This is how it happens that you choose a topic by chance, guided by the principle "like it or not like it." Then others start to like her, and in the end she begins to live her own life, and it is not you who "lead" her, but she is you! This is how it happened with a series of materials about knives and daggers - "to cut more beautifully …" VO readers liked it, and they began to write that it would be nice to continue it and even indicated "fishy places". But not all of them turned out to be such, so it took time to find materials that were equally interesting, in the opinion of the author.
Typical Roman pugio dagger. Auxiliary weapon of the Roman legionary. The blade and hilt are forged as one piece. The scabbard is also usually made of iron.
And now before you another material on this topic, which this time is based on the collection of cold steel not the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but a collection of artifacts from the museum of Princeton University in the USA - a private research university, one of the oldest, prestigious and the most famous university in the country, which is located in Princeton, New Jersey. There is also a history faculty, and there is a small but very interesting collection of edged weapons at the service of its students.
Let's start, as before, with stone daggers. However, in the past materials we did not have such a wonderful flint dagger. This one - and you see it in the next photo, is just lovely. Found in Denmark, late Neolithic, c. 8000 - 2000 BC. Length 26.9 cm, thickness 1.9 cm, width 6.4 cm. Everything seems to be clear. But questions remain, and there are more of them than answers. The skill with which it was made is amazing, and most importantly - its small thickness. But the most interesting thing is not even that. And the fact that almost exactly the same dagger is in the Stockholm State Historical Museum. True, it dates back to 1600 BC. It is believed that it imitates the shape of early bronze daggers. But … both seemed to come out of the same workshop! That is, such workshops already existed at that time, and the production of flint weapons was "in-line"? So the people and the wild were not so in the Stone Age …
A flint dagger from the Princeton University Museum.
Egypt has had a tremendous impact on the development of European civilization, although this is not always obvious. In any case, it is already important that he fed the entire Roman Empire with wheat, and if it were not for him, it is still unknown how it would develop and expand. And it was with daggers cast of copper and bronze that the ancient Egyptian warriors were armed.
For example, here is what a copper dagger of the Middle Kingdom era 2030-1640 looked like. BC. Length 28.9 cm, width 5.8 cm, thickness 2.2 cm. The design of the handle is very interesting. It has a figured top made of alabaster, riveted to the handle itself with the help of side rivets. And you had to think of this before! Princeton University Museum.
Much has already been said about the Mycenaean daggers and swords-rapiers. I would only like to emphasize that if the flint daggers were forged as copper and bronze as one whole - the handle plus the blade, then the daggers of that era themselves had a metal blade, but a wooden handle. This clearly indicates a metal shortage. The blade was cast separately, hammered and inserted into the cut on the handle, after which it was riveted. On the blade in the photo below, there are four rivet holes. And there are blades with three and four, and five or seven rivets. In any case, such a connection could not be particularly strong. But here's what is interesting: when later the handle began to be cast together with the blade, both the mount and these rivets were diligently reproduced by the craftsmen on solid-cast models. This is what the inertia of thinking has been like in people at all times. The technology is new, and the design is old - "that's what the fathers did!"
Bronze blade from the Cyclades, c. 1500 - 1350 BC. Princeton University Museum.
There are many Shan Chinese daggers in the Princeton University bronze dagger collection. All of them are made of bronze, one-piece and all have an equally beautiful and completely uncomfortable handle. And here's the question: why did they need such daggers and how did they hold them in their hands? Moreover, they are all very delicate. This is clearly not a military weapon, but then what was the point in it, or rather, what was the point of wasting valuable metal on "this"? Dagger length 26.0 cm, width 9.0 cm, thickness 0.4 cm.
Dagger of the Shan dynasty from the collection of Princeton University.
There are also the famous "Luristan bronzes" in the museum's collection. Luristan is an area on the border of Iran and Iraq, in the Central Zagros, where in 1100-700. BC. there was a developed industry of bronze cast products. The finds are characterized by a large number of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures in the decoration of weapons and details of horse harness, as well as cult objects. The emergence of this center is associated with the Caucasian tribes that migrated to this area and merged with the Kassites, who were engaged in the production of bronze back in 2000 BC. It is believed that the newcomers were Indo-Europeans, and it is quite possible that both culturally and ethnically, it was they who became the ancestors of the later Persians and Medes. In any case, the important thing is that they cast excellent bronzes using the "lost shape" technique. Many reputable museums strive to have samples of "Luristani bronzes" in their collections. Well, in Princeton there is a very interesting dagger with "ears" on the handle.
"Long-eared Dagger" from Luristan from the collection of Princeton University.
"Long-eared dagger". Side view. Again - why such a strange handle? It is not known what this form gave, why it was made the way it was! By the way, the dagger dates back to around 1000 - 750. BC. Its length is 32.5 cm, its width is 5.4 cm, and its maximum thickness is 4 cm.
However, the shape of the handle of this dagger is no more surprising than the shape of the blade of the 1905 Congo knife. Length 14.1 cm, width 3.5 cm, thickness 0.3 cm. The handle itself is wooden. The blade is forged from steel. Princeton University Museum.
Well, now let's return again to Ancient Rome, where the most common dagger, which was owned by any legionnaire of the 1st century. AD, there was a pugio - which looked like a several times reduced gladius, although not quite. Gladius usually had a rhombic blade shape, but the pugio had a flat blade with a vertical edge. The crosshair is weak, there was a thickening in the middle of the handle. The scabbard is tinned tin, bronze or iron sheet, and very often they were decorated with silver inlay. That is, swords were decorated by the Romans simpler than daggers! The length of the blade varied from 20 to 25 cm with a point of a very characteristic shape.
The Princeton University Museum also has such a dagger, and in a very richly decorated scabbard. Here and bronze, and silver, and gold, and black, in a word, adorned it wherever. But here's what's interesting: these archaeologists find daggers, confidently date them to the 1st century BC. AD, however, by the end of it they disappeared from the arms of the legionaries. In any case, there are not a single pugio on the figures from Trajan's Column!
And this is a Roman pugio from the Museum of the city of Hann in Lower Saxony. And in due time the Roman legions got there.
Pugio from the Haltern am See Museum in Germany.
A modern remake of this dagger, made in full accordance with the Roman tradition.
Let's go back to the fund of the Princeton University Museum and look at this dagger, made in France in 1840. Gilded bronze was used to decorate it. Dagger length 38.7 cm. in scabbard, blade - 36.1 cm, crosshair width 9.5 cm, blade 3.9 cm. Such a dagger is so beautiful and effective that … it is worthy of an Agatha Christie novel, where some collector is stabbed with it.
No less beautiful daggers were made in Toledo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Steel lined with silver and gold was used to make it. Length 8.5 cm, width 4.5 cm, thickness 1.1 cm. Princeton University Museum.
There is also a Japanese dagger in the museum's collection. And … very unusual. That is, its design is quite traditional. The blade is another matter. His blade looks like nothing else. Judging by the design of the handle, this is a kaiken - a dagger for a woman. But a blade with a half-double-edged sharpening of its blade is a thing completely unusual for the Japanese! Blade length 33.0 cm, width 3.6 cm, thickness 2.7 cm. Scabbard: length 25.3 cm, width 4.0 cm, thickness 3.4 cm.
It would be interesting to read about him in more detail, however, apart from information about who exactly gave it to the museum, we could not find anything else about him.
