Diver discovers 900-year-old sword dating to the Crusades

Shlomi Katzin attached a GoPro camera to his forehead, slipped on his diving fins and jumped into the waters off the Carmel coast of Israel, eager to go exploring.

On the sandy floor of the Mediterranean Sea, he found a sword. Archaeologists would later determine that it was about 900 years old. It weighed 4 pounds, measured about 4 feet long and originated from the Third Crusade, experts said.

"Oh yes, he was surprised and happy," said Jacob Sharvit, the director of the marine archaeology unit at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Katzin said he would give the sword to Sharvit's agency, but he wanted one thing: a photo with the shell-encrusted weapon.

The recent discovery was welcomed in a country that takes immense pride in its history and has a law requiring that any artifacts found must be returned to the nation.

The sword was among several artifacts discovered by Katzin, who declined to be interviewed because he said he did not want the discovery to be about him. He also found stone anchors and pottery fragments that date back hundreds of years. But nothing was more impressive than the sword, which Sharvit described as "extremely rare."

All of the items were found in the same 1,000-square-foot site. The authority has been aware of the location since June, after a storm shifted the sand. Still, finding artifacts remains elusive because of the movement of the sand.

The water off the Carmel coast remains the same temperature year-round, which helped preserve the iron in the sword. Because the iron was oxidized, shells and other marine organisms stuck onto it like glue, Sharvit said. The discovery of ancient artifacts has increased as diving has grown in popularity in Israel, he said.

In the Second Crusade, the Muslim commanders defeated Western crusaders at Damascus, said Jonathan Phillips, a professor of the history of the Crusades at Royal Holloway, University of London.

During the Third Crusade, King Philip Augustus of France, King Richard I (also known as Richard the Lionheart of England), and the holy Roman emperor, Frederick I (also known as Frederick Barbarossa), set out to retake Jerusalem. Saladin, the ruler of an area covering modern Egypt, Syria and Iraq, had conquered it in 1187, said Dr. John Cotts, a professor of medieval history at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash.

At the time, Pope Gregory VIII tried to inspire Western Christians through "great emotional language" to retake Jerusalem from Muslims, but ultimately the Muslim army kept control of the city, Cotts said.

The sword would have been expensive to make at the time and viewed as a status symbol, Phillips said. It makes sense that it was found in the sea, he said, because many battles were waged near beaches, where Christian soldiers landed and were sometimes attacked by Muslim forces.