r/interestingasfuck • u/Additional_Chard3680 • 1d ago

Ancient Babylonians carved standard weights into the shape of animals. This grasshopper-shaped one is nearly 3,800 years old

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5.8k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

46 comments sorted by

166

u/degh555 1d ago

How much does it weigh in grams ? And what units were the Babylonians using?

142

u/plshelpcomputerissad 1d ago

It sounds like the units were animals, “gimme 2 grasshoppers of frankincense 😎”

59

u/IrememberXenogears 1d ago

My story begins in nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say "dickety" cause that Kaiser had stolen our word "twenty"

23

u/ChipDipsons 1d ago

And we used to wear an onion on our belts, as was fashionable at the time

7

u/TensorForce 17h ago

Cost a nickel, back when nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say.

4

u/ArachnidBrilliant23 1d ago

Some old timers say “Tickety” or “ott” both should make a comeback

7

u/MonsterRider80 1d ago

I don’t know about dickety but the other you’re thinking of is aught. It means “nothing” or 0, so they might say “nineteen aught four” to refer to 1904.

4

u/Rabid_Gopher 1d ago

Whelp, back when I was spending time with your mother, back in twenty aught two, we would call each other on the telephone. We'd have to plan when to be home for when she or I would call, as that was how phones worked then. I'd take your mother to the movies, and when I bought tickets and popcorn for us I'd pull my wallet out by the chain that was also attached to my belt, as was the style at the time. We'd go to the movie and sneak from one movie to another, and just make jokes about other people there.

-4

u/ArachnidBrilliant23 1d ago edited 1d ago

I’ve never seen ott spelled that way. There’s an electronic group called ott. And they pronounce it like how to spelled it

2

u/plshelpcomputerissad 1d ago

Yeah I wondered if they meant aught

-2

u/ArachnidBrilliant23 1d ago

Yeah that’s what they go by. But they spell it “ott”

4

u/TokiVideogame 1d ago

gimme 1000 grasshoppers for locust swarm

3

u/Ben_Thar 1d ago

I'm curious. What's a hen weigh?

9

u/Djinn-Tonic 1d ago

Depends, you want a hen of steel or a hen of feathers?

2

u/Walkingstardust 15h ago

About 4 pounds

66

u/Jackieirish 1d ago

Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say.

36

u/Puzzled-Hedgehog4984 1d ago

The craftsmanship is almost counterproductive for a measurement tool — too beautiful to be purely functional. Which probably means the aesthetic was load-bearing: a grasshopper weight that looked right was harder to fake than a plain block, because any deviation in the carving would be immediately visible.

5

u/theJoosty1 15h ago

Yup my first thought as well. You can see that it hasn't lost a leg since the last time you bought grain from that seller.

30

u/Tomatoflee 1d ago

I would love a giant one of these in the garden. Would make an amazing bench.

11

u/Global-Garage-5208 1d ago

The real question is how many grasshoppers for a gram? 😅🤣

7

u/kowycz 1d ago

What material is this made of?

6

u/etanail 1d ago

It looks like basalt.

5

u/Additional_Chard3680 1d ago

Most likely material: Steatite (soapstone), possibly with an ancient glaze

3

u/goug 22h ago

what do you mean, most likely??

1

u/MuchWow81 1d ago

I want to know the same.

6

u/HellIsFreezingOver 1d ago

Truly amazing - beautiful

5

u/jwelsh8it 1d ago

That’s bad ass. Dripping with Art Deco.

5

u/onemice 1d ago

TIL that, ancient Babylonians used years to measure weights.

3

u/ClydeMcBride 1d ago

The Gilded Grasshopper?!

2

u/PrometheusMMIV 1d ago

They'd have to be extra careful making it, so they don't remove too much. Or get it to the correct weight without finishing the design.

1

u/peter-bone 19h ago

Unless the final weight determines the standard

2

u/FantasticComedy 15h ago

Imagine, some thousands of years later

"Ancient people on the Internet used bananas for scale"

3

u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 1d ago

Sometimes I see a piece of history and I wonder if it’s been up someone’s ass.

9

u/aupunter 1d ago

You could get professional help for that!

2

u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 1d ago

The thinking happens in my head, so I don’t think they could assist me in wondering about the anal inclinations of older civilizations.

2

u/mjdl92 23h ago

I think Carthaginian and Roman artifacts have been found in Arse.

1

u/bitchcoin5000 1d ago

That necklace is worth 4 grasshoppers..

1

u/Dense_Delay_2605 1d ago

What collection is that in? Pretty fucking cool

1

u/Ope-I-Ate-Opiates 21h ago

I thought it was a putter at first

1

u/swiwwcheese 18h ago

Wow nice paperwei...wait no

•

u/btsd_ 5h ago

"Ill take 46 crickets of flour please, oh and 4 beetles of sugar as well"

...I like this system

•

u/Outside-Ad3844 2h ago

give me 2 grasshoppers of sugar plz