3,000-year-old sword thought to be fake for 90 years. It’s real, Illinois museum says

Since the 1930s, the Field Museum has been in possession of a sword from Hungary with the belief it was just a well-made replica.

But the sword is no impostor, the Chicago museum announced on Tuesday, Jan. 17. It’s actually a genuine 3,000-year-old sword from the Bronze Age.

The Field Museum said the sword was found in the 1930s in the Danube River in Budapest. It acquired the sword from the Hungary National Museum, according to WGN.

A visitor from the Hungarian museum identified the clerical error last summer, WLS reported.

“I pulled it out and he said after half a minute, ‘This isn’t a replica,’” Bill Parkinson, curator of anthropology at the Field Museum, told WBBM. “It’s a real sword thrown into the Danube River at the end of the Bronze Age.”

X-ray analysis determined the sword was real, as its bronze, copper and tin contents is nearly identical to that of other known Bronze Age swords, the museum said.

The sword was installed on Tuesday in the Stanley Field Hall wing of the museum and will be a part of the First Kings of Europe exhibit that opens in March.

Experts believe the sword was tossed in the river “as part of an ancient ritual to commemorate those lost in battle,” WFLD reported.

“It’s seldom that you’ve got something in your collection that said in the collection records for 100 years, ‘this is a replica’, that you find out that no, it’s actually the real deal,” Parkinson told WFLD.

The Bronze Age, which spanned 3300 to 1200 B.C., represented the first time humans worked with metal, according to the History Channel.

Similar Bronze Age swords have also been discovered, including one found in 2022 in a river in Slovokia.

“They have been found in tombs, hoards and in rivers and other bodies of water, where they were deliberate depositions made for ritual purposes,” The History Blog said.

This story was originally published January 18, 2023 at 10:15 AM with the headline "3,000-year-old sword thought to be fake for 90 years. It’s real, Illinois museum says."