Fluted Mace Head
Unknown · Early Dynastic III B period, c. 2500-2340 BC
A small stone mace head, under eight centimetres tall, is cut with vertical flutes that run around its body like the ribs of a shell. A hole through the centre, three centimetres wide, took a wooden haft. The fluting was not only decorative: the ridges concentrated the force of a blow, and they also catch the light beautifully on the polished stone. Turn your eyes from the object to the small heads and figures nearby, and imagine the mace among them as part of a temple's collection of prestige gifts rather than a weapon for use.
The mace was found in 1934 in a favissa, a pit for discarded sacred objects, in the cella of the temple of Ishtar at Mari, on the middle Euphrates in present-day Syria. Mace heads were the standard royal weapon in early Mesopotamia and were dedicated in temples by rulers and officials; Sumerian kings are shown carrying them on victory monuments. When a temple was cleared or rebuilt, offerings that could not simply be thrown away were buried in pits like this one. The object came to the Louvre in the partage of finds from the 1934 season of André Parrot's excavations.
Did You Know? The mace head was found in a favissa, a temple rubbish pit where sacred objects too holy to discard were reverently buried.
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