Hello CW
I suspect that
weights of the form I identified were primarily made and used by Vikings. Whether they were exclusively made and used by Viking I do not know enough to claim. I could forward some of your scans to Lionel
Holland I guess - he has been searching the
Caesarea Maritima site for decades I think - to see if he ever saw any.
Viking standards are controversial. They are not exactly the same as
Islamic ones - but I think it is virtually certain they
had Islamic influence - the fact that they put pseudo-Islamic inscriptions on some of their
weights seems to me a clincher.
I prefer Sperber's interpretation of the situation - that the Ora was fixed a 6 Mithcals - thus:
6 x c. 4.25g = c. 25.5g
It seems to me that this does not really contradict those who want to make the Ora equal to 20 pennies of c. 1.3g,
nor those others who want to make it a degraded version of a
Roman ounce.
International traders are obviously going to make use of such fortuitous similarities I think.
I say more on this in my last book.
Finally, I would add that it is a
rare pleasure, (and all the more pleasurable for it), to come across someone willing to make an effort to debate constructively on an internet group
Thanks
Rob