Скачать или смотреть More Ancient Volume Measurement

Excavations at Nimrud continued in April/May 2024. My colleagues told me of a vessel they had found in 2022 that had markings that might indicate its intended volume and I was naturally intrigued. We retrieved it from storage and I went about testing that volume, and filmed it of course.

It held its surprises, but at least I have a theory on how it fits in with ancient capacity measures and the shift in mathematical analysis from sexagesimal (base 60) to decimal (base 10) that seems to have been occurring in Northern Mesopotamia, possibly with influence from Egyptian calculations through contact, conquest, and trade in the Levant.

Assyrians often used 'double units' compared to the those in the south. For example, they calculated weight in double minas and they had a unit (often called the 'homer') that was essentially a double bariga. But after they doubled the unit, they divided not be 120 (double the sexagesimal unit of 60), but by 100, a clearly decimal unit. This apparently led to a difference of 5/6 between many northern and southern units.