A team of archaeologists has made a rare find in Swabia : during excavations in Nördlingen , they have indeed discovered a bronze sword that is more than 3000 years old :

This is so well preserved “that it almost still glows”. It is an octagonal sword with an octagonal hilt made entirely of bronze . According to a first classification, the ancient weapon dates back to the end of the 14th century BC and therefore to the Middle Bronze Age .

The 3,000-year-old sword once lay in a tomb:

Finds of swords from this era are said to be rare and come from burial mounds deliberately opened in the 19th century or from alleged individual sacrificial finds. The now discovered sword came from a tomb stocked with rich bronze objects. A man, a woman and a young man were buried there. It is still not clear what relationship people may have had with each other. The sword and the burial still need to be examined, said Conservator General Mathias Pfeil , head of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation. ” But we can already say: the state of conservation is exceptional!”.