A 12th-century crossed sword discovered

A centuries-old sword from the time of the Crusades was discovered by a student swimming off the coast of Haifa, Israel, the University of Haifa revealed on Monday.

Shlomi Katsin, a student in the university’s Department of Maritime Civilizations, was swimming at Dor Beach when she saw a group of divers with metal detectors, the school said. Katsin feared that the divers were antiquities thieves and was able to drive them out of the area. Then he saw the sword sticking out of the seabed, the university said. The discovery was entirely “by chance,” according to the press release.

Katsin contacted Department of Maritime Civilizations professor Debi Tsveikal to inform her of the discovery. Tsveikal contacted the Israel Antiquities Authority. The university said the authority “granted special permission to remove the sword from the water in order to preserve it and prevent damage.”

The meter-long blade was recovered and taken to a conservation laboratory at the university’s León Recanati Maritime Studies Institute. It was then taken to Medica Elisha Hospital in Haifa, where a CT scan allowed investigators to learn more details about the blade without damaging it. Photos show the sword covered in shells and other marine sediment.

The scan showed that the sword was made to be held in one hand and probably belonged to a crusader warrior from Europe. There was a fracture in the sword’s blade and most of the iron from which the weapon had originally been made had been eaten away by “the ravages of time and sea,” the university said.

Dr. Sarah Lantos, a professor in the Department of Maritime Civilizations, said the sword’s discovery is rare and gives researchers “a unique opportunity to learn about the lives” of European knights in Israel.

Tsveikal, the professor to whom Katsin reported his find, said that only a few swords dating back to the Crusades in Israel are known.

“This discovery contributes greatly to our understanding of the use of sea anchorages and the lives of warriors during this period,” he said.

The Crusades took place between 1095 and 1291, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They were a series of military campaigns waged by Christian knights to wrest areas along the Mediterranean from Muslim control. The battles took place in present-day Israel, Türkiye, Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. The Crusaders built fortified castles to protect their new territories, and the two sides exchanged control of those territories over the centuries, until the era ended in 1291.

In 2021, a fan diver found a big sword dating back to the Crusades at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea off Israel.