Details

LOT 1378

Chinese Chou Bronze Spearhead

4TH-3RD CENTURY B.C.

12 1/2 in. (250 grams, 32 cm).

With thick midrib, leaf-shaped blade with lateral spurs, deep tubular socket with fastening hole for the attachment to the wooden shaft.

Provenance

Acquired in the mid 1980s-1990s.
Private collection, Switzerland, thence by descent.
Private collection, since the late 1990s.

Literature

Cf. Gorelik, M., Weapons of Ancient East, IV millennium BC-IV century BC, Saint Petersburg, 2003, in Russian, (plate XXXVIII nos.47-48, for a similar spearhead from Wuchengqiao, country of Liuhe, Prov. Jiangsu, and Fengshuiling, near Changzhen, prov. Shanxi.

Footnotes

The Chou chariot carried three crewmen, a driver, an archer on the left and a man armed with spear or dagger-axe on the right. The long spears were in bronze until the 300 B.C., when the Chou warriors began to adopt steel spearheads, 'as sharp as a bee's sting'.