Image courtesy of Africard.ch
Originally posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2014
The scale counterweights for measuring gold from the Ashanti of Africa are beautiful artifacts. This writer possesses a number of them.
The Wikipedia describes these weights this way:
Akan goldweights were used as a measuring system by the Akan people of West Africa, particularly for weighing gold dust which was currency until replaced by paper money and coins. They are referred to locally as mrammou and the weights are made of brass and not gold. Used to weigh gold and merchandise, at first glance the goldweights look like miniature models of everyday objects. Based on the Islamic weight system, each weight had a known measurement. This provided merchants with secure and fair-trade arrangements with one another. The status of a man increased significantly if he owned a complete set of weights. Complete small sets of weights were gifts to newly wedded men. This insured that he would be able to enter the merchant trade respectably and successfully. Beyond their practical application, the weights are miniature representations of West African culture items such as adinkra symbols, plants, animals and people.
Scholars use the weights, and the oral traditions behind the weights, to understand aspects of Akan culture that otherwise may have been lost. The weights represent stories, riddles, and code of conducts that helped guide Akan peoples in the ways they live their lives. Central to Akan culture is the concern for equality and justice; it is rich in oral histories on this subject. Many weights symbolize significant and well-known stories. The weights were part of the Akan’s cultural reinforcement, expressing personal behaviour codes, beliefs, and values in a medium that was assembled by many people.
Anthony Appiah describes how his mother, who collected goldweights, was visited by Muslim Hausatraders from the north. The goldweights they brought were “sold by people who had no use for them any more, now that paper and coin had replaced gold-dust as currency. And as she collected them, she heard more and more of the folklore that went with them; the proverbs that every figurative gold-weight elicited; the folk-tales, Ananseasem, that the proverbs evoked.” Appiah also heard these Ananseasem, Anansi stories, from his father, and writes: “Between his stories and the cultural messages that came with the gold-weights, we gathered the sort of sense of a cultural tradition that comes from growing up in it. For us it was not Asante tradition but the webwork of our lives.”
There are a number of parallels between Akan goldweights and the seals used in Harappa. Both artifacts stabilized and secured regional and local trade between peoples, while they took on further meaning beyond their practical uses.
Given the power of culture over politics, even in a modernistic utilitarian age such as ours the propensity for gold and its artifacts to take on “further meaning beyond their practical uses” can be said to represent a modest additional factor in favor of the gold standard. “Central to Akan culture is the concern for equality and justice.” So, too, should these be central to ours.
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