Two 19th C. Ottoman Brass & Iron Balance Pan Scales

Near East, Ottoman Empire. A pair of hand-held merchant's balances, each built from a forged iron beam with a central pivot and suspension loop, from which chains of iron and iron-copper alloy carry two shallow brass pans. The beams taper to hooked terminals, the pans are hammered thin and now bear a mottled patina of olive and umber, and one shows faint incised marks along its rim, perhaps a weight designation or an owner's tally. Scales of this type served in bazaars and workshops across the Ottoman world, weighing spices, coffee, precious metal, coin, and pharmaceutical measures against small graduated weights. Portable and endlessly repairable, they were the arithmetic of the marketplace, a technology so conservative in form that examples separated by centuries are nearly indistinguishable. Ottoman commercial life was governed by the kantar and the dirhem, units administered through the guild system and periodically checked by the muhtesib, the market inspector charged with verifying weights and measures. Hand balances like these were the instrument of that verification at street level: a merchant carried his own, the inspector carried his, and disputes were settled by comparison. The equal-arm balance, unchanged in principle since Pharaonic Egypt, remained standard in Anatolia and the Levant well into the twentieth century, long after European trade had adopted the steelyard and the spring scale. Their persistence had less to do with conservatism than with accuracy: a well-made equal-arm balance requires no calibration, only honest weights. Item # 204557

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