Steelyard weights at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City

Steelyard weights at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Steelyards of different sizes have been used to weigh loads ranging from ounces to tons. A small steelyard could be a foot or less in length and thus conveniently used as a portable device that merchants and traders could use to weigh small ounce-sized items of merchandise. In other cases a steelyard could be several feet long and used to weigh sacks of flour and other commodities. Even larger steelyards were three stories tall and used to weigh fully laden horse-drawn carts. A simple steelyard balance with a lever mechanism first appeared in the ancient Near East over 5,000 years ago. The steelyard was in use among Greek craftsmen of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, even before Archimedes demonstrated the law of the lever theoretically.
The Latin name statera comes from the Ancient Greek stater. Roman and Chinese steelyards were independently invented around 200 BCE. Steelyards dating from 100 to 400 CE have been unearthed in Great Britain. Steelyards and their components have also been excavated from shipwrecks of the Byzantine period in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, such as the 7th-century wreck at Yassi Ada, Turkey, and the mid-first millennium shipwreck at Black Assarca Island, Eritrea.





Images: Steelyard weights photographed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Bust of a Byzantine Empress, 400-450 CE, Byzantine Bust of a Woman, 4th century CE, Bust of Athena, 350-500 CE. A 1st century CE steelyard weight found in Pompeii from the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, Italy photographed at "Pompeii: The Exhibit" at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Washington.

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