Generally speaking early balance
weights from mainland Greek cities are
rare, with two exceptions - the lead
weights from
Athens and the bronze
weights from Olympia in the
Peloponnese.
Almost 500
weights were found during the controlled excavations of Olympia, and most of these are now in the museums of
Athens and Olympia, with a number also in the Staatsliche Museum in
Berlin.
Olympian
weights never appear on the market, but you can find most of the
Berlin examples here:
http://tinyurl.com/hu4jw98(
Search on gewicht bronze olympia)
Unfortunately,
as is common for museums, no
weights are given (you need Hitzl's book), so I show some typical examples below with their
weights.
There were at least three main
weight scales at Olympia, which Hitzl calls A, B and C; A and B correspond to the Euboic and Phoenician mina standards of 437 and 460 gm (the latter being the main pre-Roman
standard at
Athens), while C matches
Tekin's 480 gm
standard. The basic
inscription is a simple DIOS (
Zeus) on
Scale A
weights, plus extras on the later
scales.
The Euboic
standard is particularly interesting, as Olympia is the only place where we actually find
weights (as opposed to coins) on this
scale (except for
Tekin 12, a 1-4 mina found at
Smyrna). Probably though other Peloponnesian cities also used this
standard, but so far no examples have turned up as far as I know.
Ross G.