Perhaps it was war, or perhaps love, that motivated the ritual whereby a 3,000-year-old brown Bronze Age sword was plunged into the Danube River in what is now modern-day Budapest, Hungary. The descendants of the Eurasian nomads who once inhabited this region might have wished to commemorate a battle or the loss of a loved one by depositing a cherished weapon into the river.
Believed to date from 1080-900 B.C., according to a Field Museum press release, the sword wouldn’t be retrieved from the Danube for another three millennia. It was discovered in the 1930s before being acquired from Europe by Chicago’s Field Museum. But because it was in such good condition—almost entirely untarnished by time—for nearly a century, the museum assumed it was just a well-made replica.
This Bronze Age sword (1080-900 BC) was retrieved from the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary, in the 1930s. It came into the collection nearly 100 years ago and was thought to be a well-made replica, but a new analysis of the sword revealed that it is the real deal, dating back 3,000 years to the Bronze Age. Courtesy of The Field Museum of Natural History
Having uncovered documentation of the sword in Hungary, Gábor (right) suspected it was authentic. Working alongside Field Museum officials, scientists used an XRF (X-ray fluorescence) gun to match this sword’s chemical composition to known Bronze Age swords in Europe. Courtesy of The Field Museum of Natural History
However, in preparation for an upcoming Field Museum exhibition in March 2023, Hungarian archeologists and museum scientists asked to examine the blade. Upon inspecting it using an X-ray fluorescence detector, an instrument that looks rather like a ray gun, they saw that its chemical makeup matched that of comparable known Bronze Age specimens. A chemist alongside archeologists found the sword’s bronze, copper, and tin content was nearly identical to that of authentic swords of that period.
“Usually, this story goes the other way round,” said Bill Parkinson, a curator of anthropology at the Field Museum. “What we think is an original turns out to be a fake.”
(Courtesy of The Field Museum of Natural History)
Installation of a Bronze Age Era sword (1080-900 B.C.) in the Field Museum’s main hall as a preview for an upcoming special exhibition, First Kings of Europe. Courtesy of The Field Museum of Natural History
Parkinson is helping curate First Kings of Europe, an upcoming exhibition at the Field Museum that will feature weapons, armor, and jewelry from some of the Balkans’ earliest societies, dating as far back as 5,000 B.C. Among the artifacts to be shown is a gold laurel crown of a Thracian prince and the Varna treasure—consisting of some of the oldest man-made gold objects in the world.
Had this “replica” sword been recognized for what it was earlier, it might have been included in the Bronze Age era section of the exhibition. Now that it has been officially authenticated, it will instead be installed in the museum’s main hall as a preview for the upcoming show this spring.
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