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HOLLOW
BASE
POINT
Hollow Base points were being made thousands of years ago in the area known today as Egypt. They date back to the beginning of the Neolithic phase in this
region when simple agricultural village settlements first appear around
5300 B.C. People living during this period were growing wheat and barley
and raising domesticated animals like goats, sheep and cattle. They lived
in houses made of mud-daubed reeds or wattling or houses made of
mud-brick. These projectile points were produced up until just before the
unification of Egypt, when King "Menes" unites Upper and Lower
Egypt with a strong centralized monarchy around 3100 B.C. and a period
known as the Old Kingdom begins.
Hollow Base points have deeper concave bases than any other projectile point in the world. One or more of their fragile "ears" are usually found broken off. Complete examples are rare. They may have been designed to break on impact. If that isn't the explanation they might be considered to be a poor design, which is hard to believe since they were made for approximately 2,000 years!
Hollow Base points were hafted onto the ends of spear shafts by
sliding the point into grooves cut on either side of the shaft. Hafted
examples still exist in the museum at Cairo, Egypt. |
