Molded Collar

This axe-head, currently made up of a blade, shaft hole, and a molded head decoration, was discovered to be a pastiche during examination in conservation. A molded collar, 1992.256.137.B, has also been added to the top of the shaft; it is unclear whether this element is modern or if it may have belonged to another ancient object. The molded collar was removed, along with some of the filling covering the joins on the axe-head. While the form and iconographic style of this axe-head are related to the Luristan bronze tradition, no figural parallels are known among axe-heads. Shaft-hole axe-heads are primarily associated with third-millennium BCE Mesopotamian and Iranian contexts, but these examples lack figural embellishment (1). The janiform heads adorning this object are of the same style seen on early first-millennium BCE Luristan tubes and finials, but they are not attested on axes (2). The heads on the Harvard axe-head are very worn and broken off at the top, and it is possible that they are also modern additions; ICP-MS/AAA analysis of the three currently joined components indicates that the decorative heads have a different alloy (bronze) than the blade or the shaft (both arsenical copper). A small linear design is etched on one side of the blade. NOTES: 1. See P. R. S. Moorey, Catalogue of the Ancient Persian Bronzes in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, 1971) 39-41, nos. 4-5, fig. 3; F. Tallon, Métallurgie susienne 1: De la fondation de Suse au XVIIIe siècle avant J.-C. (Paris, 1987) 73-75, nos. 21-35, pls. 139-42; and C. L. Woolley, Ur Excavations II: The Royal Cemetery (Philadelphia, 1934) 305-306, pl. 223. 2. See Moorey 1971 (supra 1) 164-65, nos. 188-89, pls. 37-38; and O. W. Muscarella, Bronze and Iron: Ancient Near Eastern Artifacts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1988) 137 and 151-52, nos. 240-42. Amy Gansell