In 1962 an Israeli farmer ploughing his field unearthed an intriguing hoard of copper objects, now on display in the Israel Museum. Most of the objects from the hoard were made of almost pure copper except for one of the spearheads, a curved knife, and several adzes, which were made from arsenical copper instead.¹Hauptmann 2011

Adze

Axe

Spearheads

Unique to this hoard are several unusually large spearheads. The largest is 26 inches long and weighs slightly more than 4 1/2 pounds. Fitted to a properly balanced shaft, this spear would have made an exceptionally cumbersome weapon. By way of comparison, a short English pike typically weighs around 5 1/2 pounds, ash pole included! Hestrin and Tadmor thought the largest of the spearheads might have been used for ceremonial purposes.²Hestrin and Tadmor 1963, 281  Yigael Yadin suggested the large spears could have been used to dismantle enemy fortifications.³Yadin 1963 Neither of these proposals is particularly compelling.

Copper Plates

The approximately 800 ridged copper plates were also recovered from the Kfar Monash hoard. They were probably used as armor although, like the spearheads, they are unusually large (the average plate 4 inches x 1-1/2 inches) to have served this purpose. Scale armor from later periods was typically made from bronze plates a fraction of the size of the plates in the Kfar Monash Hoard. And they were always punched for sewing to an undergarment. Furthermore, if the plates were used as scale armor, it is the only known examples of this type of armor from the Early Bronze period.

The Horned Goddess

Among the objects from the hoard was a fine-toothed saw. Besides the exceptionally small teeth, which do not seem like they would have been very effective, the saw was engraved with the image of a cow that has horns terminating with stars. As you may recall, an identical symbol was embossed on an Egyptian stone vase, and also on a stone palette. In each instance, it represents the Egyptian goddess, Bat.

How old are they?

The date of the hoard has generated considerable debate. The archaeologists who published the hoard, Ruth Hestrin and Miriam Tadmor, dated it to the Early Bronze I or to the first half of the Early Bronze II (3200-2750 BC in the Conventional Chronology). This corresponds to the Late Predynastic or to the First Dynasty of Egypt.⁴Hestrin and Tadmor 1963, 286 Hestrin and Tadmor did not think the hoard could date much later than that due to parallels between it and metal objects which date to the Chalcolithic period in the southern Levant (ie. the Nahal Mishmar Hoard).

Amnon Ben-Tor disagreed with the early date, noting that spearheads are otherwise unknown from the Early Bronze I period. He also pointed to a crescentic axehead, discovered approximately six hundred feet from the Kfar Monash hoard, which he thought must originally part of the hoard. Like the spearheads, this style of axehead is otherwise unknown in the EB I.⁵A. Ben-Tor 1971; See also J. Tubb 1981, 8-9 Ben-Tor was rather inclined to date these weapons later than Hestrin and Tadmor, to the end of the EB II period.