A Swimmer Drove Off Divers, Then Found a Crusader Sword

A medieval sword that may once have hung at the side of a Crusader knight has come back off the floor of the Mediterranean after some eight centuries, found by chance off the northern Israeli coast. The account was given to the Press Service of Israel by Dr Sara Lantos of the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa.

"These artifacts are very rare and hard to find, because swords were not usually left behind," Lantos said. "Swords were very precious, symbolic personal objects of Crusader knights. They were also very expensive." She added: "This is definitely a European-type sword of a Frankish knight. It may have fallen off a ship or been lost during a battle."

How it came out of the sand

The one-metre sword was spotted the previous year protruding from the seabed near Dor Beach, on the coast south of Haifa, by Shlomi Katzin, a student of Maritime Civilizations who had been swimming there. According to the university, he noticed divers using metal detectors, suspected possible antiquities theft, drove them away and carried on scanning the seafloor himself, which is when he saw the weapon emerging from the sand.

Katzin alerted the university, which contacted the Israel Antiquities Authority. With special permission the sword was lifted carefully to prevent further damage and taken to a conservation laboratory. The Times of Israel reported in February 2026 that this was Katzin's second such find in five years, after a similar sword recovered in the same stretch of coast in 2021.

Why a hospital scanner and not a chisel

Centuries on the seabed had wrapped the blade in a thick crust of marine deposits, so its condition could not be judged from the outside. Rather than strip the concretion away, researchers took the sword for computed tomography imaging at Haifa's Medica Elisha Hospital.

"The CT is a non-invasive, non-destructive method to examine the sword, which was covered with shells and rocks, so it was hard to see the actual shape and condition of the iron underneath," Lantos said, "but the CT gives us a chance to look inside and see the shape and design." The crust cannot simply be removed: any exposure to air would accelerate the decay of the iron beneath it.

The scans placed the weapon in the 12th century and showed it was made for one-handed use, consistent with the swords carried by Crusader knights. Researchers concluded it was not forged locally but brought from Europe by Crusaders who established strongholds along the Levantine coast. The imaging also revealed a fracture in the blade, and showed that only a small portion of the original iron had survived salt water and shifting sand, which is why the sword's original weight cannot be estimated. The Jerusalem Post gave the same reading of the scan in its report of the find.

Why Crusader swords almost never turn up

Only a handful of comparable swords from the Crusader period have been documented in Israel. That scarcity is the point: a sword was an expensive, personal object that its owner did not discard, so the ones that survive tend to be the ones that were lost by accident: overboard, or in the water during a fight. The Crusader presence on this coast ran for roughly two centuries from 1099, according to the Times of Israel's account, and left a chain of fortified harbours along the Levantine shore.

Lantos said the find adds to what is known about maritime anchorages along the coast and about the daily lives of the fighters who used them. "We would like this sword to be exhibited at the University of Haifa's Hecht Museum along with several others that were found," she said. "It can show the lives and the tools used by the knights who were here."

What is still unclear

The account did not give an exact date for the discovery beyond the previous year, and did not say whether the divers Katzin encountered were ever identified or investigated. It did not explain how the sword came to be on the seabed: shipwreck, battle or something else remains open. And because so little of the original iron survives, no maker, workshop or region of manufacture in Europe has been proposed.