4 ms·

A fired-clay headed mace? I'm the daft one now, but how does this work? What fired-clay is sturdy enough to whack someone with more than once? Clearly there

A fired-clay headed mace? I'm the daft one now, but how does this work? What fired-clay is sturdy enough to whack someone with more than once? Clearly there is some, but if someone can point to a modern example I might know I will get over this disbelief more easily.

ramchip 8y ago
Given it was owned by a king, it sounds like a ceremonial weapon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_mace https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_mace
piptastic 8y ago
It was for a King, so potentially it was just ceremonial..
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
monocasa 8y ago
I thought the same thing initially, but then I saw it was Irving Finkel making the claim. He's one of the foremost Mesopotamian bronze age historians in the world. Like yeah, this is just an appeal to authority, but damn, what an authority.
gus_massa 8y ago
If they thought it was a vase, I guess it is empty and it has a hole at the "top"/"bottom". It doesn't look like a good design for a real weapon.
- cronix 8y ago
  I imagine the hole is where the wooden club was inserted/attached, which has probably since disintegrated long ago.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
    Quite. An axe head would also have a similar hole after the wooden handle disintegrates.
reaperducer 8y ago
What fired-clay is sturdy enough to whack someone with more than once? Sometimes once is enough!
saalweachter 8y ago
I believe the best modern analog would be a brick.
twic 8y ago
> Now displayed right-side up, the mace head is topped by a painted representation of a net that was used to immobilise enemies for execution. It sounds like they had a thing of capturing enemies, tying them down in a net, and then bashing them to death to really show them who was boss. If this mace wasn't entirely ceremonial, it was probably at least used in fairly controlled circumstances.
logfromblammo 8y ago
You're probably thinking about pottery. Think about bricks and glasses. The word "brickbat" refers to a piece of brick used as a weapon. In modern times, since bricks are small and guns exist, it is likely describing half of a broken building or paving brick, thrown at a line of police with plastic riot shields. In ancient times, it could have been a literal brick on a literal bat. Imagine how durable a wooden baseball bat is. It's a pretty decent weapon on its own, but if you whack anything harder than flesh with it, you might damage it. So you soak the wood, coat the end with clay, inscribe a two-page treatise on how your enemies are total bastards and they just suck so much, and put it in the kiln. Now you have a hard and brittle brick-ceramic surface, over a softer but more durable wooden core. The composite weapon is superior to an all-brick club, which would snap off at the shaft whenever you hit someone with it, and a wooden club, which would split with the grain if you hit something hard with too much force. The brick coating keeps the wood from splitting. The wood core keeps the brick head from shattering. The modern example is tightly wrapping a baseball bat with a coil of barbed wire or baling wire. The tensile strength of the wire keeps the bat from splitting. Ceramic technology has advanced a lot since the bronze age, too. The auto-glass windshield on your car is a sandwich of hard glass and soft plastic, that is at once clear enough to see through, hard enough to deflect flying debris without scratching, and durable enough to sometimes also deflect hard objects without cracking. In addition, if it does break, it doesn't turn itself into sharp knives that could cut you. The ancients used wood (and leather) the way we now use plastic. If you sandwich wood and brick, it's not as good as sandwiching glass and plastic, but it's the same concept.

ramchip 8y ago

Given it was owned by a king, it sounds like a ceremonial weapon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_mace https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_mace

piptastic 8y ago

It was for a King, so potentially it was just ceremonial..

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

monocasa 8y ago

I thought the same thing initially, but then I saw it was Irving Finkel making the claim. He's one of the foremost Mesopotamian bronze age historians in the world. Like yeah, this is just an appeal to authority, but damn, what an authority.

gus_massa 8y ago

If they thought it was a vase, I guess it is empty and it has a hole at the "top"/"bottom". It doesn't look like a good design for a real weapon.

cronix 8y ago
I imagine the hole is where the wooden club was inserted/attached, which has probably since disintegrated long ago.
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
  Quite. An axe head would also have a similar hole after the wooden handle disintegrates.

reaperducer 8y ago

What fired-clay is sturdy enough to whack someone with more than once? Sometimes once is enough!

saalweachter 8y ago

I believe the best modern analog would be a brick.

twic 8y ago

> Now displayed right-side up, the mace head is topped by a painted representation of a net that was used to immobilise enemies for execution. It sounds like they had a thing of capturing enemies, tying them down in a net, and then bashing them to death to really show them who was boss. If this mace wasn't entirely ceremonial, it was probably at least used in fairly controlled circumstances.

logfromblammo 8y ago

You're probably thinking about pottery. Think about bricks and glasses. The word "brickbat" refers to a piece of brick used as a weapon. In modern times, since bricks are small and guns exist, it is likely describing half of a broken building or paving brick, thrown at a line of police with plastic riot shields. In ancient times, it could have been a literal brick on a literal bat. Imagine how durable a wooden baseball bat is. It's a pretty decent weapon on its own, but if you whack anything harder than flesh with it, you might damage it. So you soak the wood, coat the end with clay, inscribe a two-page treatise on how your enemies are total bastards and they just suck so much, and put it in the kiln. Now you have a hard and brittle brick-ceramic surface, over a softer but more durable wooden core. The composite weapon is superior to an all-brick club, which would snap off at the shaft whenever you hit someone with it, and a wooden club, which would split with the grain if you hit something hard with too much force. The brick coating keeps the wood from splitting. The wood core keeps the brick head from shattering. The modern example is tightly wrapping a baseball bat with a coil of barbed wire or baling wire. The tensile strength of the wire keeps the bat from splitting. Ceramic technology has advanced a lot since the bronze age, too. The auto-glass windshield on your car is a sandwich of hard glass and soft plastic, that is at once clear enough to see through, hard enough to deflect flying debris without scratching, and durable enough to sometimes also deflect hard objects without cracking. In addition, if it does break, it doesn't turn itself into sharp knives that could cut you. The ancients used wood (and leather) the way we now use plastic. If you sandwich wood and brick, it's not as good as sandwiching glass and plastic, but it's the same concept.