Ancient Weights from Syria and Phoenicia in Henri Seyrig’s Archives
(2025) Shopping and Weighing Instruments in the Mediterranean World and Beyond throughout History — ISBN: [978-625-8520-27-9], 61-102, published
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- Abstract
- (en) In 1949, Henri Seyrig published a pioneering study of 71 ancient weights from Syria (Bulletin du Musée de Beyrouth 8, 37–79). Throughout his career, Seyrig tried to complete this study with other papers devoted to uncertain Syrian weights, royal weights and Phoenician weights. Although this project never came to fruition, Seyrig’s scientific archives, kept at the National Library of France, make it possible to reconstruct the various stages of his work. In 1956 or 1957, Seyrig had drawn up a first version of the second part of his corpus. In 1967 or 1968, he updated the first part of his corpus by including the weights that had appeared on the antiques market since 1949. When he died in 1973, he had compiled a corpus of more than 500 artefacts. In addition to their obvious scientific interest, Seyrig’s archives are also our only documentary source for reconstructing the rich collection of Syrian and Phoenician weights kept at the National Museum in Beirut until the Lebanese civil war. Looted during the war, this collection of over 230 weights is now dispersed on the antiquities market and in private collections.
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Citations
Doyen, C. (2025). Ancient Weights from Syria and Phoenicia in Henri Seyrig’s Archives. In Oğuz Tekin (ed.) (ed.), Shopping and Weighing Instruments in the Mediterranean World and Beyond throughout History (pp. 61-102). Suna & İnan Kıraç Research Center for Mediterranean Civilizations. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/271995