Axe with an Animal Head
Unknown · c. 1000-800 BC
At twenty three and a half centimetres this is the widest of the spiked axes displayed here. Four spikes rise from the socket, and a rib runs the length of the blade, finishing in an arrow-shaped point at the cutting edge. On the edge of the blade sits a small animal head, a touch of sculpture on an otherwise linear design.
The axe is attributed to Luristan and dated to the early first millennium BC, around one thousand to eight hundred BC. The rib was a structural feature, stiffening a thin cast blade, but Luristan smiths turned it into a decorative arrow, in the same spirit that made spikes into horse heads on the neighbouring piece. The Louvre bought the axe in nineteen fifty eight together with several other Luristan bronzes, forming the core of the group in this case. Their cemeteries, high in the Zagros mountains, produced thousands of such weapons, which have shaped our image of Iron Age Iran.
Did You Know? The arrow-shaped rib points straight at the cutting edge, as if to show the blade which way to go.
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