La bilancia e lo scarabeo alato: a proposito di due pesi bronzei dal Palazzo Nord-Ovest di Nimrud

Two bronze weight decorated with winged scarabs in thin golden sheets have been found in the so-called ‘room of the bronzes’ of the North-West Palace excavated by Layard in 1849-1850 at Kalhu/Nimrud. They were kept in the room together with a large amount of bronze items, including a collection of 150 bowls. The weights probably correspond to 1/2 and 1/3 of a mina, although the uncertain masses of the specimens makes a correlation with a weight system difficult. They are the only evidence of cubical weights with such a decoration in the whole corpus of Egyptian and Near Eastern weights and they probably have been brought to the Assyrian capital as a booty or tribute from a Phoenician or Aramaic center. The gold decoration, the comparisons from Levantine sites, and the winged scarab’s motiv make also probable their original use by the official administration of the town where they came from. The scarab motiv is in fact attested in the Levant on bronze bowls, ivory objects, seals and it seems an iconograpy eaborated during the 9th and 8th centuries BC with a specific connotation related to the royal power.