Ancient Bronze Sword Original Items

Original Item: This sword was reportedly dug up in north-western Anatolia in the late 19th Century. It is all bronze, but the hilt may have been made separately and attached to the blade. The blade is a common shape and size for Persian swords of about 900 BCE, although roughly similar swords, including variations on the Greek Xiphos sword, have been found dating from around 1300 BCE forward. The blade is 39.5 centimeters long by 4.5 centimeters wide at the hilt. It has a full-length strengthening rib on both sides of the blade. The maximum blade thickness at the hilt is just over 7 millimeters. The blade has two straight edges, except for variations from aging. This can be seen in the photographs.

The hilt has two circumferential ribs and the pommel is a concave disk 3 cm in diameter. It was clearly made for a small hand. It is heavily corroded, as can be seen in the photographs. It weighs 402 grams, which is about typical of bronze swords of the period of the period.

This ancient sword was bought at auction in the U.K. a few years ago, and the only information on its origin that was available was that it was dug up somewhere in the north-western corner of Anatolia in the late 19th Century, a period during which there was a very large trade in artifacts dug up by local citizens. The demand for ancient artifacts had become something of a craze in Western Europe, brought on by the sensational finds of the German amateur archeologist Heinrich Schliemann at the site of Ilium.