Standardized weights and measures
Sistema de pesos y medidas estandarizado
- Date
- c. 2600 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Mohenjo-daro (cubical weights), Pakistan; Ur and Girsu (mina and shekel), Iraq; Giza (royal cubit), Egypt
- Credited to
- Indus Valley Civilisation; Sumerians (Ur-Nammu's reform); Egyptians
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
Series of stone weights in binary and decimal progression (Indus), the mina-shekel-talent system (Mesopotamia) and the royal cubit of 52.3 cm (Egypt), guaranteed by the temple or the king. A uniform measure is a precondition of the market, taxation and architecture.
Indus weights (c. 2600 BCE) show astonishing precision (a 13.7 g unit); Ur-Nammu claims to have standardised the mina and shekel around 2100 BCE.
What it led to
- A market with comparable prices and international trade (the shekel adopted from the Indus to the Aegean)
- Weight fraud as a codified offence in law codes and the Bible
- Modular, mass-reproducible architecture
- Metrology as a function of the state up to the metric system
Built on
- Accounting ledgers and balancesc. 3100 BCE
- Sexagesimal number systemc. 3000 BCE
- Sexagesimal system
- Beam balance
Made possible
- Equal-arm balancec. 3000 BCE
- Indus scriptc. 2600 BCE
- Silver by weight as money standardc. 2500 BCE
- Nilometerc. 2500 BCE
- Lothal graduated ivory scalec. 2300 BCE
- Topographic map and city planc. 2300 BCE
- Linear B scriptc. 1450 BCE
- Egyptian royal cubit and graduated measuring rodsc. 1400 BCE
- Qin standardisation of weights, measures, script and axles221 BCE
- Vespasian's congius (Roman capacity standard)75
- Assize of Measures (common standards in England)1196
- Gunter's surveying chain1620
- Silver as a standard of value
- Precision balance
- Coinage (Iron Age)