ON ANCIENT DESEMERS OR STEELYARDS. 



By Hekrmann Sokeland, 



The Anthropological Society of Berlin has occasionally received 

 descriptions and seen exhibitions of simple weighinji" instruments 

 which were called, in German, desen, desemer, besemer, or bescn. A 

 discussion in the Folklore Society of Berlin resulted in decidino- in 

 favor of the form "•desemer."^ 



I was thus led to inquire what was known about such balances. 

 Two ways suggested themselves for prosecuting this inquiry by tes- 

 timonies and by monuments; that is to say, by reading what is recorded 

 on the subject in books, and ])y directly comparing German desemers 

 with more oi- less similar instruments of other peoples and ages which 

 ai-e to be foiuid among the treasures of the different museums of Berlin. 



Though there are many sterling works upon the construction of 

 e\(.'ry concei\able description of balance, and an extensive literature 

 of weights and measures, yet I have succeeded in finding nothing 

 worth mention concerning the development of that which might well 

 1)0 suspected to have been the first device for weighing— the desemer. 

 So crude a contrivance could have no interest for the artiticer. Besides, 

 the simple but imperfect instrument which is called in north Germany 

 a desemer has become almost unknown to the present generation, and 

 the consequence has been an increasingly frequent confusion between 

 the desemer and the Roman steelyard. What we mean by a desemer, 

 or. as it is called in the Altmark, an Uenzel, is something like a steel- 

 yard of wood or metal having its counterpoise fixedly attached to it, 

 while the piece upon which it rests and turns can be shifted. The 

 Roman balance, or what is usually understood i)y a steelyard, the Ger- 

 man Pfiinder, has, on the other hand, a fixed fulcrum and movable 



•Translated from Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fiir Ethnologic, etc., 

 Berlin, 1900. 



^It has l)een assumed that this word is the same as "besen," the English form of 

 which is "besom." The "steelyard" is so called because it was fi ret used on the 

 left .bank of the Thames, at a place where the Hanse merchants sold steel. It seems 

 quite possible that the original form of the balance used there was the desemer.— Tr. 



551 



