Roman swords discovered in a Dead Sea cave ‘in mint condition’

Jerusalem: Four Roman-era swords, their wooden and leather hilts and scabbards and steel blades, exquisitely preserved after 1900 years, have surfaced in a desert cave near the Dead Sea, the Israel Antiquities Authority said.

The cache of exceptionally intact artefacts was found about two months ago in an excavation by Israeli archaeologists and tells a story of empire and rebellion, of long-distance conquest and local insurrection.

The four Roman-era swords and a javelin head were found during a recent excavation in a cave near the Dead Sea, in Jerusalem.Credit: AP

Researchers, who published the preliminary findings in a newly released book, propose that the arms – four swords and the head of a javelin, known as a pilum – were stashed in the remote cavern by Jewish rebels during an uprising against the Roman Empire in the 130s.

The swords’ age was determined based on their typology, and have not yet undergone radiocarbon dating.

The find was part of the Judean Desert Survey by the Israeli antiquities authority, which aims to document and excavate caves near the Dead Sea and secure scrolls and other precious artefacts before looters have a chance to plunder them.

The cool, arid and stable climate of the desert caves has allowed exceptional preservation of organic remains, including hundreds of ancient parchment fragments known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Those Jewish texts, discovered last century and dated to the first centuries BCE and CE, contain the earliest known versions of the Hebrew Bible, as well an assortment of esoteric writings.

Archaeologists said the exceptionally preserved artifacts are dated to the 2nd century, when Jewish rebels launched an uprising against the Roman Empire. Credit: AP

Archaeologists returned to this particular cave near the desert oasis of Ein Gedi to document an inscription found decades earlier.

“At the back of the cave, in one of the deepest parts of it, inside a niche, I was able to retrieve that artefact – the Roman pilum head, which came out almost in mint condition,” said Asaf Gayer, an archaeologist with Ariel University.

Although the swords were found on the eastern edge of the Roman Empire, they were likely crafted in a distant European province and brought to the province of Judaea by soldiers in the military, said Guy Stiebel, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist specialising in Roman military history.

He said the quality of their preservation was exceptionally rare for Roman weapons, with only a handful of examples from the empire and beyond its borders.

“Each one of them can tell you an entire story,” he said. Future research will focus on studying its manufacture and the origin of the materials in order to tease out the history of the objects and the people it belonged to – Roman soldiers and Jewish rebels.

“They also reflect a much grander narrative of the entire Roman Empire and the fact that from a small cave in a very remote place on the edge of the empire, we can actually shed light about those mechanisms, is the greatest joy that the scientist can have,” he said.

AP