Chariot Linchpin with a Hedgehog
Unknown · c. 2000-1800 BC
The second of a pair, this bronze linchpin is also topped by a hedgehog, its rounded body and pointed snout easy to recognise even at this scale. The shaft below is pierced with a hole, which allowed the pin to be secured through the axle. Thirteen centimetres tall, it matches its companion so closely that the two must have been cast in the same workshop for the same chariot.
Excavators at Susa found the pair in the central court of the palace of Darius, where a horse skeleton lay with a chariot wheel rim and these two pins, evidently the remains of a horse and vehicle buried together. The objects date to the early second millennium BC, around two thousand to eighteen hundred BC, well before the palace was built, so they belong to a much older level beneath the Persian court. Chariots at this date were drawn by equids and were prestige possessions of rulers and warriors. The pin entered the Louvre through the division of finds from the French mission.
Did You Know? The pins, a wheel rim and a horse skeleton were found together, a rare trace of a chariot burial at Susa.
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