Shlomi Katzin, an amateur diver, found a 900-year-old sword, almost a millennium, at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea while diving this Saturday in front of the Carmelo coast, in northern Israel, the Antiques Authority said Monday
of Israel (IAA) in a statement.
Although it has embedded marine organisms, the leaf, grip and lining of a meter were enough enough to recognize it after the underwater currents moved the sands that had hidden it.
Other artifacts found in the vicinity of the sword were metal anchors, stone anchors and ceramic fragments.
Israeli law requires that any artifact found to be returned to the nation.
After the discovery of him, Katzin said he recovered the sword from the bottom of the sea for fear that the find was stolen or buried again.
He handed it to the authorities and received a certificate of recognition for “good citizenship”.
The location, a natural inlet near the port city of Haifa, suggests that it had served as a refuge for the navigators, said Kobi Sharvit, director of the Marine Archeology Unit of the Authority, which added that around the larger coves were built
Ancient port cities and other human settlements.
“These conditions have attracted merchant boats during Eras, leaving behind rich archaeological findings,” he said in a statement.
The sword, which is believed to be about 900 years, will be exhibited once it is cleaned and restored.
Nir Distetefeld, an official of the IAA, described it as a “beautiful and rare finding” that probably belonged to a crossed gentleman.
“It’s exciting to meet such a personal object, which takes you 900 years ago in time at a different time, with gentlemen, armor and swords.”
During the crusades, which spread from the end of the eleventh century until the end of the thirteenth century, European Knights built fortified settlements in Holy Land to try to establish a Christian kingdom with Jerusalem as capital.
Muslim forces did not travel by sea, which, according to Sharvit, indicated that the sword was a gun of the crusaders, according to Haaretz.
