The
copper model tools of the 901.8.113 series were found by Flinders Petrie at
Abydos in an intact deposit in the Second Dynasty tomb of King Khasekhemwy. The
deposit had been preserved intact due to a happy accident; Petrie recounted
that the freshly made mud-bricks used to construct the walls of the tomb had
“yielded with the pressure and flowed out sideways . . . It was only owing to
this flow of the walls over the objects in the chambers that we succeeded in
finding so many valuable things perfect, and in position.” (Petrie, The Royal Tombs of Abydos 1901: Part II, p.12.)
This copper model harpoon head mimics an archaic
bone harpoon. Single-barbed heads
generally replaced the more ancient two- and three-toothed harpoon heads during the Old
Kingdom, though the older forms may have survived in sport fishing, or at least
in symbolic images of fishing in the marshes in tombs, until the New Kingdom.
This example, cut from sheet copper, is purely ceremonial.
