In 2021 GNN reported that a man diving off the Israeli coast discovered a sword from the Crusader period.
All locked up in shells and sand, it looked like it could have been forged in mythical Atlantis, and even half-buried on the seabed, diver Shlomi Katzin couldn’t have mistaken its shape.
Now, incredibly, Katzin has found another sword—equally barnacled—while swimming not far from where he found the first one. Quite the thrust of luck.
The sword, which is believed to date back to the 12th century, was transferred to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and to researchers from the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa, where Katzin is a student of maritime archeology.
Once there, the experts hoping to examine it got the idea to use a CT scanner at a nearby hospital. With it, they could directly image what remained of the sword beneath the barnacles without risking damage to the artifact.
The scan results found that little of the iron blade still existed, and that it likely wasn’t produced in the Levant—but rather in Europe, making it and the sword from 2021 all but certain to have belonged to soldiers on campaign in the Holy Hand, perhaps during one of the Crusades.
Launched between the 10th and 13th centuries, Europeans made three ultimately-unsuccessful attempts to capture the Holy Land from the Arabs who controlled it.
Katzin was swimming in an area known to contain historic shipwrecks when he spotted a group of people with metal detectors. Thinking them to be looters, he chased with away and happened to notice the sword at the same time, sticking vertically out of the sand.
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He then contacted Professor Debbie Zwickel at Haifa Univ. who got special permission from the IAA to remove the sword to prevent looting or further damage from the environment.
“This is an extremely rare find that sheds light on the Crusader presence on the country’s coasts,” Professor Zwickel said.
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“Only a handful of similar swords from the Crusader period are known in Israel to date, and this discovery contributes greatly to our understanding of the use of naval anchorages and the lives of warriors during this period.”
Smithsonian Magazine reported in 2021 that while the Muslim armies during the time of the Crusades built fortifications on the coasts, only the Europeans were known to have traveled by sea.
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