Anatolian Weights and Measures

The speech will explore how developed the trade system in Kültepe-Kanesh was and the importance of standardization in international trade from antiquity onwards.

In the second speech of the series, Prof. İlknur Taş will explain, to the extent allowed by the modern concepts we use to perceive our world, the measures and measurements used by the Hittite State and the mathematical concepts that ultimately emerged.

The third talk of the series will explore Roman merchants and bankers’ commercial and financial activities, organizations, and relations with local communities in the province of Asia during the Late Republic and Roman Empire, in light of historical, epigraphical and archeological sources.

Based on the relationship between money and weight measures in Byzantium, this talk aims to examine the weighing devices produced in the 4th-7th century from the perspective of imperial ideology and the state control mechanism, in order to place them within the context of their use.  

The discussions focus on the marketplaces in the city-states of Anatolia, which were the prominent locations of trade or daily shopping during the Classical, Hellenistic and the Roman Imperial period, and offer a closer look at the goods, scales, weights and coins used in these marketplaces.

In collaboration with the Koç University Suna & İnan Kıraç Research Center for Mediterranean Civilizations (AKMED) and the Istanbul Research Institute, the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Pera Museum presents the Late Roman and Byzantine Coins Seminar for undergraduate and graduate students as part of its Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection. The interdisciplinary seminar aims to equip young researchers working on the history and culture of the Late Roman and Byzantine periods with the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge of numismatics.

The program, which embraces an interdisciplinary perspective to explore the topics of weights and measures often overlooked in the studies on epigraphy, is designed to provide young researchers working on Ancient History and archaeology with the necessary theoretical and practical foundation.

The seminar seeks to provide young researchers engaged in the study of Late Antique and Byzantine economy, trade, and culture with a novel approach to the prevalent commerce and trade practices of the era.

The seminar, which adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the science of numismatics, aims to provide theoretical and practical skills for young researchers working on the archaeology, history, art, and culture of the Late Roman and Early Byzantine periods.

The guided exhibition tour explores the four-thousand-year social and economic history of Anatolia, focusing on metaphors shaped around the concepts of weight and measurement.

In the panel, travel in Anatolia during the Roman Period will be examined in light of roads, harbors, routes, maps, and epigraphic data.

The seminar examining Anatolian weights and measures through cultural heritage studies aims to provide researchers with a new perspective.

The guided tour examines Anatolia's four millennia of social and economic history through metaphors based on weights and measures.

The seminar examines the marketplace—an integral venue of daily life in the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire—together with its merchants, customers, and products.

The guided tour examines Anatolia's four millennia of social and economic history through metaphors based on weights and measures.

The guided tour explores the Art of Weights and Measures exhibition from a thematic perspective. The tour examines Anatolia's social and economic history spanning four millennia through metaphors shaped around the concepts of weights and measures. Through the exhibited artefacts, participants will have the opportunity to experience the development of these concepts across Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt, the Aegean, and the Mediterranean regions.

Egyptians weighed the goods on their scales and people’s sins. To the Egyptians, the heart was the source of human wisdom and the centre of emotions and memory. In the rite of the weighing of the heart, the deceased's heart was weighed on the scale against the feather of the goddess Maat, who personified order and truth.