Francisca Bravo
17 de septiembre de 2022

It all started on Wallapop. The Civil Guard identified the sale of a sword through this internet sales service and seized what could be one of the oldest iron forged swords in Spain, whose authenticity must still be verified through studies and relevant analytics. The facts occurred during the summer in the town of Villanueva de la Fuente, in the province of Ciudad Real. The sword, which has formal characteristics typical of the end of the Bronze Age, but forged in a new material, iron, was practically three decades in private hands, and it was the person who found it in his house as a child who put it up for sale on the Internet.

The artifact was located through Operation Pandora, dedicated to the fight against illicit trafficking of cultural property over the Internet, the plundering of archaeological heritage or the reception of stolen or plundered works of art. On December 1, 2021, the advertisement was located advertising it as a supposed Roman sword and its characteristics were very similar to a mold for making swords, unique in the world, which appeared in Ronda in 1983. The Benemérita explained that it was a 'unicum': a unique and unrepeatable object.

They then contacted the seller, to whom they indicated that it was necessary to check the authenticity and age of the sword, so he voluntarily deposited the object at the Civil Guard barracks in Villanueva de la Fuente. Then, the Department of Education and Culture took charge of the expertise of the weapon.

The sword has very special characteristics, explains Professor Fernando Quesada, which suggest that it may be one of the oldest in Spain, also linked to the civilization of Tartessus. The professor of Archaeology explains that its complete authenticity must still be verified, but in the case that it is certified with guarantees we would be in front of the oldest iron sword of Castilla-La Mancha and also of Spain. "The problem is that the sword was found out of context and there was no immediate news of its discovery, so there are still things to determine, because it was also retouched and cleaned at the time," explains the expert.

Centuries and centuries ago
Now, in the case that it is indeed an authentic sword and that, in fact, it was used in what is now Ciudad Real and not in other territories such as Jaén, it has an "extraordinarily" interesting connotation. "It marks the end of a metallurgical tradition of thousands of years, such as the Bronze Age," explains Quesada. At that time, the weapons tradition was based on a bronze that was melted and poured into a stone mold. As it cooled, it was sharpened and polished. "It is the tradition of the Near Eastern world, from Babylon to Pharaonic Egypt, of the Eastern Mediterranean, of Mycenae, and also of the Iberian Peninsula before the arrival of the Phoenicians," explains the professor. Quesada also points out that the sword, unlike the spear, the bow or the sling, is one of the first weapons designed specifically for war, to kill human beings. "You don't hunt a hare or a deer with a sword," he stresses.

Coinciding with the arrival of Phoenician traders to the peninsula, steelmaking also arrived, in which molten metal was no longer used but forged from a lupia or solid cake of iron metal. "It's totally different, the temperatures are much higher and the technology used is a new world," Quesada emphasizes. These techniques also coincide with the so-called Tartessian period, a civilization that "marks" the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age.



The unique qualities of the sword
What makes this sword so special? "It is as if a blacksmith between the 7th and early 6th centuries BC tried to forge an iron sword with the shape and dimensions of a Bronze Age sword," reflects the teacher, with formal characteristics that have been found in other areas of Spain such as Ronda. "This shows us that it is a time of transition between the Bronze and the beginning of the Iron Age. But a sword is not just anything in the ancient world, everyone knows that they have an important symbolic value and prestige in addition to the military," he says.

And it is not only during the Middle Ages that swords were tools associated with the aristocracy, but also since ancient times. But not only that: having a possible link with the molds found in Ronda and Alicante can also be considered as the marker of "a very important communication route from the coast of Alicante to Extremadura, known as the way of Hannibal. It is a surprise what has happened in Villanueva, the normal thing would have been to have found the sword in Alicante or Huelva", he affirms.

First swords forged in iron
In any case, Quesada insists that its authenticity must be confirmed, since the relevance of the finding depends on it. "We talk about it being one of the first swords forged in iron in the Iberian Peninsula, it can be seen as an experiment of a blacksmith with this new material," he explains. The sword has "very marked" semicircular recazos, reeded hilt, a straight and long narrow blade with ribbing. "This sword, if it is authentic, could belong to the first culture that used writing in the Peninsula," says the professor. "It is one of the oldest iron swords, but the oldest? We don't know," he concludes.

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