Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This is half of a double axe, which would have been suitable for chopping and splitting wood, is now broken across one edge of the transverse perforation where the metal is thin. It is similar to contemporary American steel-timber axes. The cutting edge of the axe is rounded; the top and bottom surfaces of the axe flare outward concavely to the cutting edge. Its fragmentary state suggests that it may have been broken up for scrap and have been part of a hoard intended for melting down to cast new objects. This axe could have come from anywhere in Greece, the Aegean Islands, or Crete (1).
NOTES:
1. See N. K. Sandars, “Later Aegean Bronze Swords,” American Journal of Archaeology 67 (1963): 117-53, esp. 136 (from Mycenae); G. M. A. Richter, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1915) 433, no. 1630 (from Gournia); M. Comstock and C. C. Vermeule, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Greenwich, CT, 1971) 392, no. 538 (inv. no. 64.515); J. W. Hayes, Ancient Metal Axes and Other Tools in the Royal Ontario Museum: European and Mediterranean Types (Toronto, 1991) 54-57, nos. 115-20; H. G. Bucholz, Zur Herkunft der kretischen Doppleaxt (Munich, 1959); id., “Doppeläxte und die Frage der Balkan beziehungen des ägäischen Kulturkreises,” in Ancient Bulgaria: Papers Presented to the International Symposium on the Ancient History and Archaeology of Bulgaria, University of Nottingham, 1981, ed. A. G. Poulter (Nottingham, 1983) 43-134; C. Mavriyannaki, “La double hache dans le monde hellénique à l’âge du Bronze,” Revue archéologique (1983): 195-228; and H. Erkanal, Die Äxte und Beile des 2. Jahrtausends in Zentralanatolien, Prähistorische Bronzefunde 9.8 (Munich, 1997).
David G. Mitten
