Roman Legion XIII 'Battle of Munda' Lead Slingshot

The blade with raised mid-rib and penannular guard, integral flanged hilt with organic inserts for the grip and crescentic pommel. 368 grams, 31.5 cm



Ex London art market, 1980-1990s. This lot is accompanied by an illustrated lot declaration signed by the Head of the Antiquities Department, Dr Raffaele D'Amato.

These daggers were cast in one-piece mould. Some scholars (Negahban) states that blade and grip were cast in one piece mould, and that the penannular guard was later cast onto the blade. However the main characteristic was the hilt and pommel open to accept organic inlays, here preserved.

Triangular double-edged blade with raised midrib and short tang with a rivet in situ. 263 grams, 34.5 cm



Ex North London, UK, collection, 1990s. This lot is accompanied by an illustrated lot declaration signed by the Head of the Antiquities Department, Dr Raffaele D'Amato.

A (reiterhammer) head made as a single solid iron bar, one end shaped as a squared hammer and the other as a pointed curved spike; the head showing a strong quadrangular outline; the spike is a 'raven beak' shape of pointed section, oval socket with saltire cross flanked by two vertical lines on either side. 174 grams, 14.2 cm



From a North American collection formed in the 1970s-1990s. This lot is accompanied by an illustrated lot declaration signed by the Head of the Antiquities Department, Dr Raffaele D'Amato.

This war hammer is of the type used by European cavalry in the 16th century, represented in iconography (battle of San Romano, painting by Paolo Uccello of 1455 AD; portrait of Maurice of Saxony made in 1578 AD by Lucas Cranach the Younger) and showing parallels with similar examples in the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. Reiterhammers of this type are called ‘raven’s beak’ (bec de courbin) in the sources; the shaft was originally a wooden shank reinforced by metal shafts with one-handed handle, but in the later models, like our specimen, the astile could be entirely in metal, thinner than the wooden one, with guard and knob to better ensure the grip on the handle for a user wearing a glove. The war hammer was developed to counter the protection offered by plate armour, which made simple cutting weapons useless. In a military context dominated by the figure of the knight in plate armour, the sword lost its status as a weapon par excellence. The evolution of this offensive weapon ran in parallel with that of complete armour. When the latter developed ridges to limit the damage from thrusting hits, the war hammer gained prominence as a penetrating weapon. Weapons capable of concentrating a considerable force on a narrow target, a joint or a precise point of the armour proved to be more effective in the fray. As much as the mace of arms and the archer’s axe, the war-hammer became a decisive melee weapon for the knight. The weapon, descended from the East-Roman akouphion, began to be used by armoured knights in the 14th century, due to the need to better the axe and the mace of arms with a piece of equipment capable of inflicting injuries through armour. It reached its full development only at the end of the 15th century, but its wide use in the 16th century is widely documented by archaeological artefacts and iconography, like the one representing the battle of Dreux, in an engraving of 1588 AD, one of the first clashes of the Wars of Religion in France, where knights are visible fighting on horseback with such weapons in their hands. The war hammer was often visible in tournaments, and, much like sword hilts, war hammers became richly decorated with etching and gilding, often appearing to be works of art. However, they never lost their primary function as dangerous weapons (Edge-Miles Paddock, 1988, p.149). With the seventeenth century and the establishment of portable firearms (pistol and petronel) as weapons of the new heavy cavalry (Cuirassiers and Reiters) the war hammer disappeared from western battlefields. In Eastern Europe, its variants, such as the Polish nazdiak, remained in use among cavalry forces until the 18th century, when it finally fell into disuse along with the axe and mace, starting from the Napoleonic Wars, when the model of the horseman armed only with sabre and pistol became dominant.