ABSTRACT
A study of a specific case of presuppositional attitudes to a metal like iron assists us to contextualise both retrojected and predictable general movements of agricultural and military evolution, but also to address specific conceptual tendencies in ancient human creativity. One qualifiable parallel of typical sites is the ludic use of the iron axe. The equivalent Ugaritic form occurs in a mythological votive context. In Ugarit, a cultic axe was discovered, apparently of the type referred to by this term. A matching figurine of Berlin Baal was found at the same time at Ugarit in the Late Bronze acropolis; this embodies a smiting-god position, holding aloft an axe. The iron axe that was discovered is a full-sized one, which comes from a smiting-god, similarly full-sized, statue, and was used by priests as a ceremonial emblem of the war god. The collision between military language and political prose has been a species of subversive instability whose presence mimics a subversive absence.
