I noted the discovery of the weight here and the pushback about it here (cf. here). The response from the Hebrew University team in the BHD essay is new to me. If the hinge marks do appear on the labels of all other eight gera weights, that would seem to establish that the weight was highly fraudulent, instead of just (maybe) a wee bit.
It bothers me, though, that it is so much heavier than the displayed weight. Would customers really fall for being overcharged nearly fourfold? That seems like a lot. Being cheated by 20%, if that, seems more plausible.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
