The bronzes

The Knives. Three complete one-edged knives, and one fragmentary, were found in the tombs. The bronze knive (I. 5 ) belongs to a small group in which the whole of the handle including a T-shaped pommel extension was cast in one piece with the blade, while inset panels of perishable material were secured by rivets and deep flanges in the metal. Apart from this pommel-flange it is similar to a large contemporary group of bronze knives to be found throughout the Aegean. One-edged knives with flanged handles are at least as old as the Shaft-grave period at Mycenae. In Crete a riveted handle without flanges was preferred from Middle Minoan times, but the flanged handle appears at the end of Late Minoan II or the beginning of IIIA. The pommel-flange is rare, though found occasionally on both riveted and unriveted knives. The earliest dated example is probably that from the Palace of Mycenae found with other objects of Late Helladic II or early III date; one comes from Dendra, Chamber Tomb 7, and one unriveted from Chamber Tomb 2, dated L.H. IIIB. The Mycenae knife has not the true T-projection but only a broadening at the end of the handle which is in shape very like handles of Levantine daggers and two-edged knives found in the so-called ‘Hyksos tombs’ of Ras Shamra and at Tell el Ajjul, Tell Fara, and elsewhere in Palestine

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• Two Mesopotamian Daggers and Their Relatives

  R W Hutchinson•Iraq•1934

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