You dig up a clay tablet recipe for unleavened bread and it asks for 50 shekels of plain flour. Your kitchen scale speaks grams and ounces, not Bronze Age accountancy. To bake it the way the scribe intended, you first have to translate the units, and ancient cooking measurements turn out to be a surprisingly tidy puzzle once you know the numbers.
Ancient weight measurements
Old weights were built from seeds and stacked upward. The smallest was the grain, the weight of one dried wheat or barley grain, about 0.065 g. Twenty grains made a scruple, three scruples a dram, and these still survive in the apothecary system. The shekel was the workhorse of the ancient Near East: a Hebrew shekel was roughly 11.4 g, though Babylonian shekels ran lighter at around 8.4 g. Fifty shekels made a mina (about 571 g), and sixty minas a talent, a load near 34 kg that one person could just about carry.
The slug is the odd one out. It is not ancient at all but an obscure unit of mass from the foot-pound-second engineering system, about 14.59 kg, the mass that one pound of force accelerates at one foot per second squared. It almost never shows up in recipes, which is exactly why it earns a place in a list of measurements people have mostly forgotten.
| Weight unit | Approx. grams | Approx. ounces |
|---|---|---|
| Grain | 0.065 g | 0.002 oz |
| Scruple (20 grains) | 1.3 g | 0.05 oz |
| Dram (3 scruples) | 3.9 g | 0.14 oz |
| Shekel (Hebrew) | 11.4 g | 0.40 oz |
| Mina (50 shekels) | 571 g | 20.1 oz |
| Talent (60 minas) | 34 kg | ~1200 oz |
All figures are historical approximations; ancient standards drifted between cities and centuries, so treat them as close, not exact.
Old volume measures
Volume words were vaguer and more charming. A pinch is what you can grab between thumb and one finger, roughly 1/16 teaspoon. A dash is a touch more, near 1/8 teaspoon, and a smidgen smaller still at about 1/32 teaspoon. Bartenders kept the jigger alive (about 44 ml), while British kitchens used the gill, a quarter of a pint. A noggin was the same quarter pint, roughly 142 ml in UK measure, which the water converter reads as about 142 g of liquid. The pottle was a half gallon, about 2.27 litres, the sort of measure you used for ale, not vanilla extract.
| Volume unit | Approx. millilitres | Approx. fluid ounces |
|---|---|---|
| Smidgen | 0.15 ml | 0.005 fl oz |
| Pinch | 0.3 ml | 0.01 fl oz |
| Dash | 0.6 ml | 0.02 fl oz |
| Jigger | 44 ml | 1.5 fl oz |
| Gill / Noggin | 142 ml | 5 fl oz |
| Pottle | 2270 ml | 80 fl oz |
Measures from India and China
South and East Asia had their own seed-based ladders. In India the ratti (a jequirity seed) was about 0.12 g, eight ratti made a masha, and twelve masha a tola, the classic 11.66 g unit still used for gold and spices. The seer sat far above that, standardised near 0.93 kg under the British Raj before metrication rounded it toward a kilogram.
China measured trade goods with the liang, often called the tael, about 37.8 g historically and 50 g in mainland China today, though Hong Kong and Taiwan keep it near 37.8 g. Sixteen liang made a jin (catty), close to 600 g in old usage and fixed at 500 g today. For volume, the sheng was roughly 200 ml in early dynasties and grew to about a litre in modern Chinese measure, a reminder that even well-documented units stretched over time.
Units built from the body and a king's forearm
Many measures started on a ruler's body rather than a balance. Three barleycorns laid end to end defined the English inch, which is why shoe sizes still climb in barleycorn-sized steps. The carat that weighs your diamonds comes from the carob seed, prized for being unusually consistent. The grandest is the Egyptian royal cubit, set as the length of the reigning pharaoh's forearm from elbow to fingertip plus the width of his palm, about 52.4 cm. When the king changed, the official cubit could too, so master rods were cut in granite to keep builders honest.
Bringing ancient measures into a modern kitchen
Translate the units and old recipes become easy to follow. Those 50 Hebrew shekels of flour are about 570 g, which the plain flour converter puts at roughly 4.56 metric cups (1 metric cup of plain flour is 125 g). A full mina of sugar, about 571 g, comes to roughly 2.84 cups on the sugar converter at 201 g per metric cup. A noggin of liquid is around 142 ml, so on the water converter that is about 142 g, near 0.57 of a metric cup since one cup holds 250 ml. For any other antique weight, work it into grams first, then send it through the grams to cups tool and bake it as the ancients meant it.