SAVAGE WEAPONS AT THE CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION. 243 



tional Museum in the Government Building. They are ancient and are 

 generally supposed to be of a ceremonial character. It was either not 

 noted or was not observed where a was from ; b, d, and g were from Wis- 

 consin; c from New Jersey ; e from Connecticut; h from Pennsylvania. 

 So the practice of making the perforated bipennis in stone was widely 

 spread. It may be mentioned that the hole in h, Fig. 52, is only rudi- 

 mentary. A fine selection of per- 

 forated axe-heads from Denmark 

 is in the Peabody Museum, Cam- 



Fig. 52. — Double-bitted perforated axes. 



bridge, and a great many more at St. Germain, France, and inthemu- 

 seumof Geneva, Switzerland. This object is called a "banner stone " in 

 Abbott's article on the Stone Age in New Jersey 73 ; compare also Wil- 

 son's " Stone Age." 80 



The bipennis, or double-bitted axe, was the weapon of the female war 

 riors of Scythian race known as Amazons. It was also known in As- 

 syria. Its antiquity may also be assumed from its being the sacrificial 

 axe of the Eoman priesthood: Dolabra pontificalis. The old scena or 

 sacena of the Latins had two cutting edges, large and small, the former 

 St curis ; the latter dolabra. It may have been copied from the agri< ! 

 tural axe dolabra, which was something like our mattock, with an axe 

 edge and a pick on the respective ends of the head, and was used in 

 cutting wood and cleaving land of bushes and grubs. The flolabclla was 

 the small axe or billhook. The sacrificial malleus was a round ball per- 

 forated for a handle, and it also seems to indicate the long-sustained 

 use of very primitive forms of weapons and implements for ceremonial 

 purposes. 



Many copper battle-axes were recovered by Schliemann from a depth 

 of 28 feet in the rains of LTissarlik. 81 



79 Smithsonian Report, 1875, p. 332. 

 ^Nilson, PI. viii, Fig. 173 and p. 71. 



si "Troy and its Remains." 



