Talk:Mina (unit)

Incorrect
Most of what is expressed in the article is incorrect. Or better, they are correct facts expresed incorrectly.

The Mina is an ancient (ca. 2000 BC) unit of weight. And just of weight. It consists on 60 shekels (not 50, never) and 60 minas formed a talent.

It happens that only when account gold, and just for gold (not for any other product) the babylonians used a 50 shekel mina. The gold talent comprised 60 of these "reduced" minas. The shekel used had the same weight as the standard shekel.

About 850 BC the system changed with the introduction of a new Mina weighting double of the old one. This causes some problems in all related Wikipedia pages (Mina, Talent, Shekel, Drachma, Greek Coinage, etc.) The relations were not changed, so there were a new shekel, a new talent, and new gold units too, all of them weighting double of the ancient ones (the Dugi ones).

Extra confusion arises from the fact that everything about that is related to the "Common Norm" mina. But for all beforementioned units there were relatives called the Royal Mina or Mina of the King, and relatives (for all of them, the three units and the two weights). These royal units weighted 1/36 more than the common ones, due to taxes. And there were also 1/24, 1/20 and even 1/12 taxed units.

Very careful attention must be payed when talking about Minas, Shekels and Talents, since you must always specify if talking about the light or the heavy one, the common or the royal one, the weight or the gold-weight one (excepting for shekel), and if talking about the royal, which is the used tax. There are many laws about hammarabi and a lot of them have to deal with mina.

And silver-weight units has nothing to do about this, since they were defined to have equal values than the gold ones, not equal weights.

I'm not english native, so please somebody who is correct this article and the related ones.

-- Envite @ spanish wikipedia 85.52.195.170 (talk) 17:27, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The sacred mina originates as a cube of one hand of side 100 mm in Babylon c 1750 BC as part of a sexigesimal system in which it has a value of sixty sheckles. There is also a profane or ordinary mina of fifty sheckles which is 5/6 as large and has a side of 80 mm.


 * Ancient Egypt takes Mesopotamia's sexigesimal scale and makes it septenary using palms instead of hands. One palm is 75 mm. In terms of measures 3 hands and 4 palms = 1 foot of 300 mm. The Persians and Greeks go with hands and the Romans with palms, but their system is octenary.
 * You commonly hear of the sacred Mina in those different ANE cultures having values of 33.5 oz,(27.9) 20 oz(16.67 oz)(1.25 foot) and 18 oz (15 oz); giving both the sacred and (profane) form.


 * you can make a rough conversion of oz to cubic inches as 1 oz to 1.8 cu in
 * a mina of 33.5 oz = 60.45703 cu in with a side of 3.9 in or 99.695 mm that's within the margin of error for measuring anything hand made so we can relate the measure of length to the measure of volume. its thus likely that if the mina is divided into 60 parts each is about 1.01 cu in". 1 cu in = 16.387 gr = 1 pound, where 1 m = 1,000,000 gr


 * The shekel had a variety of values depending on who issues it when and where and whether its silver or gold; weights between 9 and 17 grams, and values of 11,[4] 14, and 17 grams are common. 142.0.102.190 (talk) 20:08, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

English "mine"
This page had said
 * Note, that the word "mine", in the sense of land mine came from the form of this ancient weight stone.

That's not the accepted etymology (OED Etymonline) -- although it's not airtight, received opinion is that "mine" is from a Celtic source. "Land mine" is certainly a later development of "mine" 'excavation', anyhow, after the tunnels dug to lay explosives. 4pq1injbok (talk) 00:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Reference not found
Reference not found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mina_(unit)#cite_note-6

That reference doesn't actually include the described commentary. I looked around and couldn't find it in other scenes either. Can someone else check?

Mina also as a unit of time
I'm on a phone, so apologies for brevity. 2010 Writings of Early Scholars, ed by Imhausen & Pommerening pg 279. Re: Babylonian astronomy, "Times and differences are given on minas and shekel or in us, where 60 us = 60 shekel = 1 mina. The day and night lengths in the scheme below are given on units of us..." -Lis Brack-Bernsen Bob Enyart, Denver KGOV radio host (talk) 13:02, 14 May 2021 (UTC)