Early Byzantine Bronze Weight — Six Nomismata / Gold-Coin Standard (5th–6th Century AD)

Name: Early Byzantine Bronze Weight — Six Nomismata / Gold-Coin Standard (5th–6th Century AD)
Brand: Kinzer Coins
Price: 317.5 USD
Availability: InStock

$317.50 USD

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Early Byzantine Bronze Weight for Six Nomismata

Own a Tool from the Monetary Infrastructure of the Byzantine Empire

The exact early Byzantine bronze weight shown, marked NS for a standard of six nomismata and decorated with silver inlay.

✓ Guaranteed Authentic
✓ Exact Artifact Shown
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⚖ Marked for a six-nomismata gold-coin weight standard
✝ Decorated with Christian-associated cross imagery and silver inlay
🤲 A genuine practical artifact from the early Byzantine monetary world

Own This Piece of History

Why This Weight Matters

Byzantine commerce depended not only on coins, but also on standardized weights used to check precious metal and coinage.

This square bronze weight belongs to the early Byzantine tradition of exagia or monetary/commercial weights. Its inscription NS identifies a standard of six nomismata. In this period, the gold nomisma was the Eastern Roman continuation of the solidus standard, so six nomismata corresponded approximately to the weight of six gold solidi.

It is better to describe the object as a six-nomismata weight than simply as a device made specifically to test six particular solidi. Weights of this class could be used in commercial and administrative contexts to check monetary weight and precious-metal transactions.

The silver-inlaid letters and Christian imagery are typical of many early Byzantine weights, where practical denomination marks were combined with decorative or religious symbols.

Objects like this helped provide a standard against which valuable gold currency could be weighed. They were part of the physical infrastructure that made long-distance Byzantine commerce possible.

Unlike a coin, this is not money itself. It is a tool from the system behind the money—a rare surviving object from the everyday mechanics of the Byzantine economy.