Two Predynastic Egyptian Stone Mace Heads on Custom Stands

North Africa, Egypt, Predynastic period. Two ground stone mace heads, each bored straight through the center to fit onto a haft, shown on custom stands. The taller head is a smooth, pear-shaped form in pale gray-white stone. It rises from a broad base to a narrower crown, where the drilled socket opens cleanly. Its companion is squatter and more globular, in a coarser, pitted stone with gray and russet tones and a pronounced lip around the bore. Shaping a hard stone into a symmetrical form and drilling a long shaft hole with simple abrasives took serious time and skill. Mace heads like these probably served as weapons and as emblems of rank, and the pear-shaped type later became the standard royal smiting weapon of early Egyptian kingship. The pear-shaped mace head came into use in Upper Egypt during the Naqada II phase, replacing the earlier disc-shaped type, and soon took on meaning beyond the battlefield. On the Narmer Palette, one of the founding images of pharaonic kingship, the king raises exactly this kind of mace over a kneeling enemy. That smiting pose stayed in royal art for three thousand years. Oversized, carved ceremonial mace heads, such as those dedicated at Hierakonpolis in the names of the kings Scorpion and Narmer, show how the weapon became a symbol of royal authority. Item # 204448

Estimate:$600

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