Sword with pharaoh’s mark found in Egypt, still shimmering 3,000 years later

It’s a “very striking and a truly remarkable find,” said Elizabeth Frood, an Oxford University Egyptologist who was not involved in the dig, in an email Thursday.

The weapon was uncovered among a cache of ancient Egyptian treasures, dug out of the Tell Al-Abqain ancient fort around 30 miles southeast of Alexandria by archaeologists from Egypt’s antiquities ministry.

According to a statement from the ministry, the fort served as a critical outpost guarding Ancient Egypt’s northwestern frontiers in its New Kingdom era, considered a golden cultural period of the civilization known for its political stability, military might and monumental architecture.

Ramses II, the second-longest ruling pharaoh in Ancient Egypt, reigned from 1279 to 1213 BCE, a period marking the final peak of Egypt’s military power. Ramses was known for his ambitious program of construction and keen military prowess — expanding the borders of Ancient Egypt northward into the present-day Levant. Many scholars believe he was also the pharaoh reigning over Ancient Egypt during the time of Moses, who was described in the Old Testament’s Book of Exodus as leading the enslaved Israelites out.

The fact that the sword was uncovered in a working setting — rather than inside a tomb — makes it unusual, Frood said.

“For an object to bear the cartouches of Rameses II would suggest to me that it belonged to someone of relatively high rank,” she said. “To be able to display such an object, even though it would have been presumably in a scabbard, was a marker of status and prestige.”

The archaeologists also found ovens used for cooking food, an ivory applicator for kohl eyeliner and ceremonial scarab beetles, shedding light on the everyday rites of ancient soldiers during the reign of Ramses II.

Kohl was used by men and women alike to protect their eyes from the bright sun, as well as for keeping away insects, serving both practical and aesthetic functions. Researchers also collected jewelry and makeup accessories, including half a bronze ring and two necklaces.

Aiman Ashmawy, an archaeologist at Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities who was involved in the dig, said in the ministry statement that some of the buildings discovered at the fort were found with the remains of large pots used for storing food, with leftover fish and animal bones inside, suggesting they functioned as a type of canteen. Cylindrical pottery ovens used for cooking were also found.

They were discovered in a row of neatly-organized mud huts that formed military barracks and weapons warehouses, separated by a slender passageway. “It is remarkably well preserved,” Frood said. “You can also imagine this type of architecture and therefore management of daily life being appropriate to the disciplined life required of a military group,” she said, adding that the squared layout is in keeping with state-organized architecture found elsewhere in Egypt.

The fort is the latest in a number of sites to have been excavated along what would have been Ancient Egypt’s western border. In a statement, the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mohamed Ismail Khaled said the military site formed a protective ring used to defend against attacks from Libyan tribes and those known as “sea peoples,” an aggressive group of seafarers who carried out attacks across the eastern Mediterranean but whose precise identity and origin remain a mystery.

“These were defensive units, controlling Egypt’s western border, as well as perhaps being used as bases for military interventions against Libyan groups. These seem to have been an increasing problem in the 19th and 20th dynasties, so the latter part of the New Kingdom,” said Frood. The Ancient Egyptians left behind vivid inscriptions detailing their ferocious battles with the Libyans.

Heba Farouk Mahfouz and Paul Schemm contributed to this report.