A Doctoral Student Just Discovered a Tiny 5,000-Year-Old Sword—One of the Oldest Weapons in the World—in an Italian Monastery

In 2017, an Italian student
named Vittoria Dall’Armellina was visiting a
monastery-turned-museum on San Lazzaro degli Armeni, a small island
off the Venetian Lagoon, when she spotted a familiar looking sword.
The sword, mistakenly grouped with medieval artifacts, was thought
to be a few hundred years old at most.

It turns out it’s one of the
oldest known weapons in the world.

Dall’Armellina, who was getting
her doctorate in archaeology at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University at
the time, thought the object looked familiar to those she had
studied for her master’s thesis on the early Bronze Age, when
swords were believed to have been first invented. It turns out she
was right: After more than two years of analysis, experts have
dated the artifact back 5,000 years, according to an announcement from
the university.

“I thought that I knew that type
of sword and that I was certain it was contemporary with those of
Arslantepe and Sivas,” Dall’Armellina told Live
Science, referencing the
weapons from ancient cities of Anatolia, in what is now eastern
Turkey, which date back to 3000 BC.

Working with scientists from Ca’
Foscari University, Dall’Armellina traced the sword back to Ghevont
Alishan, a poet and famous Armenian priest who maintained a close
relationship with English art critic John Ruskin. The object was
gifted to Alishan in the late 1800s by a collector and passed to
the monastery after his death in 1901. 

A handwritten note that once
accompanied the sword explained that it was unearthed in a small
settlement on the coast of the Black Sea, in what is now eastern
Turkey.

The sword was also discovered to
be made of arsenical copper, an alloy of copper and arsenic that
predated the invention of bronze. That fact, for Dall’Armellina,
was confirmation that her hunch was right.

“I was pretty sure of the
antiquity of the sword,” she said. “When the results of the
analysis revealed that the material was arsenical copper, it was a
great satisfaction.” 

Both the material and the
tapered shape of the sword are similar to those of a pair of twin
swords found inside the Royal Palace of Arslantepe in Anatolia,
which are considered to be the oldest examples of their kind ever
discovered. 

The post A Doctoral Student Just Discovered a Tiny
5,000-Year-Old Sword—One of the Oldest Weapons in the World—in an
Italian Monastery appeared first on artnet News.