be turned for him in the sight of all. Ezrel liked to say the glass never lied, and that every grain that fell was coin leaving a man's purse. People laughed, then they signed.

The boatwright, Bel-shuma, signed away three winters, then four. One evening Ezrel turned the glass and found the lower bulb marked with a shape like a skull, pressed into the sand by his own thumb, though he could not remember doing it. He swept the stall that night and counted his silver twice. It rang true each time, and each time it sounded smaller, like a bell struck under water.

They say he sat until the lamp went out, turning the glass over and over, watching the sand fall and never once looking up at the market where his own days were being spent. The coins are still in a chest somewhere under Sidon. The glass is not. So when someone tells you time is money, ask who is keeping the count.