Shaft-Hole Axe with Boar's Head

The butt of this shaft-hole axe is in the shape of a boar’s head. The ears are pointed and have a small raised ridge between them; the tip of the left ear is possibly broken. The eyes are raised bumps. The tusks are semicircular and curl sharply up onto the snout, and the mouth is depicted slightly open. The neck of the boar expands as it nears the circular shaft hole, forming an angled ridge on either side of the hole before tapering again toward the blade edge. The edge of the blade flares slightly on either side. An axe head now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, has a horse protome of a similar style (1), although the museum has now separated the protome from the axe (2). NOTES: 1. See H. Pittman, Art of the Bronze Age: Southeastern Iran, Western Central Asia, and the Indus Valley (New York, 1984) 65-66, no. 32. 2. Inv. no. 1989.281.39 is the horsehead; inv. no. 1989.281.45 is the axe. The museum also attributes the axe to Bactria-Margiana, dating it from the late third to early second millennia BCE. Lisa M. Anderson