1912.89.50

Collection type

Object

Description

Iron sickle blade with serrated edge.

Long description

Iron sickle blade with serrated edge. The blade is curved and serrated on the inside edge. The handle end has a perforation and cross piece of iron. [MJD (Verve) 20/6/2016]

Geographical reference

Egypt

Africa > Northern Africa > Egypt

[Nubia] Faras

Cultural groups

Nubian

Person

Field collector Francis Llewellyn Griffith

PRM source Francis Llewellyn Griffith

Date / Period

Date made: 1-300

Date collected

1911- 1912

Acquisition information

Purchased: 1912

Materials and processes

Material Iron Metal

Dimensions

Length x Width x Height: max 167 x 73 x 22 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1912.89.50 Other numbers: 1912.ß.319

Research and responses

This object was chosen to feature in a trail around the Pitt Rivers Museum in association with the Museum of English Rural Life on Farming The First 12,000 years (https://merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/online-exhibitions/farming12k/). It featured in a pamphlet with the caption "Sickle blades. Use of curved handtools for harvesting crops predates the earliest farming. The first sickles hand flint blades but they later employed metal. Similar objects are found around the world. In the UK they were common until the nineteenth century when scythes and mechanised reapers took over. These examples include a Neolithic example found in 1937 in Jutland, Denmark, and another excavated in 1911 in Faras, Lower Nubia, Egypt. Faras was later flooded by the Aswan Dam, a project based largely on the need for irrigation for farming." [FB 5/1/2021]

Search terms: Tool, Agriculture and Horticulture, Sickle, Agricultural Tool