A Milanese burgonet, bearing the visage of a dragon. Musée de l’Armée, Paris.

Hat tip to Belacqui.

Dated: 4th quarter of the 13th century – 1st quarter 14th century
Place of Origin: France (Paris, Seine, site du Pont-au-Change)

Source: Copyright © 2015 Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge/Jean-Gilles Berizzi

From Art of Swords.

Burgundian helmet belonging to Gustav I Vasa, King of Sweden. 1540.

Hat tip to Collections & Recollections.

Ewart Park Phase, 700-800 B.C.

Via Art of Swords.

The Rudham Dirk was found bent.

EDP24 has a great story.

The 3,500-year-old Rudham Dirk, a ceremonial Middle Bronze Age dagger, was first ploughed up near East Rudham more than a decade ago. But the landowner didn’t realise what it was and was using it to prop open his office door.

And the bronze treasure even came close to being thrown in a skip, but luckily archaeologists identified it in time.

Now the dirk has been bought for Norfolk for close to £41,000 and is now on display in Norwich Castle Museum.

Dr John Davies, Chief Curator of Norfolk Museums Service, said: “This is one of the real landmark discoveries.”

The dirk – a kind of dagger – was never meant to be used as a weapon and was deliberately bent when it was made as an offering to the gods.

Only five others like it have ever been found in Europe – including one at Oxborough in 1988, which is now in the British Museum. But thanks to a £38,970 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, following a £2,000 donation from the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society, the Bronze Age treasure will now stay in the county.

Read the whole thing.

———————————-

The British Museum’s account of its discovery differs:

Stumbling upon antiquity

A man walking in woods near Oxborough literally stumbled across this dirk in 1988. It had been thrust vertically into soft peaty ground nearly 3,500 years ago, but erosion had exposed the hilt-plate, which caught his toe.

The ‘weapon’ respects the basic style of early Middle Bronze Age dirks, but it is ridiculously large and unwieldy, 70.9 cm long and 2.37 kg in weight. The edges of the blade are very neatly fashioned, but deliberately blunt and no rivet holes were ever provided at the butt for attaching a handle in the customary manner. The dirk was evidently never intended to be functional in any practical way. Instead, it was probably designed for ceremonial use, or as a means of storing wealth.

Although of an extremely rare type, and indeed the first example from Britain, there are four excellent parallels from continental Europe – two each from the Netherlands and France. Two of these earlier finds give the type the name Plougrescant-Ommerschans type. The five weapons are so similar, in style and execution, that it is possible that they were all made in the same workshop. However, on present evidence we cannot be sure whether this was in Britain, or the neighbouring parts of continental Europe.

Ceremonial bronze dirk

Bronze Age, 1450-1300 BC
From Oxborough, Norfolk, England

Hat tip to Ratak Monodosico.

Ebay lot 381041066398 was sitting there at $230.00 on Saturday as the auction drew toward its close at 8:27 pm. I had just bought a rifle on Gun Broker, so I was feeling a need for some restraint, but I certainly was not going to let this sell for $230.00 without bidding a bit higher. So I left an Esnipe bid somewhere near $300.

It’s impossible to tell what some auctions are going to do in their final moments, when all the snipers open fire. You can bid double the current bid sometimes and still find that you came in too low. I had no idea what this dagger would fetch. It was obviously worth a great deal more than $230, but beyond that I hadn’t a clue.

It sold, as things turned out, for $599.90, and I still think it was worth much more than that.

————————-

The seller described it as an “Old antique Italian Hunting knife/dagger SUPER NICE RARE.”

You are bidding on an antique Italian hunting knife. This is an exceptional example well made and well preserved. It probably dates from the first half of the 19th century. It is large 15-1/2 inches long, solid blade 11 inches long with two decorative fullers and mirror engraved images as well as a small section of brass inlay, the blade is 2 inches wide at the base. The handle is made from wood with two decorative brass side grips and a very interesting tang section that can be seen on the back. Nice file work on the mid section. Super nice knife.

But, what was it really?

I looked through George Cameron Stone’s A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times, Together with Some Closely Related Subjects, and my conclusion is that it was an anelace aka anelec aka anlace, a long dagger variation of the cinquedea featuring a triangular double-edged blade tapering sharply to a point: used from the 13th to the 16th centuries. This weapon was often carried at an angle at the small of the back and would be the only weapon carried in cities, at court, traveling on horseback or riding during the hunt, also used to slide between the plates of platemail armour.

It does not look old enough to me to be 16th century. It has an 18th century look to me. But, I suppose, it might have been an extremely high quality 19th century reproduction.

Carried by Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805. Because fighting aboard ships was likely to occur in confined spaces, Naval officers were more likely to carry a hanger (a short hunting-style sword) into battle, rather than a full-length sword.

Via Ratak Monodosico.

Charles Hartley: “Amazing folding stock on a North Italian snaphaunce coach gun, made so it fits into a leg of mutton gun case.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Cuirass of Carabinier Antoine François Faveau worn in the Battle of Waterloo, 18 June 1815.

Ronald Pawly, Napoleon’s Carabiniers:

The visitor to the Army Museum at Les Invalides, Paris, who walks into the room devoted to the 1815 Campaign and the Restoration is confronted by a dramatic relic taken from the battlefield of Waterloo. In a display caninet stands a handsome polished cuirass of brass-plated steel, expressing the martial glamour of Napoleon’s Army — except that a huge hole is punched through both breast and back plates, where a 6-pound cannonball smashed its way through the trooper’s right chest and shoulder.

The sight of this ruined armour, now engraved with the date “18 juin 1815”, is extraordinarily moving, and the visitor cannot help imagining the fate of the 23-year-old Carabinier Antoine François Faveau, who wore it on that fatal Sunday. He rode with the 2nd Company, 4th Squadron, 2nd Regiment of Carabiniers — one of only two regiments to wear these gleaming brass-faced cuirasses. Brigaded together, these two regiments took part in the last desperate charge sent by Marshall Ney against the stubborn British infantry squares.

———————

Wikipedia on the Carabiniers-à-Cheval:

[After 24 December 1809:] the uniform of the carabiniers: white costume, double steel cuirass (breastplate and backplate) covered with brass sheathing (copper for officers), helmet with a peak and which covered the back of the neck, with a golden-yellow copper crest decorated with a chenille made of scarlet bristle. Their armament included a carbine, a sabre (straight-bladed before c. 1811, then “a la Montmorency” – with a very slight curve) and a pair of pistols.

Hat tip to ClassicPics (Twitter) via Karen L. Myers.

Théodore Géricault, Portrait of a Carabinier-à-cheval, c.1812, Louvre

Tutenkhamun’s daggers

The 1922 discovery of the tomb of the boy pharaoh Tutenkhamun dazzled the world with the precious artifacts and funeral goods found (which still regularly draw enormous numbers of visitors to exhibitions at museums around the world).

The deceased king was accompanied to the afterlife by two obviously personal favorite knives, both double-edged daggers in form, pretty close 3000-year-old equivalents of the Randall Model 2 Fighting Stiletto.

What is most interesting though is that King Tut’s personal daggers were made in the Bronze Age of other metals. One knife is made of gold, hardened with copper. The American custom knife-maker Buster Warenski (1942-2005) took it as a personal challenge and successfully completed in 1987 a replica. That project required five years of work and used 32 ounces of gold.

The second knife is made of iron, at a time in which the forging of primitive iron weapons was a new technology invented by the Hittites. Even in the future, when the Greeks would be besieging Troy, Achilles and the other heroes would still be armed with bronze swords and bronze-tipped spears. It’s good to be the king. Tutenkhamun possessed, and got to take with him into his tomb, the superb iron-bladed knife seen above. Modern analysis has determined that it was forged from meteoric iron, and though it lacked the complete rust-and-stain-resistance of the gold blade, it undoubtedly took a better edge and remained sharper longer. In 1300 B.C., iron would have been rarer and more expensive than gold. I think this knife may have been intentionally made with a ricasso, a flat, unsharpened area above the grip, which would allow the user to hold the blade farther forward for precision cutting.

Via Karen L. Myers’ HollowLands.

British Museum

Dimensions: Length: 43 millimetres — Weight: 105.16 grammes

A very rare Khanda hilted sword with serrated edge and of Cobra form

A very rare type of Indian sword, likely from the late 18th century in good as found uncleaned condition.

From Swords and Antique Weapons via Sword-Site posted by Ratak Monodosico.