Technikatörténeti szemle 10. (1978)

A MÉRÉS ÉS A MÉRTÉKEK AZ EMBER MŰVELŐDÉSÉBEN című konferencián Budapesten, 1976. április 27–30-án elhangzott előadások II. - Powell, M. A.: A mezopotámiai súlymértéktan modern szemszögből

M. A. POWELL* ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN WEIGHT METROLOGY The study of ancient Mesopotamian standards of mass* poses problems quite different from those one encounters in studying other aspects of Mesopotamian metrology. Whereas the evidence for length and capacity standards is extremely sparse, that for standards of mass is sometimes bewildering, both by its multiplicity and by its numerousness. The reason for this is quite simple: most Mesopotamian standard-weights were made of stone. Thus, many have survived intact to the present day; hundreds are already present in museum collections, and many more are discovered with each new archeological excavation. The scientific study of Mesopotamian weight metrology began in the middle of the nineteenth century, along with the beginnings of systematic archaeological exploration in Mesopotamia. In the early phase of this study, metrology, like Mesopotamian studies in general, tended to focus on Assyria from the ninth through the seventh century BC, and many of the early debates over the nature of Mesopotamian weight metrology revolved around problems which we now perceive to be characteristic of Assyria only, rather than of Mesopotamia as a whole. In Assyria, for example, there existed a double standard: a mina weighing about 500 grams and another mina twice as large. This double standard and enigmatic but tantalizing terms such as „mina of the king," ,,mina of the land," and ,,mina of Carchemish" were once thought to refer to general metrological realities in Mesopotamia. We now know that they are peculiarities of the Assyrian system, which is still not fully clarified, even today. Another feature of Assyrian weight metrology that was not fully appreciated by the early metrologists is the tendency in that system to replace standard-weights of stone with bronze-weights. As a result of this, the evidence from Assyria is neither so abundant nor so accurate at that which has survived from the region further south. Stone seems to have always been the preferred material for manufacturing weight-standards in Babylonia. If there was a parallel tendency in Babylonia to switch from stone to bronze, it is not observable in the surviving evidence, for, of the many hundreds of weight-specimens that derive from Babylonia, not a single one of these is made of bronze. One of the characteristic features of Mesopotamian weight metrology in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was the employment of the method called comparative" metrology (vergleichende Metrologie). This method operates on the * Northen Illinois University, De Kalb, USA.