Ilan Sztulman/Tel Miqne-Ekron Excavation Project

A double headed bronze linchpin found in the southern room of 11th-century B.C.E. building 350, once secured a wheel to an axle of a Philistine chariot. Two faces look out in opposite directions from the top of the peg-shaped linchpin. Elaborately fashioned linchpins are known elsewhere in the ancient Near East, especially from depictions of Egyptian chariots. See drawing of Egyptian chariot and the closeup of its linchpin and axle.

Stylistically, the double heads and flat caps of the Ekron chariot linchpin strongly resemble the sphinxes that decorate wheeled ceremonial stands from Cyprus, and are clearly Aegean in origin.