Attic Minas to Grams (mina to g)

1 Attic mina equals 436.6 grams exactly.

1 Attic mina = 436.6 grams

How to convert Attic minas to grams

To convert Attic minas to grams, multiply the number of Attic minas by 436.6. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply grams by 0.002290426019 (rounded).

grams = Attic minas × 436.6

Example: 10 Attic minas = 4,366 grams.

Approximate value. Standards for the Attic mina varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Attic Mina (mina)

Ancient GreekHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

About 436.6 g, equal to 100 drachmas. A mina of silver was a considerable sum in ancient Athens.

Mina is a borrowed word. It traces back to a Semitic root meaning to count, appearing as manu in Akkadian and maneh in Hebrew, and Greek mna was taken from the same source. In Babylonia the mina was a standard of silver weight by about 2000 BCE, at roughly 570 grams. The Greeks adopted both the word and the sixty-to-one link between mina and talent, but fitted the unit to their own coinage.

The Attic mina of Athens is usually given as about 436.6 grams, the figure used here, though other estimates run a few grams lower, near 431 grams. Cities such as Aegina used a heavier mina of about 624 grams, so a sum in minas meant little without knowing the standard. According to the sources, the mina first counted 70 drachmas and was raised to 100 around the time of Solon, about 594 BC. That decimal relation made it handy for bookkeeping, with 100 drachmas to the mina and 60 minas to the talent. A modern comparison is a little under a pound, about 0.96 pound avoirdupois.

1 Attic mina = 0.4366 kilograms (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Mina (unit); Wikipedia: Ancient Greek units of measurement; Wikipedia: Talent (measurement)

Gram (g)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One thousandth of a kilogram. The standard unit for food quantities and small objects.

A gram was once defined as a small drop of the natural world. The French National Convention of 1795 set it as the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to a cube one hundredth of a metre on each side, a cubic centimetre. The reference temperature was first the melting point of ice and was later changed to the temperature of maximum density of water, about 4 degrees Celsius. The word came into French as gramme, from Late Latin gramma, itself from the Greek for a letter or small mark; in Late Antiquity it meant about one twenty-fourth of an ounce.

The gram was the base unit of mass in the centimetre-gram-second system, but in 1960 the SI took the kilogram as its base unit, which made the gram one thousandth of it. That is why it appears in so many everyday places: it is the standard for non-liquid ingredients in cooking and shopping, and nutrition labels commonly list contents per 100 g. For a sense of scale, a small paper clip or a pen cap weighs about a gram, and a Japanese 1-yen coin is close to exactly that, while a US penny is around 2.5 g.

1 gram = 0.001 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Gram; Wikipedia: Kilogram

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