Thursday, March 24, 2016

Cache of bronze votive weapons found in Oman

(Thanks Giannis Kadoglou and Mike Loades!)  A French archaeological expedition in Oman, on the Arabian Peninsula, has announced the discovery of a group of miniature weapons, including bows and quivers made of solid bronze, on the floor of what is thought to be a religious complex.

The article dates the weapons to "Iron Age II (900-600 BC)" or approximately the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Elamite periods and roughly contemporaneous to the canonical Luristan bronzes.  However, author Mike Loades has opined that the arrows and quivers bear a strong resemblance to those seen on the famous Achaemenid friezes from Susa.  No closeups of the "five daggers with crescent-shaped pommels" is included but the description obviously sounds like daggers from the Levant, Mesopotamia and western Iran from the late Bronze Age through (as we now know) early Achaemenid times.  I'm unfortunately unfamiliar with the type of axehead shown in the article.