As the topic of January, we chose an agricultural tool that was discovered in Sâncrăieni, in the fall of 2022, as a special burial inventary. The two hackles were found joint together by their teeth, having been placed in the grave during a ritual burial. They were lifted from the grave as a block of oxidized iron which, with the help of the Hargita County Emergency Hospital, was later subjected to X-ray examinations, and then, based on the results, the restorer of the Szekler Museum of Ciucului, Lázár Levente, restored and preserved it.

The hackle is a shovel-shaped wooden tool with a handle used for combing wool and various fibers. It has 1-2 rows of sharp nails driven perpendicularly into its wider part. It was customary to work with two identical hackles at the same time: one fixed on a chair or bench, and the fiber caught in the teeth was first torn by hand into small pieces, then the smoother fibers remaining between the teeth were combed by hand, with another giver. The use of this type of comb can be found especially in the culture of Transylvanian Hungarians, but there are data about its appearance also to the west, as far as the Danube.

Its name ("gereben" in Hungarian) is the one used everywhere. The basic form of this combing tool from the old European wool and linen culture, is the shape of a real comb, carved from wood, with a longer or shorter handle, which has survived to this day only in the culture of the Eastern Slavs. In classical Greek and Roman cultures, where the use of iron became more widespread, the wooden teeth of the hackles were replaced by iron nails, which - due to technical necessity - had to be inserted perpendicularly into the end of the shovel-shaped handle. This is how the new form of hackles appeared, used in the territory of the former Roman provinces (or in the Germanic-speaking areas, further north). When the South Slavs broke away from their former common Slavic homeland, they took with them the flat wooden comb called a "gereben", but in their new Balkan country with a Romanized culture, they learned about the more advanced form with iron nails and thus replaced earlier instruments that performed the same function. After the conquest, the Hungarians, especially the ethnic groups living in the Transdanubian territories and belonging to the South Slavs, adopted the new instrument in their culture, along with its name, "greben", used by the South Slavs. The two hackles on display coe along with a special feature, a perforated iron plate, which was attached, we assume, to a shovel-shaped piece of wood. The wooden parts of the instrument did not survive the exposure to the acidic environment.

The hackles can be admired at the museum's ticket office from Tuesday to Sunday, daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.