The gold loop that lay between the fingers of the deceased infant is attached to a gold balance - a beautiful piece to look at! But what was its purpose and how did it end up in a grave? The balance is made of thin gold plates. It has all the parts that a scale would need to function: discs for the commodity that needed to be weighed, strings that attached the discs to a beam, and in the middle of the beam something, in this case a loop, to hold the balance and enable it to make its see-sawing motion.
The size of this scale is only 16 cm long, so it is a smaller-size scale. In addition to this size, the fragility of the material does not make it convincing that this balance was used for weighing actual commodities. So what was this balance used for? A theory is given by Heinrich Schliemann, the famous excavator who also excavated the tomb to which this balance belonged. He thought it had a symbolic function and was therefore given to the child. He associated the balance with justice and fate. The balance was thought to have been used by gods to determine a man’s fate by weighing his good deeds and bad deeds.Schliemann, H. (1878).“The First, Second, and Third Tombs in the Acropolis.”, Mycenae: A Narrative of Research and Discoveries at Mycenae and Tiryns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 198; Pare, C. F. E. (1999). “Weights and Weighing in Bronze Age central Europe.”, Eliten in der Bronzezeit. Ergebnisse zweier kolloquien in Mains und Athen. Mainz: 476.
A similar practice is found in the archaic Greek culture. In Homer’s Iliad, for instance, we find the passage where the fates ofAchilles and Hector are determined by the use of a balance (Hom. Il. XXII 208). This story illustrates the significance of the balance’s movement: Zeus placed grievous death upon both pans, one for Achilles and the other for Hector. The latter’s fate was determined when his pan was lowered. We see that the lowering of the pan was considered to be a bad omen, as it was an indication of an unfavorable result. In Ancient Greek this is described as kerostasia, which simply means that the balance will decide the outcome of the fate between two people, who will win or lose, live or die.Seidenberg, A. & Casey, J. (1980). “The ritual origin of the balance.”, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 23 (3):223. There is also another term, psuchostasia, which refers to the influence the movement of the balance has on fate during life. See for this Evans, A. (1925). “The Ring of Nestor: A Glimpse into the Minoan After-World and A Sepulchral Treasure of Gold Signet-Rings and Bead-Seals from Thisbê, Boeotia.”, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 45: 60.
This illustrates Schliemann’s theory that the balance the infant held in his hand pointed toward the use of the balance as a means to determine one’s fate. Beside Schliemann’s theory about the function of the balance being related to fate and his association with the Greek gods using balances to determine a certain outcome, there are three additional theories about the utility of the balance. The first one is that the balance symbolized high status, because balances were common objects owned by people of high rank in the Mycenaean world. See Pare, C. F. E. (1999). “Weights and Weighing in Bronze Age central Europe.”, Eliten in der Bronzezeit. Ergebnisse zweier kolloquien in Mainz und Athen. Mainz:476. The significance of a high value indicates that the infant in this tomb who held the balance must have been of great importance. See Konstantinidi-Syvridi, E. (2018). “Mycenae, Shaft Grave III. Tomb of the High Priestess?”, Journal of Prehistoric Religion 26:56. In the second theory it is argued that the balance was used for weighing silk thread. This assumption is based on the fact that the insect presented on the pans was in this particular case interpreted as a silkworm instead of a butterfly, as it would be according to other interpretations, see Konstantinidi-Syvridi, E. (2018). “Mycenae, Shaft Grave III. Tomb of the High Priestess?”, Journal of Prehistoric Religion 26:55. The last additional theory is that a balance is an indication for or can be taken as a “natural emblem of stewardship” , see Evans, A. (1930). The Palace of Minos at Knossos: A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos Vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 65. Similar to the Mycenaeans, the balance also played a big part in the funerary beliefs of the ancient Egyptians. Curious to find out more about the scale and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian culture? Continue reading the extended version!