Field Museum shows off 3,000-year-old sword once believed to be a replica

The sword will be displayed at the entrance to the upcoming exhibition “First Kings of Europe,” which aims to transport visitors back 5,000 years.

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Ann Prazer, a mount shop supervisor, shows a 3,000-year-old Bronze Age Era sword to visitors during a press event at the Field Museum, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023. Found in the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary, in the 1920s, scientists initially thought it was a replica.

Ann Prazer shows a 3,000-year-old Bronze Age sword to visitors Tuesday at the Field Museum.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

The story typically goes something like this: A priceless object on display for decades at the museum has now been revealed to be a fake.

In the case of a three-foot-long weapon in storage at the Field Museum since the 1920s, what was believed to be a replica has turned out to be a 3,000-year-old bronze sword.

“I think there was a clerical error when it got here,” William Parkinson, curator of anthropology at the Field, said Tuesday. “Someone just wrote it down wrong.”

The bronze sword was found at the bottom of the Danube River in about 1920.

Tossing swords — and body armor — into rivers was part of a Bronze Age tradition in the present-day Balkans and surrounding areas.

“Sometimes they seem to commemorate a treaty,” Parkinson said. “Literally, sometimes they are burying the hatchet. You’ll get a deposit of hatchets that are brand new.”

A 3,000-year-old Bronze Age sword, which is part of the upcoming First Kings of Europe exhibit, is seen during a press event at the Field Museum, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, where museum staff mounted the sword for display. Found in the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary in the 1920s, had been mistakenly labeled as a replica.

A 3,000-year-old Bronze Age sword, which is part of the upcoming “First Kings of Europe” exhibit, had been mistakenly labeled as a replica.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

Parkinson was in the museum’s main hall to offer a teasing view of the Field’s upcoming exhibition “First Kings of Europe,” which aims to transport museum-goers back 5,000 years to “explore the rise to power of ancient Europe’s first kings and queens.”

The Field Museum bought the remarkably well-preserved sword from the Hungarian National Museum soon after it was plucked from the Danube River, according to Parkinson. He said a friend visiting Chicago from the Hungarian museum last summer identified the clerical error with the sword, and testing confirmed the mistake.

“At the very beginning of the Bronze Age, they already know how to smelt copper, already extracting copper from ore. Then, they start mixing it with tin, which is the big game-changer,” Parkinson said of the additive that made the metal much stronger.

Bill Parkinson, a curator of anthropology at the Field Museum, is interviewed about a 3,000-year-old Bronze Age Era sword during a press event at the Field Museum, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023. Found in the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary in the 1930s, scientists initially thought it was a replica.

Bill Parkinson, a curator of anthropology at the Field Museum, talks about the upcoming exhibit “First Kings of Europe.”

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

At some point toward the end of the Bronze Age — which ran from about 3,000 B.C. to 800 B.C. — bronze swords likely clashed with the newfangled iron ones, Parkinson said. But the moment wasn’t recorded for later generations.

And somewhere, too, European farmers saw horses for the first time, which arrived from southern Russia. That’s something visitors will hear about in the exhibition, which opens on March 31.

“That happened sometime about 5,000 years ago,” Parksinson said. “We don’t know exactly when … but there was a moment when there were villagers working their farms and some guys come up on horseback. Can you imagine how mind-blowingly world changing that is?

“That same kind of thing must have happened during the Bronze Age, where you’re a warrior, and you go up against someone with an iron sword. That’s a game-changer. That’s a moment we can’t see, but that must have happened.”

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