Weights and Balances in Ancient Egypt

Abstract

AT the Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution on November 8, Prof. S. R. K. Glanville discussed “Weights and Balances in Ancient Egypt”. The actual weights recovered from Ancient Egypt divide into eight main standards, derived from a much larger number in very early times. What we have go back to prehistoric times and show a gradual fusion of the standards, a process which is completed by the seventh century B.C. The balance may be traced from the Old Kingdom, with a possible example of a balance beam from pre-dynastic times. The New Kingdom balance, which lasted at any rate until the Ptolemaic period, was very efficient, and shows a greater accuracy in its design than the small Roman balance which succeeded it. There is evidence of a standard of exchange in ordinary transactions from the Old Kingdom, though whether this standard was a piece of metal, which could be passed between buyer and seller, is questionable at this period. The explanation of the lack of evidence for such mediums of exchange is probably in the nature of the organisation of the country in earliest times as a huge estate owned by the king, and later as a number of big estates controlled by governors and priesthoods, a condition which to some extent exists to-day. These estates being largely self-sufficing, it was possible to conduct their economic affairs without resort to anything approaching currency. There is, however, evidence of the use in the Middle Kingdom of copper pieces, and of a much more frequent use in the New Kingdom of silver pieces which gave way to copper as the State grew poorer, the whole standard being backed by gold. It is difficult to decide how far the balance was used for general purposes, as its representation on tomb paintings is almost confined to the weighing of gold, silver and precious stones, either domestically for distribution to the metal workers on private or public estates, or as a registration of income or taxes from within the State or of ‘tribute’ or prizes of war from abroad.