Attic Minas to Kilograms (mina to kg)

1 Attic mina equals 0.4366 kilograms exactly.

1 Attic mina = 0.4366 kilograms

How to convert Attic minas to kilograms

To convert Attic minas to kilograms, multiply the number of Attic minas by 0.4366. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply kilograms by 2.290426019 (rounded).

kilograms = Attic minas × 0.4366

Example: 10 Attic minas = 4.366 kilograms.

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)

Kilogram (kg)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI base unit of mass. Since 2019 it is defined by fixing the value of the Planck constant, replacing the old platinum-iridium cylinder in Paris.

Oddly for a base unit, the kilogram began life as a derived one. In 1793 revolutionary France defined the grave as the mass of one litre of water, and a decree of 1795 then replaced it with the kilogramme, a name built from the Greek khilioi (a thousand) and gramma, a Late Latin word for a small weight. In 1799 a platinum cylinder, the Kilogramme des Archives, became the physical standard, matching a cubic decimetre of water at its densest, around 4 degrees Celsius. In 1889 the metric community adopted a platinum-iridium cylinder made in 1879, the International Prototype of the Kilogram, nicknamed Le Grand K.

The kilogram is still the only SI base unit with a prefix in its name. Because SI forbids stacked prefixes, a millionth of a kilogram is a milligram rather than a microkilogram, so every mass prefix is attached to the gram. Calibrating every national standard against one object in a vault near Paris meant that all of them drifted relative to it, so in November 2018 member states voted to tie the kilogram to a fixed value of the Planck constant. The change took effect on 20 May 2019. Day to day nothing shifted, but the definition no longer depends on a single piece of metal.

The kilogram is the reference unit for weight & mass on this site.

Sources: NIST: Kilogram introduction (SI redefinition); Wikipedia: Kilogram

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