VENICE, ITALY—According to an ANSA report, a 5,000-year-old sword has been identified in a collection of medieval objects held in a monastery museum on the island of San Lazzaro by Vittoria Dall’Armellina of Ca’Foscari University of Venice and Ivana Angelini of the University of Padua. Dall’Armellina noticed that the weapon’s shape resembles two swords from eastern Anatolia held in a museum in Arslantepe. Analysis conducted by Angelini determined that the sword was made of a blend of copper and tin in use around 3000 B.C. A search of documents in the monastery’s archives revealed that the sword was found among a collection of objects in northern Anatolia, carried from northeastern Turkey’s Black Sea coast city of Trabzon to Venice by a merchant named Yervant Khorasandjian, and donated to the museum in the mid-nineteenth century. To read about 2,400-year-old Cypriot aristocratic tombs with grave goods imported from Anatolia and the Achaemenid Empire, go to "Living the Good Afterlife."
