Model of an Axe
Unknown · c. 2000-1800 BC
At first glance this small clay object looks like an axe head, and that is exactly what it is: a model of a socketed hatchet with three finger-like projections on the butt, made in terracotta rather than metal. It is about ten centimetres wide and has broken, but the shape copies the bronze axes displayed nearby, down to the ridged spikes behind the socket.
Clay models of weapons were made at Susa in the early second millennium BC, around two thousand to eighteen hundred BC. They may have been cheap substitutes for offerings, toys, or patterns used by metalworkers to plan a casting. Whatever its purpose, the model documents the popularity of the three-pronged axe in Elam at the time when the Sukkalmah rulers governed Susa. The piece was found on the acropolis of the city by the French mission and came to the Louvre through the division of finds with Iran. It is worth comparing with the metal axes in the same case.
Did You Know? A clay axe could never cut anything, which is probably why it survived when the real bronze ones were melted down.
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