Half-size. It greatly resembles the bronze knife from the Palafittes of Neuchâtel, figured by Desor. The Swiss knife, however, has a tooth at the edge, near the hollow.] [Heading: _THE AXE AND THE SWORD._] The Akhu or war-axe was, as we might expect, known to ancient Egypt in early days, and became an _objet de luxe_. A gold hatchet and several of bronze were found buried as amulets in the coffin of Queen Askhept, the ancestress of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Again, a bronze weapon occurred with a mummied queen of the Seventeenth Dynasty (B.C. 1750). Useful in war, the implement, probably when in the stone period, rose to be a symbol of the Deity: hence, doubtless, the _hâches votives_ of the later Bronze Age without edge to serve for work or weapons, and intended only for religious use. The two-headed weapon was that outward and visible sign of Labrandian Jove, so called from the λάβρα, which in the Lydian tongue was synonymous with πέλεκυς. The emblem appears on the medals of three Carian kings, the most notable being Mausolus (or Mausollus), dating from B.C. 353. According to Plutarch (_De Pythiæ Oraculis_) the Tenedians ‘took the axe from their crabs, ... because it appears that the crabs alone have the figure of the axe in their shells.’ Hence the double-headed weapon on the coins of Tenedos is a votive or sacrificial, rather than a warlike, symbol. The Tenedian Apollo also held the axe, which some regarded as the symbol of Tennes. Aristotle and others maintained that a certain King of Tenedos decreed that adulterers should be slain with the axe, and his carrying out the law upon his own son gave rise to the proverb, Τενέδιος πέλεκυς, denoting a rough-and-ready way of doing business. [Illustration: FIG. 88.—THE GLAIVE.] [Illustration: FIG. 89.—EGYPTIAN AXES OF BRONZE.] Although the πέλεκυς is mentioned by Homer (‘Il.’ and ‘Od.’) as a weapon as well as a tool, the Greeks, like the Assyrians, did not much affect it. The Romans, who worshipped Quirinus in spear-shape, bound the securis in a bundle of rods (_fasces_), bore it as a badge of office, and placed it on consular coins. The weapon was lowered in the salute, and thus, perhaps, arose our practice of dropping the Sword-point, which is unknown to the East. The axe with expanded blade upon Trajan’s column is in the hands of a workman. Possibly the classics of Europe despised the weapon because it was proper to the _securigeræ catervæ_ of the effeminate East. As early as the days of Herodotus (I. chap. i. 215) the σάγαρις, the Armenian _sacr_, and the Latin _securis_, made either of gold or chalcos, was the favourite weapon of the Amazon[309] and the Massagetæ[310] horseman. In Ireland the axe plays a part in the tales of Gobawn Saer: this goblin-builder completed the dangerous task of finishing off a royal roof of cutting wooden pegs, throwing them one by one into their places, and driving them in by flinging the magic weapon at each peg in due succession.