The Art of Weights and Measures

The Art of Weights and Measures catalog, featuring articles and a selection of objects from the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation’s Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection, explores, through the eyes of civilizations, gods, merchants, masters and apprentices, the economy, culture, intercultural system relationships and the dynamics of social trust shaped around the weights and measuring instruments used in Anatolia and neighboring regions from the 2nd millennium BCE to the present and the journey of standardization of units and offers a perspective of what has changed and what has remained.

The catalog packed with the images of more than 500 works, includes the articles “An Overview on Scales and Scale Weights Throughout History” by Oğuz Tekin, “Astragalus-shaped Roman Weights” by Charles Doyen, “The Art of Weighing in Byzantium” and “The Scales of Justice on a 19th Century Icon” by Brigitte Pitarakis, and “Ottoman Surveying Technology and Havayi Terazi (16th-18th Centuries)” by Uğur Tanyeli.

Date of Publication: 2022
Number of Pages: 183
ISBN-13: 978-605-71205-1-9

4-5 Foreword
İnan Kıraç

6 An Overview on Scales and Scale Weights Throughout History
Oğuz Tekin

18 Astragalus-shaped Roman Weights
Charles Doyen

24 The Art of Weighing in Byzantium
Brigitte Pitarakis

38 Ottoman Surveying Technology and Havayi Terazi (16th-18th Centuries)
Uğur Tanyeli

64 Seeds and Metaphors

76 Decline and Rebirth: Anatolia in Classical Antiquity

96 Politics and Poetics of Weighing: Anatolia under the Rule of the Roman Empire

106 Faith and Power: Anatolia Under the Byzantine Rule

124 The Scales of Justice on a 19th Century Paper Icon
Brigitte Pitarakis

136 Ideology and Continuity: Weighing in the Ottoman World

The Art of Weights and Measures

As the measurement of discovery became the substance of myths, weighing and measuring, beyond being mere physical actions, became an important means of self-expression to those captivated by the universe and what lay beyond the boundaries of knowledge.