As I mentioned in the off topic forum, I went and saw an exhibit on the life and legacy of Alexander the Great, while I was there, one very curious artefact that was displayed, was a sword with a gold plated hilt, I cannot remember exactly which culture it was from, but it belonged to one of Alexanders enemies, I remember that much at least.

And one very interesting thing about it was that along the middle of what was left of the blade (only about the bottom 1/2-1/3 was still left, and was fairly rusty) was a series of holes.

I could tell with a fair degree of certainty that the holes were not just due to rusting, because the holes were evenly shaped, and spaced, they were sort of shaped like a pill, if memory serves there were at least 3 holes in that part of the blade.

I know in that vidual encyclopedia of swords and daggers there are examples of blades with small prick perforations to reduce weight, bt I had never seen such reletively large holes in a sword, and especially not one from that far back (it was dated around the time of Alexander i.e. 300 and something BC)

just how rare are these swords, really?

I know that some akinakes had lightening piercings or slots in their iron grips, but I have never seen one with holes in the blade. The Greeks were real big on storing war trophies in their temples, perhaps the holes were made so that the sword could be mounted in a conspicuous place? Like this medieval example with 2 nails hammered through the blade. http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...highlight=

I would love to see some pics or even just get a better written description.