In 2002, Hungarian colleagues lent a sword found in a vicinity of the Danube river to a Czech exhibition called The centre of Europe around 1000 B.C.

I visited the exhibition at the Prague castle twice. Unique items had been displayed there, literally the most precious ones from the central European museums that are bound to the 1000 B.C. time, including the sword and armour of St. Wenceslas… For me, the sword from the museum Budapest, Hungary was just another beautiful artefact among many others at that professional and breath-taking exhibition. I had absolutely no idea I would get back to this weapon many years after.

After cleaning the Toušeň sword, us and our colleagues from the National Museum and the Institute of Archaeology in Prague have begun to look for close analogies, weapons resembling the ours most. Even at a very first glance, the Hungarian sword´s photo in a catalogue from the above mentioned exhibition at the Prague Castle seemed to be quite similar with our Toušeň sword. We found the fact our colleague archaeologist, Dr. Katalin Almássy, is from Hungary very useful in this situation. Katalin asked for a detailed photo of that sword, now deposited in the Nemzeti Múzeum in Budapest, Hungary and Dr. László Révész was very kind to cooperate. Thanks to this collaboration, we can work with a very detailed documentary photos of the sword found in the town of Szob, at an Early Middle Ages burial site located on the left riverbank of Danube (pic. No.1) The sword was part of a funeral gear of a man aged 30 - 35. The deceased man was buried approximately in the centre of the burial site (pic. No. 2, grave No. 21) and he was presented with many other charitable gifts for his last journey. Also a reflexive bow and arrows, an axe, a knife and other items such as jewellery and parts of a horse harness (pic. No. 3 and 4) were put to his grave. This grave contained the wealthiest gear of all the other graves at the site so we suppose that man used to be a very important person in his community. Maybe the most important one…The bone remains showed no difference from the common population in Hungary of that time. For sure, he was not a two-metre-tall blond Nordic man and so the Scandinavian sword had to get to him as a very special gift or as a booty.

To our big surprise, the Hungarian sword has got nearly identical decoration of the guard and pommel. Also, the technology of forging silver wires, copper and brass is the same in both cases. Similarities in decoration of both swords are absolutely striking (pic. No. 5 and 6). If I were a sympathizer of conspiring theories, I would not hesitate to write both the swords had been made by the very same person somewhere in Scandinavia. Even if the location of their finding is 400 km distant form each other.

As we have to keep certain scientific quality level of our articles, this sixth part of the Story of the Sword could inspire mainly those interested in the literary competition announced by our museum.

Pavel Snítilý, Head archaeologist of the Municipal Museum in Čelákovice

Sources and literature:

https://mapy.cz

Photo archive of the Municipal Museum in Čelákovice

Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum Budapest

Bakay, K. 1978: Honfoglalás és államalapitás kori temetök az Ipoly mentén. Studia Comitatensia 6, p. 16 – 21.

Our thanks go to our dear Hungarian colleague Dr. László Révészi from the Nemzeti Múzeum Budapest.

Author of photos is Mr. József Rosta from the same institution.