RARE PRESTIGE SWORD OF THE ANCIENT BRONZE NEAR EASTERN LURISTAN CULTURE *LUR102

Product Description

This extremely RARE ancient bronze long sword is from the Ancient Near Eastern / Luristan Bronze Age Culture.  This is the one of the most elaborately designed known types of ancient bronze Luristan swords!  The methods used to make a sword of this type would have been extremely difficult in ancient times making this one of the most expensive and coveted styles of the Ancient Near East.  The blade is a combination of casting and hammering leaving an extremely thin cross-section that rarely survives the ravages of time.  Often, just the heavy cast handle of this type, is found but almost never does the thin blade survive as this one has.  Take note that compared to our asking price, in 2012 Christies of London sold an identical style of this sword for $16,000 USD and that was for a piece that had an artificially composited handle from another dagger. 

This is THE FINEST AND ONLY COMPLETE AND ORIGINAL specimen of this type of Luristan ancient sword we have ever seen and it is the only example we will ever offer.  In ancient times, bronze swords were the most prized and expensive weapon of and very few soldiers owned or carried them because of their extreme cost in those days.  Swords were reserved for only the most noble, highest rank and wealthiest warriors. 

It is certain that this sword would have been once owned and carried by an elite warrior or nobleman of great wealth.  Due to its size, it would have most likely been a prestige weapon of a high-ranking commanding officer or royal soldier of extreme wealth and status.  With its hard, hammer forging to its razor thin blade, this personal weapon would have been SUPERIOR to EVERYTHING encountered on the battlefield with respect to bronze bladed weapons.  In extreme close quarters, the heavy pommel would have been deadly effective as a striking weapon against an enemy soldier.

This INVESTMENT CLASS ancient bronze sword is INTACT with a full blade and tip and a complete ORIGINAL (NOT COMPOSITED FROM ANOTHER WEAPON AS MOST ARE IN THE MODERN MARKET) handle in solid bronze.  The patina is incredible and this is a very well-balanced weapon.  Specimens like this are becoming EXTREMELY rare in today's market.  There is no other ancient sword of the Luristan Bronzes that would have been made like this. 

This piece has been professionally cleaned and conserved in our lab, being treated with a special sealer developed and formulated by us specifically for ancient metal preservation.  The patina shows beautiful traits only found in authentic ancient weapons such as a layered mineralized patina with encrustations.  No active bronze disease.   Bronze disease can be a problem in bronze artifacts and untreated, it can literally eat away an artifact over a short time of a matter of years and turn the piece to powder.  

WARNING:  There is an increasing number of fake Near Eastern (Luristan) bronze weapons on the market.  As fine quality intact, original specimens become more scarce and techniques have become more sophisticated to fake these weapons.  We have personally handled numerous extremely well-done fakes with extremely convincing patinas.  The degree to which the fakers have been able to replicate patina to disguise their work requires an expert examination by highly experienced individuals.  It is common to find very reasonably priced weapons that are made up of part original and part modern components or wholly modern pieces displaying elaborate artificial patinas.  All purchases should include from the dealer a written guarantee of authenticity with unconditional and lifetime return policies regarding such guarantee. 

With origins dating back to prehistory, the empire of ancient Iran was one of the world's first superpower civilizations by the time it had taken form in the second millennium B.C..  The various cultures that can be included in the former ancient Iranian Empire stretched across an enormous geographical region extending beyond what is called the Iranian Plateau.  To gain insight as to just how large this area was, the Iranian Plateau alone, includes Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan and comprises approximately nearly 4 million square kilometers (almost 1.5 million square miles).  The area of ancient Iran included not only the massive Iranian plateau made up of the tribes of the Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians, but also included groups as far west as the Scythians (an eastern Scythian tribe existed in parallel in Central Asia), Sarmartians, Cimmerians and Alans populating the steppes north of the Black Sea.  To the eastern boundary of the empire, the Saka tribes dominated, spreading as far as Xinjiang, China.  From a very early period, the ancient Iranian peoples have been historically documented to exist in two separate continuums - a western civilization (Persia) and an eastern civilization (Scythia).

The beginnings of ancient Iran trace back to an influx into the Iranian cultural region of bands of horse-mounted steppe nomads from Central Asia, speaking Indo-European languages.  Some settled in eastern Iran but other groups migrated deeper to the west settling in the Zagros Mountains.  These first people descended from the proto-Iranians, originating from the Central Asian Bronze age culture of what is called the Bactria-Margiana Complex (aka Oxus Civilization), dated 2200-1700 B.C..

This historical achievements  and the breadth of diverse cultures included of this once great empire are too vast to adequately credit in this brief synopsis.  The Islamic conquest of Persia in the middle of the 7th century A.D. and the collapse of the Sassanid Empire marked the end of once geographically expansive and culturally diverse ancient superpower.

The term LURISTAN references artifacts made by a society of semi-nomadic people that once lived in the mountainous region of Northwest Iran.  Little is known of this ancient culture but the most impressive traces are that of the bronze artifacts they left behind that can be found in parts of present-day Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan.  These include highly decorative equipment for their horses, ceremonial containers and numerous weapons ranging from simple utilitarian pieces on up to elaborate masterpieces of warfare. 

It is theorized that the Luristan bronzes were crafted by the earliest existence of the Median empire but this has never been proven as written records of the Medes have not survived.  The Medes were Indo-Iranian people originally from central Asia who settled in Northwest Iran in the 9th century BC and later defeated the Assyrian empire in 614 BC.  Their success is short-lived and their empire which once stretched from central Iran to the Persian Gulf and Anatolia was overrun in 550 BC by the Persians.