Dagger with a Serpent-Dragon Handle
Unknown · c. 2600-2400 BC
The handle of this dagger is carved from dark steatite into the forepart of a serpent-dragon, its jaws open as if the copper blade were its tongue. The creature's body flows into the grip, so that the whole weapon, thirty centimetres long, reads as a single beast. The blade, cast in copper, is plain and narrow, letting the sculpted handle take all the attention.
The dagger comes from south-eastern Iran and dates to the middle of the third millennium BC, around twenty six hundred to twenty four hundred BC. At that time cities such as Jiroft and Shahdad produced a distinctive art of carved chlorite and steatite, full of snakes, scorpions and composite monsters, which was traded across the Iranian plateau and into Mesopotamia. Serpent-dragons of this kind may have stood for the untamed forces of nature or the underworld. The Louvre bought the dagger in two thousand and three. It is displayed here with other objects from the same region so the shared vocabulary of snakes and beasts becomes visible.
Did You Know? Whoever held this dagger gripped the neck of a dragon whose mouth spat the blade.
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