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Thursday, 13 August 2015

Medieval Sword Carries Mysterious Inscription

A medieval sword inscribed with a mysterious message is stumping researchers and causing a stir among armchair historians.

The 13th-century weapon was found in the River Witham in Lincolnshire,
in the United Kingdom, in 1825. It now belongs to the British Museum,
but is currently on loan to the British Library, where it's being
displayed as part of an exhibit on the 1215 Magna Carta.

The sword looks fairly ordinary at first glance. Weighing in at 2 lbs.,
10 ounces (1.2 kilograms) and measuring 38 inches (964 millimeters)
long, the weapon is steel, with a double edge and a hilt shaped like a
cross. But on one side of the sword is a mysterious inscription, made by
gold wire that has been inlaid into the steel, which reads,
"+NDXOXCHWDRGHDXORVI+."
What doesthis strange group of letters mean? No one knows for sure, according to the British Library,
which recently posted information about the weapon on its website,
along with a request for readers to help crack the seemingly
incomprehensible code.

Is the message some kind of magical incantation,
meant to empower the weapon's owner with mystical abilities during
battle? Perhaps the inscription is a religious blessing, or maybe it's
just the complicated signature of whoever forged the weapon. Those who
read the British Library's blog post put these and many other theories
forward regarding the sword's enigmatic message.

Dozens of commenters chimed in to help solve the mystery. And luckily,
one of those commenters had a lot of insight into the history of
inscribed swords in Europe. Marc van Hasselt, a graduate student of
medieval studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands,