2023-09-06 12:33:38
Jerusalem. Four well-preserved Roman-era swords have been found in a remote cave in the Dead Sea area, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced today. He believes the weapons may have belonged to Roman soldiers and were later taken by Jewish rebels nearly two millennia ago.
“The weapons were discovered in a small cave hidden in an area of isolated and inaccessible cliffs of the Ein Gedi nature reserve, in the Judean desert,” specified the AAI, which today exhibited them for the first time and described the finding as ” exceptional”.
The weapons cache, regarding 1,900 years old, is “in an excellent state of preservation” and was discovered in a crevice in the cave by AAI researchers.
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At the time, probably “the swords were hidden by rebels in the area, following they were taken from the Roman Army as booty”, an event that might have occurred around the time of the Bar Khoba revolt (132-136 AD), when the Jews rebelled for the umpteenth time once morest the Roman Empire, although this is still a supposition pending confirmation by experts.
According to the AAI, the swords were discovered “in an almost inaccessible crevice at the upper level of the cave,” and “three of them were found with the iron blade inside their wooden scabbards.”
“In the crack, leather and metal strips belonging to the weapons were also found,” and among them is a weapon with a handle.
According to the AAI, the swords were discovered “in an almost inaccessible crevice at the upper level of the cave,” and “three of them were found with the iron blade inside their wooden scabbards.” (The Associated Press)
The metallic blades of three of the swords are between 60 and 65 centimeters long, and due to their size they have been identified as the swords of the Roman military.
After their discovery, “the swords were carefully removed from the rock and transferred to the AAI’s climate-controlled laboratories for preservation and conservation.”
After that, “an initial examination of the cache set confirmed that they were standard swords used by Roman soldiers established in Judea in Roman times,” says the same body.
In turn, the fact that they were deep in a crevice in a cave “indicates that the weapons were taken as loot from Roman soldiers or from the battlefield, and deliberately hidden by Judean rebels for reuse.” .
Now, according to Eitan Klein, one of the directors of the Judean Desert Study, “the objective is to try to discover who owned the swords, where, when and who made them”, so it remains to be determined in detail which one it was “the historic event that led to the stockpiling of these weapons.”
The dry climate of the Judean Desert, located between the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank and Israel, “allows for the preservation of artifacts that do not survive” in other parts of the region, and is “a unique time capsule”, highlights Eli Eskosido, AAI Director General. In fact, it was also in caves in this same area that the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were found.
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