Ethiopean Sword

[Bill M]

Originally Posted by Conogre

A comment and a question, even if perhaps a little dumb.
As to the horn hilt, rhino is a possibility, based upon the close-up photo in which the thermometer is seen, as the edge shows a "roughened" area, but in all the hilt appears too translucent to my eye, a tough call with just photographs.

Mike, There is a piece of the hilt broken off near the blade. The hilt does have a translucency to it. I did work to get the backlight to shine through it.

Most of the rhino horn I have seen looks more like wood, but here are some blond-looking rhino horn hilts.

http://www.oriental-arms.com/item.php?id=567
http://www.oriental-arms.com/item.php?id=1710

Originally Posted by Conogre

Keep in mind that rhino and giraffe horn are compacted hair that's completely opaque and not naturally shiny unless carefully buffed and polished.

I recently met with a collector who has an incredible Jambiya with Giraffe hilt. It was slightly translucent and a strange, but beautiful greenish color. He said that someone told him that the Giraffe horn is too fibrous to make good hilts and that the hilt was made from a Giraffe hoof. I had never seen one before.

Most of the rhino horn I have seen looked very much like wood, but there are five different kinds of rhino alive today. Maybe one has this kind of horn???

http://www.priweb.org/ed/ICTHOL/ICTH...papers/42.html

"The most interesting fact about the rhino horns is that it is made of hair. Most people associate hair with soft furry substance found on ones head. But the rhino horns were extremely hard and sharp. The horns of cows are hollow with a bone core, but rhino horns are made of fused, fibrous constructions that are solid all the way through. The fibers are hairs that are attached to the nose by skin supported by a raised, roughened area on the skull."

Originally Posted by Conogre

As to the question, is this still called a gurade, based upon the hilt, even though it has a perfectly straight blade?

At any rate, it's a completely beautiful sword, and while I'm not usually impressed by "blood stains" and the like, my own preferences are to a sharpened blade, particularly in military pieces, unless it was done with a Dremmel or on a garage grinder with a heavy hand.
Mike

The sharpening is OK with me.

[Conogre]

Hi Bill;
I too have seen blond colored rhino horn, and, as you mentioned, it is very similar to wood in its graininess and likewise in its being opaque, with no member of the rhino family having translucent horns.
Another way to tell is to moisten it...if it's rhino horn it will expand, making the hairs individually apparent and giving it a slightly "sticky" feel, as in very fine velcro, one of the prime reasons it was (and still is, thus the poaching problem) prized for hilt material, as opposed to regular horn, which will become slippery.
While the horns of giraffe are less compacted than rhinocerous, they are still used rarely to occasionally, very fortunate for giraffes, while the hoofs of many of the large quadrapeds are very similar to the material found in their horns and could also be easily used for hilting/ scabbard sheating purposes, although they are more commonly used, of course, as "Jello".
Mike

[Bill M]

Originally Posted by Conogre

Hi Bill;
I too have seen blond colored rhino horn, and, as you mentioned, it is very similar to wood in its graininess and likewise in its being opaque, with no member of the rhino family having translucent horns.
Another way to tell is to moisten it...if it's rhino horn it will expand, making the hairs individually apparent and giving it a slightly "sticky" feel, as in very fine velcro, one of the prime reasons it was (and still is, thus the poaching problem) prized for hilt material, as opposed to regular horn, which will become slippery.
While the horns of giraffe are less compacted than rhinocerous, they are still used rarely to occasionally, very fortunate for giraffes, while the hoofs of many of the large quadrapeds are very similar to the material found in their horns and could also be easily used for hilting/ scabbard sheating purposes, although they are more commonly used, of course, as "Jello".
Mike

Mike,

I tried your moistening suggestion and it does feel 'sticky' and not slippery. But with a strong light behind it, it IS translucent.

The blade and scabbard are much better than the average Ethiopean sword and a quailty hilt would be in order.

IF this is not rhino, what could it be?

A friend suggested it might be cow horn.

Discussion on this Forum earlier about hilt possibilities.

http://www.vikingsword.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002288.html


"Jello?" This is making me hungry. Do they make a rhino or giraffe flavored Jello? On second thought, I think that I'll pass.

[Mark]

I have been trying to think of which big, horned critters are found in Ethiopia, and actually there are not many. I do not believe that there are any native species of rhino, for instance. Of course, it might be imported. Is it possible that oils from handling impregnated the handle and made it more translucent?

Cow horn is not so outlandish and idea, actually, as there tons of them in Ethiopia, and some have enormous horns. Though generally hollow, the tip would be solid, and big horns would have sizable solid parts.

[Conogre]

I would tend to agree that this sword (IS it a gurade? ) would be deserving of a high quality hilt and that rhinocerous horn would certainly be in order and not at all unusual, so that's not a problem at all.
I also noticed that the only place that it appears slightly translucent is at the pommel end, which is a seperate piece that appears to be cut cross-grain from the rest of the hilt and even here only at the edges, so it's possible that it was cut from a piece of the horn that had slightly less mass (or possibly from a younger, immature animal whose horn was only partially developed) than the rest for wideness.
When dealing with animal by-products in weaponry, one thing that we tend to forget is that no two are ever exactly alike due to differences in individual animals so a certain amount of variation is not only to be expected, but is actually inevitable.
As to the likelihood of the hilt coming from a local animal, I'd like to interject here that if a material is highly valued enough, no distance is too great or cost too extreme for the very rich or royalty, and since rhinocerous horn is a commonly used material in Islamic weaponry of exceptional quality, it's also a good example as rhinocerous occur nowhere in what is commonly thought of as Islamic territory, with the possible exception of Borneo, and that's just since the acceptance of Indonesia as a unified nation.
Another extremely popular material for hilting, of course, is elephant ivory, this having been so since the days of the earliest cave paintings, not to mention look at the amount of Mammoth ivory that shows up as sword and knife hilts and the regions in which these weapons frequently appear.
While the jury is still out, it appears more and more likely that the extinction of the Wooly Mammoth was indeed largely brought about by overhunting by humans, with the entire tusk probably used as tent supports.
Mike

[spiral]

Hi Guys,

Nice sword Bill!

Rhino horn sometimes has a translucent outer layer, at least.

Heres a solid, 26 inch long, 2part {eg. The handle & shaft} Georgian {As in pre Victorean.} Rhino horn riding crop, which shows the partial translucent outer layer in the handle.{from a small diameter tusk.The tusk center is the other lighter patch.}

When carried in bright sunlight it glows like a bulb in the translucent area !

The colour varies from yellow to green brown on the handle & the shaft is green brown without translucency.


Spiral

[Bill M]

Thanks Spiral!

Here are some more pictures showing a damaged place. Unfortunately I don't have the chip.