Rare Ancient Roman Swords From 1,900 Years Ago Found in Desert Cave

A cache of ancient weapons from the Roman period has been discovered hidden in a remote cave in Israel.

The cache includes four exceptionally well-preserved Roman swords from 1,900 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced on Wednesday. It also contains a shafted weapon known as a pilum—a type of javelin used by the Roman army and generally measuring around 6 feet in length.

"Finding a single sword is rare—so four? It's a dream! We rubbed our eyes to believe it," IAA researchers said in a statement.

The cave in which archaeologists found the weapons is located in the En Gedi Nature Reserve, which covers an area just to the west of the Dead Sea. The cave is small and nestled within a set of isolated and inaccessible cliffs, the antiquities authority said.

The En Gedi reserve forms part of the Judean Desert, which lies east of Jerusalem and descends to the Dead Sea. The desert is spread across parts of the West Bank and Israel.

Eitan Klein, one of the directors of the IAA's Judean Desert Survey Project, told Newsweek: "The assemblage of weapons discovered in this isolated cave is rare and special both in terms of its state of preservation and the important scientific value that can be learned from it.

"The swords were found with the blades inside wooden scabbards, the wooden handles are kept in excellent condition and include additional parts of leather, wood, ropes and metal."

Researchers said the weapons might have been hidden in the cave by Jewish rebels, who seized them from the Roman army as booty.

"This is a dramatic and exciting discovery, touching on a specific moment in time," IAA Director Eli Escusido said in the statement. "The dry climatic conditions pertaining in the Judean Desert enable the preservation of artifacts that do not survive in other parts of the country. This is a unique time capsule."

The weapons were found when two researchers and an IAA photographer visited the cave to study a stalactite featuring an ancient Hebrew inscription.

During this visit, one of the experts, Asaf Gayer with the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Ariel University, spotted the pilum in a deep, narrow crevice on the cave's upper level.

Gayer and his colleague, geologist Boaz Langford of the Institute of Earth Sciences and the Cave Research Center at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, reported the discovery to the IAA.

Gayer, Langford and the IAA's Judean Desert Survey Project team returned to the cave to carry out further investigations of all of its crevices. During this work, they found the four Roman swords in an almost inaccessible crevice on the upper level.

Three of the swords have blades around 24 to 26 inches in length, with researchers identifying them as Roman spatha swords. The remaining sword is somewhat shorter, with a blade about 18 inches long.

"The hiding of the swords and the pilum in deep cracks in the isolated cave north of En Gedi hints that the weapons were taken as booty from Roman soldiers or from the battlefield, and purposely hidden by the Judean rebels for reuse," Klein said in the IAA statement.

"Obviously, the rebels did not want to be caught by the Roman authorities carrying these weapons," Klein added.

The team carefully removed them from the crevice and transferred them to the IAA's climate-controlled laboratories for conservation. An initial examination found that they were standard swords used by Roman soldiers stationed in the ancient territory of Judea.

Following the discovery, archaeologists conducted a thorough excavation at the cave, unearthing other artifacts dated to around 6,000 years ago, as well as the Roman period around 2,000 years ago.

At the entrance to the cave, archaeologists found a bronze coin from the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in Judea—a rebellion of Jewish people against Roman rule in A.D. 132 to 135.

Researchers said the findings shed new light on how the Jewish population exploited the desert caves.

"We are once again presented with thrilling findings from the Judean Desert that offer a glimpse into the daily lives of our ancestors who resided in this area about 2,000 years ago," Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu, the Israeli minister of heritage, said in a statement.

Further studies of the cave and the weapons are now being carried out.

"We are just beginning the research on the cave and the weapon cache discovered in it, aiming to try to find out who owned the swords, and where, when and by whom they were manufactured," Klein said.

"We will try to pinpoint the historical event that led to the caching of these weapons in the cave and determine whether it was at the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt."

Update 09/13/23, 12:15 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional comments from Eitan Klein.