An Inscribed Weight from Tell Sweyhat, Syria

Abstract

A stone weight with a cuneiform inscription was discovered during the 1974 season of excavations at Tell Sweyhat in Syria. Tell Sweyhat is located on the left bank of the Euphrates River approximately 64 km. south of Carchemish. The British excavations at Sweyhat are sponsored by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, as part of the international campaign launched by the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums to rescue those sites threatened by the completion of the Tabqa Dam and the formation of Lake Al-Assad.The object under discussion (Fig. 1), Sweyhat registration number 585, is now on permanent display in the special Euphrates Valley Exhibition which opened on 16th November 1974 at the National Museum, Aleppo. It is a smooth, barrel-shaped weight ground from grey limestone which measures 12.5 cm. in length and 4 · 5 cm. in diameter and weighs 472 · 2 grammes. Its original weight would have been slightly higher, since it is worn and chipped at both ends, perhaps through use as a pounder or grinder. The three cuneiform signs inscribed along the main axis of the weight measure 3 cm. in total length. The first sign, a triangular incision with its apex to the right, clearly represents the numeral I, and the following two signs read MA.NA, i.e. maneh or mina, the well-known Near Eastern unit of weight. I am indebted to Dr. Edmond Sollberger for advice on the inscription, which he dates approximately to the end of the third millennium B.C., and for calling my attention to comparable weights in the British Museum. The date is confirmed by the associated pottery, which has close parallels among Mallowan's “Late Sargonid” material from Brak and in Jidle Level 5.