An Egyptian Breccia Mace Head, Old Kingdom, ca. 2700 - 2500 BCE Writing and Manuscripts 2002 Redlands Westpac Art Prize

2002 Redlands Westpac Art Prize

Provenance:  Vernon Pick private collection

in the Central Desert of Australia

Condition: Fragmentary as noted with ancient loss to the left knee and the object formerly held in the raised right hand

The horn suggests figures such as these may be shaman figures communicating between the living and the dead

An Egyptian Breccia Mace Head, Old Kingdom, ca. 2700 - 2500 BCE Writing and Manuscripts 2002 Redlands Westpac Art PrizeThis stone mace head is a surviving example of one of humanity's earliest and most enduring weapons. Carefully shaped into a rounded, pear like form and pierced longitudinally for attachment to a wooden shaft, it would originally have served as the striking head of a mace, a weapon used throughout Egypt from the Predynastic Period onward. While practical in function, the mace quickly assumed a symbolic role in Egyptian society. By the dawn of the