Axe Head Decorated with a Wagon
Unknown · Early Bronze Age III, c. 2700-2200 BC
Along the socket of this copper axe runs a tiny scene: a covered wagon with high sides and a curved roof, pulled by two oxen, with a figure seated inside and two men pushing from behind. The blade itself is narrow, and the long socket that held the handle ends in a ridge at each end. Seventeen centimetres wide, the axe was cast in one piece, so the wagon was formed in the mould rather than added later.
The scene is among the earliest images of a wheeled vehicle from Iran, dating to the Early Bronze Age, roughly twenty seven hundred to twenty two hundred BC, and the axe is said to come from Luristan. Covered wagons drawn by oxen were slow, heavy transport, quite different from the light horse-drawn chariots of later centuries, and the men straining at the back give a vivid sense of the effort involved. Why a weapon should carry this image is unknown; perhaps it belonged to someone whose wealth came from trade or transport. The Louvre purchased the axe in nineteen ninety nine.
Did You Know? Look closely and you can see two men pushing the wagon from behind, a detail that has not changed in four thousand years of stuck carts.
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