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Art. XII.—On the Assyrian and Babylonian Weights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2011

E. Norris
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Extract

Among the relics brought home by Mr. Layard, and deposited in the British Museum, the visitors to our national repository may notice a series of bronze lions, of good workmanship and graduated magnitude, from one to several inches in length,—the largest weighing above 40 lbs., the smallest barely 2 oz. There are also several marble ducks, with cuneiform inscriptions upon them, of Babylonian rather than Assyrian characters. These appear to have been the commercial weights used by the people of Assyria and Babylonia. They were distinguished by cuneiform inscriptions on the back, which must have been originally well engraved, although they are now a good deal defaced, and in some cases so much obliterated as to leave scarcely the slightest trace.

Type
Original Communications
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 16 , January 1856 , pp. 215 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1856

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References

page 215 note 1 Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853, p. 601.

page 216 note 1 Some of the copies of Mr. Layard's plate, have erroneously the weight 5 lbs. 0 oz. 4dwts. 12 grs. here. The numbers given in the letter press, p. 601, are altogether erroneous, and must have been printed before the lions were weighed at the Museum.

page 217 note 1 A letter received from Colonel Rawlinson in the course of last year, gave this reading, and suggested the probability of the king's name being that of Evilmerodach. See Duck No. 1 in the lithograph.

page 218 note 1 The word looks like Nabovulibar, a name quite unknown to me. See Duck No. 2.

page 218 note 2 One of these had also a legend in four lines, a good deal peeled off. I have attempted a facsimile of the characters remaining, but they are doubtfully rendered for the most part. See Duck No. 4.

page 218 note 3 Dr. Hincks in a paper printed in the proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. v. p. 405, mentions his discovery of the value of those two characters, being respectively ⅕ and 1/30; of a manah; the one of course which I suppose to be the Babylonian weight. He has subsequently favoured me with the following note:—

“ I cannot recollect whether I had any other grounds for valuing the as a sixtieth of the manah, when I published my letter in the 5th volume of the proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, than the following:

“The manah is the sixtieth part of the tikun or talent; and it is natural to expect that the sexagesimal division would be continued, more especially as the Assyrians had a word for denoting ‘sixty’ ef anything, analogous to our ‘dozen’ and ‘score,’ viz. susi; whence, as applied to years, the σώσσοç of Abydenus.

“ In conformity with this, the lion-shaped weights in the museum give the nearly one-fifteenth, and the nearly one-thirtieth of the manah, which would be quadruple and double shekels if this were a sixtieth of the manah.

“ All doubt on the subject is, however, removed by a tablet which I saw in the museum this spring; which proves positively that the mana contained 60 and this last contained 30 (a weight not previously known to me), and which appears to indicate moreover, that accounts of money were kept in these three denominations.

“The mana contained about 7740 grains.

“The ” 129 ”

“The ” 4·3 ”

“Killyleigh, 19 April, 1854.”

page 223 note 1 “The legal shekel is equal to four and the dinar is the zuz (or drachma.) The shekel of our Rabbins is but one half, and contains two dinars.” Aruch, quoted in Schindler's Lexicon Pentaglotton,

page 225 note 1 Σίκλν άργυρίων έ Mωϋσç øησίν έν тῇ παλαιᾷ.

page 225 note 2 Δύναтαι δ σίρç δύ δραγμç ' Aттικç.

page 225 note 3 The note communicated by Dr. Hincks, inserted in page 218 may perhaps be thought to invalidate this conclusion; but the Hebrew division might have been different from that of the Babylonians.

page 226 note 1 It has been suggested, and it is certainly possible, that these legends may be in the cursive Assyrian alphabet, which would then have been subsequently adopted by the Phoenicians; but the cursive characters on undoubted Assyrian monuments, though allied to these, are still different, and the language of the inscriptions before us, fragmentary as they are, seems peculiarly Hebrew or Chaldee, rather than Assyrian.

page 227 note 1 Bengal Journal, vol. iv., 286Google Scholar. Ib. 713.

page 227 note 2 Bengal Journal, vol. xvi., 266Google Scholar.