Oxhide ingot

Oxhide ingots are metal slabs, usually of copper but sometimes of tin, produced and widely distributed during the Mediterranean Late Bronze Age (LBA). Their shape resembles the hide of an ox with a protruding handle in each of the ingot’s four corners. Early thought was that each ingot was equivalent to the value of one ox. However, the similarity in shape is simply a coincidence. The ingots’ producers probably designed these protrusions to make the ingots easily transportable overland on the backs of pack animals. Complete or partial oxhide ingots have been discovered in Sardinia, Crete, Peloponnese, Cyprus, Cannatello in Sicily, Boğazköy in Turkey (ancient Hattusa, the Hittite capital), Qantir-Piramesse in Egypt, and Sozopol in Bulgaria. Archaeologists have recovered many oxhide ingots from two shipwrecks off the coast of Turkey (one off Uluburun and one in Cape Gelidonya).

The appearance of oxhide ingots in the archaeological record corresponds with the beginning of the bulk copper trade in the Mediterranean—approximately 1600 BC. The earliest oxhide ingots found come from Crete and date to the Late Minoan IB, approximately 1500 BC to 1450 BC. The latest oxhide ingots date to approximately 1000 BC, and were found on Sardinia. The copper trade was largely maritime: the principal sites where oxhide ingots are found are at sea, on the coast, and on islands.

It is uncertain whether the oxhide ingots served as a form of currency. Ingots found in excavations at Mycenae are now part of the exhibits of the Numismatic Museum of Athens. Cemal Pulak argues that the weights of the Uluburun ingots are similar enough to have allowed “a rough but quick reckoning of a given quantity of raw metal prior to weighing.” But George Bass proposes, via the Gelidonya ingots, whose weights are approximately the same if somewhat lower than the Uluburun ingot weights, that the weights were not standard and thus the ingots were not a currency. Another theory is that the oxhide shape, as well as the bun shape that some ingots took, was a visual statement that the ingot at hand is part of a legitimate trade. In Sardinia, oxhide ingot fragments have been found in hoards with bun ingots and scrap metal and, in some cases, in a metallurgical workshop. Citing this evidence, Vasiliki Kassianidou argues that the oxhide ingots “were meant to be used rather than to be kept as prestige goods.”

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Wikipedia