A Byzantine coin-balance

At first glance, it looks like an ornate coffee spoon…

What is it?

This curious object, which looks at first glance like a large, ornate, cruciform coffee spoon, is in fact rather an elegant counterpoised coin balance. Suspended on a thread from a small, perforated lug on its stem, this was a handy pocket scales used for gauging the actual weight against the face value of a coin placed in the small round pan. The ornate crossbar and the little incised disc at the opposite terminal served as a counterpoise. This disc is weighted so that – if allowance is made for the loss of a small gash – the apparatus was perfectly in balance and level when a hyperpyron, the standard saucer-shaped Byzantine gold issue between the late 11th and the mid-13th century, weighing 4.45g, was placed in the pan.

Where was it found, and when? 

The balance was found in 2008, in an extramural suburb of the ancient coastal city of Butrint in southern Albania, during student training excavations focused on a 3rd-century mausoleum and a nearby villa rustica. The context was a later rubbish midden between the two buildings, which also produced an 11th-century Byzantine lead seal, a bronze pectoral reliquary cross, fragments of fine ceramics of 12th- to 13th-century date, and a coin of Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118). These, together with a 10th- to 11th-century finger-ring engraved with a Greek monogrammatic invocation to the Mother of God, suggest that this was a site of some standing, possibly a customs post organising long-distance trade in fish, Butrint’s principal product at this time.