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

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

“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.

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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