Peser, mesurer, compter à Ras Shamra-Ougarit à la fin de l'âge du Bronze récent

The kingdom of Ugarit, located on the Syrian border was included into the Hittite sphere of influence at the time of Suppiluliuma's reign (1350-1319 B.C.) and remained so until the destruction of Ugarit in 1185 B. C. Ugarit, possessing a rich textual documentation including five systems of writing and eight different distinct languages, provides therefore a very favorable place for observation of the central/peripheral model applied to metrological and mathematical knowledge. The scientific interest of such a research concerns the history of science : the study on the development about " the knowledge of measurement " at the end of the second millenium B. C. in Ugarit appears as a fundamental link to the understanding of cultural interactions between the Mesopotamian, Syrian and Anatolian cultures. The implications of this study concerns equally the history of economy : at the end of the Late Bronze Age, in the context of pre-monetary economy, as in the kingdom of Ugarit, the notion of cost/price is linked with the measures of weight (balance) and of capacity. The analysis of weights in Ras Shamra allows possibility to relativize the idea of multiple systems used in Ugarit at the end of the Late Bronze Age and advantage rather the supremacy of the local system, characterized by an average value of the sicle weight of 9.4 g. This result seems to agree with the study of administrative cuneiform alphabetic texts and those in mesopotamian cuneiform. These weights would serve to weigh small quantities of precious materials as gold, in a minor way, and silver in much greater extend, which appear as accounts in practical texts. The king and his near surrounding seem largely implicated in the control of weighing operations as legal documents and letters in akkadian permit to comprehend. The only representation of an actual scene of weighing appears in an ugaritic mythological text, in relation with royal ideology. Other categories of people seem also implicated in the weighing operations, like merchants, metal-workers, or scribes who recorded measures and accounts. These scribes have drawn up metrological lists which are texts for the apprenticeship of metrology and numbers, but the impact of these writings seems relative on the composition of the textes in practice. However, the presumed errors in the over-all total of administrative textes in mesopotamien cuneiform and in alphabetical cuneiform are perhaps due to the different functions of these totals : récapitulative or prospective.