File:Roman steelyard weight (FindID 568924-433110).jpg

English: Very large, lead-filled copper alloy steelyard weight in the form of a quarter-length bust of a boy satyr, height approximately 92mm, weight 862g . His long hair is gathered up in a Harpocrates-style top-knot worn widely by children whilst two thick curls run down each side of his head. Four curls run down the back of his neck above the lead filling. There is iron staining behind the topknot, all that remains of the iron loop from which the steelyard weight would have suspended. The face is damaged, the nose and right eye having broken off, presumably due to expansion of the iron and lead that filled the head.,

This is one of the larger steelyard weights from Roman Britain, being parallelled by only a few others, a head of Silenus from Richborough (Richborough IV, pp.125-6 and plate XLII, no. 159) and a female head from Kingscote villa. Ralph Jackson (pers. comm.) has advised that the British Museum has two Maenads from Great Chesterford, Essex (1865,0408.12 at 2347g) and Nursling, Hants (1856,0701.5090 at 2361g), a boxer (1856,0701.5091 at 1200g) and a male head, perhaps a philosopher from the City of London (1934,1210.1 at 6812g). None on the PAS database approach it in size.

Close dating of steelyards is not easy but this example probably belongs in the second century.

Bought at a Burgh Castle car boot sale in the mid 1990s from a seller who had no knowledge of what the item was. Probably a local find and almost certainly from the general area of central eastern East Anglia.