Asset number
1204846001
Description
An iron sword corroded into a copper-alloy and iron scabbard. The sword lacks its tang, but has a bronze hilt end (48 mm wide and about 9 mm high) that is deeply grooved on the front. The blade must have measured about 570 mm long and is about 40 mm wide at the top. About 2 mm of the blade is visible on the front, but nearly all of it is exposed on the back. It is corroded and has no median ridge, but there is a marked taper from the level of the top of the chape. A couple of loose rivets (20-22 mm long) with large copper-alloy heads (14 mm diameter) at each end probably decorated the handle (1905,0717.2-3). On the front, the heads are similar to those of the four roundels riveted to the scabbard; but on the back they are plain. The scabbard is 606 mm long and 45 mm wide, with a decorated copper-alloy front plate that overlaps an iron back plate. There is a crease across the middle of the front plate, as if it had been bent and then straightened. But the sword is straight, so any bending of the scabbard must have taken place in antiquity. Otherwise the front plate is in good condition, apart from one longitudinal split and two transverse splits at the edges. The iron back plate is fragmentary: a short length within the chape; a 90 mm length just below the centre; and small pieces at the edges, especially near the mouth. The central piece starts about 288 mm from the top of the mouth, and its top is thickened, possibly representing part of the lower loop plate of a suspension loop, but if so its shape cannot be distinguished. The copper-alloy front plate has a low campanulate mouth (9 mm high), a decorated mouth panel and then decoration over its full length. All the motifs are infilled with open circles and basketry hatching, but the entire design is quite worn and its surface is corroded. The decoration on the mouth panel is within a circle and comprises two opposed nodules, each with three tapering arms. Four of the arms are linked to border the circle, and the other two join in a reversed S across the middle, creating an overall yin-yang effect and defining large voids to the left and right. On the left is a trumpet void (with concave, convex and S-shaped sides), but the right void has only two sides (convex and S-shaped). Within each void, a roundel has been riveted to the front plate: each has a high rounded rim and a dished head to the rivet. The top of the main length of decoration is sharply abbreviated by the transverse line that defines the mouth panel, and the overall design is modified to suit this abbreviation. For the rest, the design is essentially a wave tendril. Reading from the top, a tendril springs from a central cusp and bifurcates to occupy the whole of the available space within the first complete wave. The second wave is similar, with its tendril to the left. The third stops short, and its tendril, to the right, becomes a partial wave at the bottom, with a central cusp from which another tendril sprouts, and behaves in similar fashion to produce another tendril that develops into a complete wave, taking the design to the top of the chape. Most of the tendrils terminate in 'bird-heads', some with double 'beaks' and one with two eyes, and there is one larger and more complex terminal enclosing a trumpet void. Three of the 'beaks' have never been hatched. The entire design can be viewed as a string of trumpet voids alternately facing up and down. Most are arranged so that when the void's concave side is to the bottom, then the S-shaped side is to the right; when the concave side is to the top, the S-shaped side is to the left. This is true of the top twelve voids apart from numbers three and four (numbering f
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