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 seems broken, with a flat head and two barbs. Cut from sheet copper, it is purely ceremonial.