Exceptionally large gold weight - Achantis - Ghana

The Akan peoples had their own system for weighing gold dust. In most cases, these were geometric small weights with symbolic decorations. Over time, figurative weights were also introduced, usually only a few cm tall.
The weights used by the king were considerably larger and heavier, and were therefore called royal weights.
The depiction of a calao bird with a grain in its beak is the illustration of a proverb: "if you had given a bird something to eat, you would have heard a beautiful song come from its beak".
Only in the foundational work of G. Niangoran "l'univers Akan des poids a peser l'or" do we find a similar object of almost the same size (see photo)
Originating from an important private collection.

for more details look at the photos

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