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Weights on the Dilmun Standard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Michael Roaf
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Extract

In 1970 Geoffrey Bibby drew attention to a tablet from Ur of c. 1800 B.C. which equates weights on the Dilmun weight standard with those on the standard of Ur. He concluded that the Dilmun weight standard was the same as that used in the Indus Valley, but was puzzled by the inconsistencies in the arithmetic, which he explained by assuming that the merchants took a commission each time the weight was converted from one standard to another, that is a different rate of exchange was used to convert from Dilmun weights than was used to convert from Ur weights. Collation of the tablet in the Iraq Museum, however, has removed the problems in the mathematics and the need for Bibby's elaborate commercial procedures.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1982 , pp. 137 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1982

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References

1 Bibby, T. G., “… according to the standard of Dilmun”, Kuml 1970, 349–53Google Scholar.

The text was first published in autograph copy by Figulla, H. and Martin, W. J., Letters and Documents of the Old Babylonian Period (UET V, 1953), no. 796, on pls. CXXIX–CXXXGoogle Scholar. Its excavation number is U 16524 and is now in the Iraq Museum (registration number IM 57569). I owe this last piece of information to Dr. P. R. S. Moorey.

It was transcribed and translated by Leemans, W. F., Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period (Leiden, 1960), no. 16 on pp. 38–9Google Scholar.

2 I am grateful to Dr. E. Sollberger, Mr. C. B. F. Walker and Mr. J. N. Postgate for assistance with the translation and interpretation of the tablet. The translation is based on that of Leemans, op. cit., 38–9. Passages in square brackets are damaged portions of the tablet and passages in round brackets have been supplied to clarify the meaning.

3 ⅔ or possibly ⅚, which would be closer to the calculated value of ⅞: see below, and note 8.

4 hibiltu taken in the sense of “debt” as suggested by Leemans, op. cit., p. 49, rather than “damages, compensation” as in CAD 6, H, p. 179Google Scholar, AHw p. 344. The arithmetic is clear even if the reason for the debt is not.

5 “has been taken” rather than “went”, otherwise there would be no reason for the plene writing with a final u. The meaning is not certain.

6 Bibby, , Kuml 1970, 352Google Scholar.

7 This simple equivalence was already determined by Leemans, op. cit., 49. It is difficult to explain the error of 9⅓ Ur minas. It could be explained as an error in the calculation but it is difficult to see how it could have arisen.

8 This shows the correctness of the approximation of ⅜ rather than 0·375286, since the latter would give 5,537·090 Dilmun minas which does not fit the traces on the tablet. The figure of ⅔ rather than ⅞ might have arisen from the use of an inexact multiplication or division table.

9 UET V, no. 796 on pl. CXXIX. Leemans, op. cit., 38; on 49 Leemans drew attention to this problem.

J. N. Postgate has kindly collated the tablet and writes “the copy in UET V is pretty good in general, and the only error does seem to have been in the first line, where the number immediately before the break has at least three verticals, and those beginning below the top of the line so that 7 is perfectly possible although not de rigueur”.

10 Bibby, , Kuml 1970, 352–3Google Scholar.

11 Woolley, C. L., Ur Excavations 7. The Old Babylonian Period (Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar, see index under duck weights and under weights.

12 Powell, M. A., Sumerian numeration and metrology (University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, 1973), 167–98Google Scholar, has reviewed previous attempts to estimate the absolute values of the weights used in ancient Mesopotamia and has been justifiably suspicious of the methodologies and over-precise estimates suggested. Nevertheless most suggested values, and indeed most weights themselves, conform to sexagesimal systems with 1 mina weighing approximately 500 grams. For references see Powell, loc. cit.; and for the Neo-Assyrian weights, see Postgate, J. N., Fifty Neo-Assyrian legal documents (Aris and Phillips, Warminster, 1976), 64–6Google Scholar.

13 Powell, op. cit., Table 8 on pp. 205–7. To this list a 1 mina weight of c. 2000 B.C. found at Tell Sweyhat should be added, Holland, T. A. “An inscribed weight from Tell Sweyhat, Syria”, Iraq 37 (1975) 75–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This was slightly damaged and weighed 472·2 grams.

14 Much has been written about the possible location of Dilmun, see Cornwall, P. B., “On the location of Dilmun”, BASOR 103 (1946), 3–11Google Scholar; and Bibby, T. G., Looking for Dilmun (Pelican, 1972), chapters 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, and 16Google Scholar.

On the weights see Bibby, T. G., Kuml 1970, 350Google Scholar.

15 Mackay, E., “Weights”, in Chapter XXIV of J. Marshall, Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization (Arthur Probsthain, London, 1931), vol. 2, 461–4Google Scholar; A. S. Hemmy, “System of weights at Mohenjo-Daro”, Chapter XXIX of Marshall, op. cit., vol. 2, 589–98; Hemmy, A. S., “System of weights”, Chapter XVII of E. J. H. Mackay, Further excavations at Mohenjo-Daro (Delhi, 1938), vol. 1, 601–12Google Scholar; and A. S. Hemmy, “Relation to Egyptian and Susian weights”, Appendix II of Mackay, op. cit., vol. 1, 672–8.

Hemmy also suggested that two weights weighing 2·240 and 2·330 grams formed part of the same weight system, being 1/600th part of the 800 unit. (A. S. Hemmy, in Mackay, op. cit., vol. 1, table III on p. 602.) It seems more likely that these are aberrant weights.

16 A. S. Hemmy, in Mackay, op. cit., vol. 1, table III on p. 602, and pp. 672–4.

17 A. S. Hemmy, in Mackay, op. cit., vol. 1, 604–5.