Ancient Thracian Dagger found in Bulgaria

[Laurie W]

The two Machieras shown were photos the customer found elsewhere. They are not in his possession. The one he does have was bought about three years ago.

Here is the reproduction we made of it. This is the customer's photo and he has been using it (why the blades is discolored near the tip). As I mentioned, the blade's engraved decoration was adapted from the one with the scabbard. The same motif was used on the Rhomphaia.

Incidentally, have you had any contact with John's family? I'm curious to hear if they have any thoughts about publishing his collection.

Best,
Andrew

You would hope that a such a huge, collection would catch the eye of a museum curator. One time he posted some photos of his collection in his AFST Yahoo group site. The variety and periods of his pieces were astounding. There was not a room that did not have something in it and he joked about not worrying if some one broke into his bedroom as he had plenty of swords to grab and fight them off with.

As a member of John Piscopo's "AFST@yahoogroups", I received an email concerning Mr. Piscopo's collection from a Rich Nable from "Pricelespast.com". Apparently Mr. Piscopo's daughter is having the collection sold off by an individual (name not mentioned) This seller has asked Rich Nable (of www.pricelespast.com)

"to forward him a list of anyone interested in possibly purchasing any remaining items."

From what Mr. Nable says, this seller has a CD of all items available on it and will mail a copy to interested parties. However Mr. Nable has no idea what is left and cannot answer any questions. He just merely agreed to forward email addresses of interested parties.

I have sent a request because the CD would be a wealth of reference material. "If money grew on trees" is all I can say.

Because of what we do and research, of course your eye is alway catching any odd old weaponry in second hand stores, yard sales and flea markets. In Quartzsite Arizona there is a huge "Rock and Gem" show where vendors from all over come to sell anything you can think of. And not just "rocks" either.
Antiques of all kinds, "brick a brac", crafts, Americana, and anything else. Including ethnic weaponry. In the past, there have been several African vendors setting up with allo sorts of items and sometimes some tribal weapons. Lately the Chinese have been setting up selling "old Chinese heirlooms", including coin swords and occasionally other old edged weaponry.

We would go there to see what to see and pick up supplies from vendors who look around for stuff we can use in our shop. (leather, thread for the leather machines, files, blacksmithing equipment et.c) Stuff that is getting harder to find anymore. Alot of "antiques" that still have alot of life in them and perfectly operational with a little TLC. Better they are used than thrown away.

Alot of edged weaponry from many historical periods crops up there. Most of it new but old as well. Also fakes and some pretty good ones at that. In some cases, passed off as something else because the vendor had no idea what they had. But have seen some tampered pieces too. So, like you say, it's "Caveat Emptor".

[Laurie W]

By the way, I just checked the AFST Group site (have not been there since Mr. Piscopo died) and found the Rhomphaia photo folder is now gone. This showed two different ones he had. The longest one was 65 inches long overall. The 45 inch long blade ended at a fingerstop which a 20 inch long rounded bare shank started. The last four inches was formed for two piece rivetted "grip". This was the one we replicated and can be found on MyArmoury website.

The other was shorter and was 35 inches overall.

Fortunately, I did save his photos when they were first posted in the AFST "photo" folder. If it's ok. I would like to post them here to pass along? Or create a new thread.

[Emanuel]

Greetings, back from my visit to Romania!
I've seen the collection of the Military Museum in Bucharest, and they had some examples of these daggers -called sica, also knows as falx. Two of them are remarkably similar to the first machaira posted by Laurie, and also similar to the one that was on ebay. These were identified as Dacian, of course, and dating from around the 2nd century bce I believe. The third blade is dagger-sized, while the other two are larger. I think it also has a star close to the fullers along the spine.

Emanuel

[Laurie W]

The Dacians were much later than the Thracians and were in a different area. However the weapons of the latter would no doubt be influenced by former's legendary effectiveness. The Romans certainly found this out during the Dacian Wars.

The Falx is not a Rhomphaia, however. But you can see the similar correlation between the Sica and Macheria. The Falx was designed differently from the earlier Rhomphaia to fit the Dacians' needs in combat. There is not as much ironwork in the Falx as there was with the Rhomphaia, for one. As for tactics, they were probably similar to the Rhomphaia though.

Nice photos.