Originally published at: Amateur diver hauls up 900-year-old crusader sword off Israel coast | Boing Boing
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From the article (and quoted elsewhere)
“Every antique that has been uncovered helps us assemble the historical puzzle of the Land of Israel,” Eli Escozido, the director of the IAA, added.
And, also, the history of the Land of Palestine.
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Did someone even bother to find out if it’s cursed before picking it up?
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“The sword was preserved in perfect condition, it is a beautiful and rare find,” Nir Distelfeld, an inspector for the IAA’s Robbery Prevention Unit, said in a statement. "It was found encrusted with marine organisms, but it’s apparently made of iron
Uhh, if the sword was iron and was in the ocean there’s no way in hell its in “perfect condition”
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“The sword was preserved in perfect condition” um it looked a bit barnacley to me?
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Yeah without them even showing an x-ray or some kind of investigation of the inner sword condition, they can’t really say it’s perfect.
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No kidding. So far, I don’t see the sword, just a barnacle encrusted something.
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It is. It still has the cross guard and pommel and its entire length of blade. For an archaeological sword find that is astonishingly good preservation.
It’s also almost certainly been x-rayed already. If they date it specifically to the 11th century they did so based on style, and you would want to see the pommel shape for that.
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"You can’t expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!”
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It might work better than their proportional representation mess.
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Its the semantics of it. If you tell me an artifact was found in perfect condition i would expect a sword, not an sword shaped object.
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Will they be returning this to the Catholic Church?
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Yeah, archaeologists have a different conception of the concept, maybe.
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The NYT has a video of this, and it’s a guy from the antiquities agency standing on a rocky shoreline holding it, showing it off, talking about how they still have to x-ray it. As far as I’m concerned, no (x-ray) pic, didn’t happen (or not a real 900 year old sword). Weird thing is that they even have someone swinging it around, pretending it’s underwater, and then it’s leaned up against rocks in the bright seashore sunlight. Link, which might be paywalled.
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Odd to hear an Israeli get excited about the Crusades, since the First Crusade kicked off with massacres of German Jews.
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I was wondering where I’d left my +2 Broadsword of Shellfish Harvesting.
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When 900 years old you reach, look this good you will not.
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They made their wisdom save roll on a d20
I dropped by to see if anyone knew more about just how these guys decided, without actually seeing what was under the barnacles, that this was a 900-year-old sword. It certainly looks like a sword, but could it be a 500-year-old sword? A 100-year old sword?
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Size and shape.
I mean, directly answering your questions, a sword from 100 years ago (1921) would have been an officer’s sabre, if that, which this clearly wasn’t. A sword from 500 years ago (1521) from that region would probably have been an Ottoman scimitar, which this is also clearly not.
It’s a lot older than either when you’re looking at the shape of it, and it matches very nicely with the form and size of a sword which was used on both sides during the various crusades in the Middle East.
Beyond that, there are people who’ve devoted their lives to categorising and documenting swords over the eras (Michael Oakeshott comes to mind first and foremost), and it’s amazing how much you can guess just from shape and size.
The rest comes down to the analysis at the museum.
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