If you visit the Field Museum in Chicago for the First Kings of Europe exhibition, which opened on March 31, 2022, you’ll stumble upon an unsightly sword that looks like a rubbish. This sword has a very special history, or rather a story.
The Field Museum began displaying it thinking it was a convincing replica of a Bronze Age sword. But they were apparently very wrong about this.
This sword is actually about 3,000 years old. The museum had purchased the artifact almost a century ago. It is said to have been first discovered in the 1930s on the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary.
Field Museum scientists, who specialize in chemistry and archaeology, examined the sword with an X-ray fluorescent detector that can determine what an object is made of. “When they compared the sword’s chemical makeup to other known Bronze Age swords in Europe, the bronze, copper and tin contents were nearly identical,” the Field Museum said in a statement this week.
Being able to trace the sword back to its location in history was unexpected. Bill Parkinson, curator of anthropology, said, “Often this story goes the other way. “We find that what we think is original is fake,” he said.
The sword’s validation was too late to include it in the Bronze Age section of the First Kings of Europe exhibition. Therefore, the museum placed it in the main hall.
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