LOT 0293

Caucasian Axehead with Engraved Dragon Heads

KOBAN CULTURE, 12TH-8TH CENTURY B.C.

7 3/8 in. (806 grams total including stand, axehead: 18.8 cm).

Comprising a swept curved edge, slender neck with faceting, bulb socket and small striking face to the butt; frieze of hatched serpentine necks and heads to each face of the blade, with reserved triangles; band of hatched chevrons to the neck, horizontal fluting to the socket; mounted on a custom-made stand.

Franz Heger (1853-1931), Austrian traveller and ethnographer, acquired in the Caucasus during his 1890 expedition.
Believed to have been gifted circa 1930 to Franz Hancar (1893-1968), noted scholar and expert in ancient Caucasian cultures.
Thence by descent, acquired in the 1950s by Mr R.D., Vienna, Austria.
Acquired from the above in 1998 by N.M., former Israeli Ambassador to Austria (1998-2000).

Accompanied by an academic report by Dr Raffaele D'Amato.
This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by a search certificate number no.12840-240720.
This lot has been cleared against the Art Loss Register database, and is accompanied by an illustrated lot declaration signed by the Head of the Antiquities Department, Dr Raffaele D'Amato.

Featured in Apollo Magazine, May 2019.

Cf. Gorelik, M., Weapons of Ancient East, IV millennium BC-IV century BC, Saint Petersburg, 2003, in Russian, see pl.XXII, no.34, from Caucasus (Koban type, Tliy burial ground), for similar.

During the latter half of the 2nd millennium B.C., one type of axe head dominated in the region of the Eastern European steppes. It had a narrow horizontal blade, a short blade and a tube-shaped handle. Examples have been found across the steppes of Eastern Europe from Transcaucasia. From the middle of the second millennium B.C., the spread of the type in the Eastern Steppes was connected with the movement of Iranian-speaking nomads, maybe the Tocharo-speaking tribes, who used two-wheeled horse-drawn war chariots.