amber

In England, before 7^th – 13^th centuries, the amber was a unit of capacity originally used by the Saxons. Its magnitude is very uncertain. In 694, Ine, the king of the West Saxons, included “12 ambers of Welsh ale, 30 of clear ale” in a list of foodstuffs to be collected as rent for 10 hides of land. Some have tried to guess the amber's value by guessing what would constitute a reasonable rent; conjectures range from approximately 1.7 imperial gallons (approximately 7.7 liters) to as much as 6 gallons. The present writer is inclined to the view that the amber was much larger, about 30 gallons, because

the amber was half a mitta (see source 2, below),
such a magnitude accords with the size of the Ahm, a “Teutonic” unit which probably shares a common ancestor,
that is the size of the later unit of dry capacity, also called an amber, and
modern readers tend to greatly underestimate the quantity of beer and ale early medieval people drank.

The early references, though few, are all to a unit of liquid capacity. But King Alfred’s 9^th-century translation of Paulus Orosius speaks of “ten ambers of feathers”, clearly dry capacity. Subsequent references are all to a unit of dry capacity, used, for example to measure salt, which is said to have been about 4 bushels.

Some have suggested the word came from the Roman amphora. It may be related to the German Ahm and Eimer.

Sources

Æt tyn hidum to fostre tyn fata hunies, ðreo hund hláfa, twelf ambra Wylisces ealoð, ðrittig hlutres, twa ealda ryðeru oððe tyn weðres, [& tyn gees & twenti henna & tyn cysas,] amber fulne buteran, fif leaxas, twentig pundwega fodres & hundteontig æla.

[As a food-rent] for ten hides: 10 vats of honey, 300 loaves, 12 ambers of Welsh ale, 30 of clear ale, two full-grown cows or 10 wethers, 10 geese, 20 hens, 10 cheeses, an amber-full of butter, 5 salmon, 20 pound-weights of provisions and 100 eels.

The Laws of Ine, 70.1
in
F. Liebermann
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen.
Halle a S.: M. Niemeyer, 1898-1912.
Volume 1, pages 119-121.

Copies of at least a portion of Ine's laws survived because King Alfred added them as a sort of appendix to his own laws, by way of justification.

...xxx ómbra gódes UUelesces aloþ, ðæt limpnað to xv mittum...

...30 ambers of good Welsh ale, that is equivalent to 15 mitta...

a Kentish will of the ninth century,
in
Benjamin Thorpe.
Diplomatarium anglicum aevi saxonici.
London: Macmillan, 1865.
#460

the amounts to be given to the monks of Canterbury on the annual anniversary of the deceased's death. So according to this source an amber was half a mitta. The mitta is said to have been in the range of 60 to 80 gallons, making the amber 30 to 40. If we take a bushel as 8 gallons, a 4-bushel amber would be 32 gallons, which fits well.

Note that, as in the earlier source, the unit is associated with Welsh ale, and also that the writer of the will feels a need to define it in terms of another unit, which may indicate that at this date the amber was already obsolescent.

...Tyn ambra feðra...

...10 ambers of feathers...

King Alfred, translator. circa 893
Orosius
in
H. Sweet, editor.
King Alfred's Orosius.
London: Published for the Early English Text Society, 1883.
I i 15