The workshop for carpentry in Elephantine Island was uncovered by a German Swiss mission led by Cornelious von Pilgrim. Among the objects found in the workshop are two objects of particular importance. It is an assemblage of two metal axes made of bronze or copper. They were deposited in a small pit in one of the uppermost floors of the latest phase of the house. The phase can be dated in the time of Thutmosis III or in the early years of Amenhotep II.
Dr. Pilgrim said that after their discoverey both axes have been carefully restored by the conservator of the mission in May 2017. One of the axes is a symmetrical axe with elongated lugs, a type that started to appear in Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period. The axe was heavily corroded and is badly cracked. It is best paralleled with the group of splayed axes with straight sides that becomes a common form in the 18th Dynasty. This axe type was most probably used as a tool. The second axe found in the same deposit is most exceptional and clearly of foreign origin. It is the first example of an axe of this Syrian type in all Egypt. It has a shaft-hole to mount the shaft into the axe, a technology which never was adopted by Egyptian manufacturers.
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