CHICAGO, ILLINOIS—According to a statement released by the Field Museum of Chicago, X-rays of a bronze sword held at the institution since the 1930s have revealed the weapon is about 3,000 years old. It had been previously thought that the sword, which was discovered in Hungary in the Danube River, was a replica. Museum curator William Parkinson thinks a clerical error was the source of the mix-up. “Someone just wrote it down wrong,” he said. When the weapon was analyzed by scientists from the Field Museum and Hungarian archaeologists who were preparing a special exhibition, they were surprised to find that its chemical makeup was nearly identical to that of other Bronze Age swords found in Europe. “Usually, this story goes the other way round,” Parkinson concluded. “What we think is an original turns out to be a fake.” To read more about arms in the past, go to "Weapons of the Ancient World."
