Weights| and Scales|Ancient|
and |Medieval |Weights and |Scales for |sale at |Forum |Ancient
|Coins|Ancient|
|Scales and |Weights |on |the |Classical| |Numismatics
|Discussion|Weights|
are among the more common objects of pre-modern societies. Weights and a
balance were essential for measuring quantities of many commodities and
for evaluating coins. In the Islamic world, balance weights were made
of metal, glass, or stone. If the mass of any small solid object
conforms to an appropriate weight unit, it is likely to be a balance
weight. Many excavated weights have been wrongly identified as game
pieces or tokens. Probably the most
common class of weights are those for evaluating coins. The weights of
pre-industrial handmade coins were often regulated loosely or not at
all. Nearly every monetary transaction, therefore, required the use of a
balance with weights, to ensure that the coins being transferred were
of full weight or to measure their value as a direct function of their
total mass. Every merchant, money changer, and fiscal official had a
balance and a set of weights for the coins he used. Bakers in
eleventh-century Cairo, for example, had weights for the bread they sold
and for the coins they received (al-Musabbi hi, 63; Bates, "Function,"
71). -- Michael Bates in Bates
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