Crusader sword from the 12th century discovered off the coast of Haifa, Israel. Yoav Bornstein, University of Haifa

A centuries-old sword from the time of the Crusades was discovered by a student swimming off the coast of Haifa, Israel, the University of Haifa revealed on Monday.

Shlomi Katsin, a student in the university's Department of Maritime Civilizations, was swimming off Dor Beach when he saw a group of divers with metal detectors, the school said. Katsin feared the divers were antiquities thieves and was able to chase them out of the area. Then, he saw the sword protruding from the seafloor, the university said. The discovery was entirely "by chance," according to the news release.

Katsin reached out to Department of Maritime Civilizations professor Debi Tsveikal to report the find. Tsveikal contacted the Israel Antiquities Authority. The university said the authority "granted special permission to remove the sword from the water in order to preserve it and prevent damage."

The three-foot-long blade was recovered and brought to a conservation laboratory at the university's Leon Recanati Institute of Maritime Studies. Then it was taken to Medica Elisha Hospital in Haifa, where a CT scan allowed researchers to learn more details about the blade without damaging it. Photos show the sword covered in seashells and other marine sediment.

The scan showed that the sword was made to be held in one hand and likely belonged to a Crusader warrior from Europe. There was a fracture in the sword blade, and most of the iron that the weapon had originally been made from had been eaten away by "the ravages of time and the sea," the university said.

Dr. Sarah Lantos, a professor at the Department of Maritime Civilizations, said that the discovery of the sword is rare and gives researchers "a unique opportunity to learn about the lives" of European knights in Israel.

Tsveikal, the professor who Katsin reported his find to, said there are only a few known blades that date back to the Crusades in Israel.

"This discovery contributes greatly to our understanding of the use of maritime anchorages and the lives of warriors during this period," she said.

The Crusades took place between 1095 and 1291, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They were a series of military campaigns fought by Christian knights to take areas along the Mediterranean from Muslim control. The battles took place in modern-day Israel, Turkey, Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. The Crusaders built fortified castles to protect their new territories, and the two sides traded control of those territories over the centuries, until the era ended in 1291.

In 2021, an amateur diver found a large sword dating back to the Crusades at the bottom of Mediterranean Sea off Israel.

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