2019.03

Minoan Bronze Double-Axe Head

Crete, Late Minoan, c. 1500-1000 BC

Length 16.5 cm

Solid cast, with a circular shaft hole and broad body which tapers to slightly curved cutting edge at each end.

Provenance: Private collection, UK; acquired 1960s and thence by descent.

Comparanda: an example at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 26.31.481.

Both axe heads (2019.03, and 2019.04, in this collection) are well preserved and are marked with traces of their manufacture and use. 2019.03 has light corrosion product over most of its surface, thickening somewhat on one side and each side is pitted and has a number of shallow recesses. Each cutting edge is flattened and dented from use and there are several shallow striations on the sides, leading from each of the cutting edges. On one side, there are several tear-like structures parallel to one cutting edge and there are a number of dents and patches of striation elsewhere over the surface, including a number of oblique dents around the shaft-hole on one of the long edges. 2019.04 has thicker corrosion products, particularly on one side, which obscures much of the surface detail on the metal. The cutting edges are relatively sharp, with several dents, and the sides are marked with tears, dents and striations similar to those on the sides of 2019.03. One of the long edges has a several large pits in its surface and dents around the shaft-hole.

The axes can be classified as Type 1a within Doniert Evely’s double-axe typology, which is the most recent typology based on form. This type is rectangular in side profile with modest curvature of the cutting edge, minimal or only slight concavity in the upper and lower edges and with a round shaft-hole. Other types have a more pronounced arc in the profile of their cutting edges, a corresponding pronounced concavity in their upper and lower edges and round or oval shaft holes.

Bronze double axes are one of the most common extant Minoan tools and were present on Crete throughout almost the entire period, appearing in Crete from Early Minoan IIB levels

(c. 2400-2200 BCE) until the end of the Minoan period, Late Minoan IIIC (c. 1200-1050 BCE). The forms remained consistent throughout the period. Other extant Minoan bronze hand-tools include adzes, picks, chisels, drills, awls, razors, saws and, in fewer numbers, hammers and flat and single axes. Double-axe ritual or votive objects also appear in a range of materials and scales, from tiny gold alloy and semi-precious stone pieces to oversized sheet-bronze sculptural forms. The symbol of the double axe is also ubiquitous in Minoan material culture, appearing as a character in the Linear B syllabary—as well as in other Bronze Age scripts—and as an applied motif on pottery and inscribed in seals, metalwork and masonry.

The find-contexts of most bronze double axes are poorly recorded, making it difficult to generalise about their social and symbolic functions. However, from those few which are well recorded, we see an interesting diversity of context types including habitations, hoards, graves and sanctuaries. This diversity of contexts indicates that double axes were not only valued for their functionality as a tool and the value of their bronze fabric but also for some symbolic function.

It is not clear what the relationship was between the functional bronze double axe and the symbol of the double axe mentioned above or votive equivalents in stone, precious metal and sheet bronze which are found in burials and sanctuaries as well as in association with important buildings within larger settlements and palatial complexes. It is now accepted by most scholars that the double axe had some religious symbolic meaning, but the nature of this symbolism is not at all settled. Because the symbol has been found in association with the bucranium in Minoan iconography, it has been suggested that functional axes like the Classics Museum examples were used for ritual sacrifice. However, the two symbols had been in use separately long before they were used in association with one another, and in extant representations of animal sacrifice, it is the dagger or sword which is depicted, not the axe. Many scholars regard the double axe to have been associated with the Minoan goddess or priestess. Correspondingly, some have associated it with fertility or rebirth while others regard it as an apotropaic symbol. Matthew Haysom argues, however, that the meaning of the symbol changed over the course of the period and that, for the Neopalatial period (c. 1700—1625 BCE) at least, the double axe was a symbol of a social group: agricultural leaders who had leadership roles on religious occasions and in warfare.

Despite the apparent solemnity of their symbolic significance, double axes appear to have been used for fairly humble tasks. Maria Lowe Fri has undertaken use-wear analysis of surviving double axes and experimental reconstruction with replicas and her results suggest that they were used for carpentry, butchering and dressing soft stone. Each of the Classics Museum’s axes has different wear on its cutting edges. The edges of 19.04 are relatively sharp, indicating that it was probably used for butchering or working wood and was deposited while it was relatively new. Conversely, the cutting edges of 2019.03 are very blunt and dented, suggesting that it may have been used for dressing stone—which does not require a sharpened edge—and that the axe had been well-used, perhaps for some time, before it was deposited.

These functional double axes were cast in copper, arsenical copper, bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) and arsenic bronzes (copper, tin and arsenic). The Classics Museum axes were made from some bronze type. Pure copper is very soft, so the addition of arsenic or tin to copper, whether intentional or accidental, has the effect of hardening the metal, enabling axes to retain their sharp cutting edges. They were cast using moulds made from stone, clay or sand. A number of two-part stone moulds for double axes have survived from the period, as have the remains of single-use clay moulds which were used for lost-wax casting. For this process, the clay was built up around a wax model which was subsequently melted out of the

mould to leave the hollow matrix into which molten bronze was poured. A double-axe mould made from bronze found at Vasiliki and dated to the Early Minoan IIB period may have been used to cast such wax models or might even have been used to cast bronze axes themselves. They were also produced by sand-casting, wherein a single-use, two-part mould is made by impressing a model or a finished axe into a compacted, clay-rich sand mixture. The visible original surface texture on the two Classics Museum axes suggests that they were cast in clay moulds. 2019.04 has gas blowholes in one of its long edges, which arise when gases cannot escape the mould during the cast. 19.03 has several tear-like structures on one face, parallel to one of the cutting edges, which probably originate from casting as the metal shrank and contracted while the liquid metal solidified.

After casting, excess metal remaining from the casting process, such as flashing and sprues, were removed with chisels and abrasive stone tools used in a similar manner to files today. 2019.03 has some striations on one of its long edges, adjacent to one cutting edge, which are characteristic of this “filing” process. After cleaning up the cast, the faces of the axes were hammered, hardening the material so that they could retain sharp cutting edges. These cutting edges were subsequently sharpened with whetstones and pumice. The axes were mounted on wooden handles which were probably fixed in place with wedges as for modern hafted tools. One of our axes, 19.03, bears oblique tool marks around the shaft-hole on one of its long edges which may remain from hammering a wedge in place.

Despite the careful use of alloys and hammering to harden the material and retain sharp cutting edges, bronze axes would have become blunt frequently and the edges needed to be re-shaped and sharpened regularly. Lowe Fri’s experimentation with axe replicas show that even axes used for carpentry required resharpening at least once a day.

By Christina Clarke.

Buchholz, Hans Günter, Zur Herkunf der kretischen Doppelaxt. Geschichte und auswärtige Beziehungen eines minoischen Kultsymbols. Munich: Kiefhaber & Elbl, 1959.

Evely, R. D. G. Minoan Crafts: Tools and Techniques: An Introduction Vol. 1. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 92.1. Göteborg: Paul Åströms Förlag, 1993.

Haysom, Matthew. “The Double-Axe: A Contextual Approach to the Understanding of a Cretan Symbol in the Neopalatial Period.” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 21 (2010): 35-55.

Lowe Fri, Maria. The Minoan Double Axe: An Experimental Study of Production and Use. Bar-IS 2304. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011.