Armor: How effective was Chainmail

[Jori]

A slave would cost about the same thing than a car today. Buy one slave, and put him doing your hamata during one year.

So the cost of the hamata is : the cost of a slave + food and housing the slave during one year. But your slave, at the end of the work, you can sold him again, maybe for even more money (now, it's a well trained slave in doing hamata...).

So what would be the cost of a hamata? Not that much. It would simply take a lot of time to have it.