The Mystery Dagger of the Arizona Historical Society
Hi tumblr. Maybe you can help me out with something.
I first saw the dagger while shadowing the curators of the Arizona History Museum. It’s located in the vault of the museum– once the vault of a bank on whose foundations the museum now stands– alongside a cabinet of antique guns, a large quantity of worked silver, and various other objects. The dagger had been sitting atop a filing cabinet, inconspicuous yet conspicuously out of place. Throughout the day, the curators had shown me a number of objects in the museum’s possession that had “Nothing to do with Arizona”, and this dagger, alongside the Hapsburg silver on the museum floor and native-made fishing spears from the Pacific Northwest, numbered among them.
“What’s up with that dagger?” I asked, pointing it out. One of the curators took it down from the cabinet and unsheathed it. The blade made a hellish screech as it rasped free.
“Huh. I don’t actually know,” said the other curator. And so the mystery began.
The dagger, as it turned out, had no provenance. That is to say, there’s no record of where it came from. It lacked an item tag, so there was no way tell who had donated it, where it had come from, or when it had entered the museum’s collection. (I later searched the museum’s artifact catalog, and the artifact doesn’t appear to come up in searches for “dagger” or “knife”. Many of the artifacts have no publicly available images, but the curators tell me that the artifact is not in the catalog.) I joked with several friends that the dagger must be cursed, and that I’m probably about to become an H. P. Lovecraft protagonist if I keep doing what I’m doing. But as we left that vault, all I could think was:
“This needs to go on the blog.”
I really wish I could tell you more about this thing. I’ve cross-referenced similar artifacts in the catalogs of the British Museum, the Met, and the Digital Repository of the Museums of India. The most similar artifacts have been 19th century Turkish, Indian, and Arabian blades. In particular, the flared, hammer-shaped pommel seems to be more common in Persian and Ottoman daggers. (Mughal daggers seem to more often have knob- or horse head-shaped pommels.) It may be a khanjar or a jambiya, or it may be some kind of forgery. The Middle East and North Africa isn’t my area of expertise, but I’m hoping that by putting this out there, I may be able to get some new leads if people recognize this thing. I’ve put all my notes on the dagger below.
What do you all think?
Notes:
-Object measures about 44 cm from pommel to tip of the bird’s neck.
- Sheath has split where it would come in contact with the blade of the dagger. There is some slight staining on the fabric.
- Blade itself is about 24 cm long with a recurve shape. A ridge runs down both sides of the blade’s flat.
- Blade appears to be sharpened on both edges.
- Blade displays slight nicks and corrosion
- elaborate floral motif on hilt and scabbard
-Scabbard cloth may have originally been red but has faded to a dirty orange over time
- scabbard features small loop, possibly to secure dagger onto a belt
-long-billed bird’s head ornament on the tip of the scabbard. This design appears to be unique and has not appeared in any of the museum daggers I’ve seen. Species of bird is unknown.
-Parts of the crossguard are decorated with some kind of yellow metal. Gold? Brass? I didn’t have a way to check at the time.
Similar objects:
Jade-handled dagger and cover with silver ornament, origin unknown. Dated c. 19th century. Located at Indian Museum, Kolkata. https://museumsofindia.gov.in/repository/record/im_kol-R-14700-16720
Iron dagger with bone and mother-of-pearl hilt from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Date unknown. Located at Indian Museum, Kolkata.
Dagger and sheath set made of steel, copper, gold, bloodstone and ruby. Culture of origin listed as “Persian or Turkish, Ottoman”. Dated 18th-19th century. Located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Dagger (Jambiya) with sheath and belt. Materials: steel, silver, wood, leather, iron. Culture of origin listed as “Arabian”. Dated 19th century. Located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Dagger (Jambiya) with sheath. Materials: steel, wood, silver, brass, gold, niello (a black compound of sulfur and copper, lead, or silver used to infill engraved metal). Culture of origin listed as “Moroccan”. Dated 19th century. Located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Steel, rock crystal, and gold ceremonial dagger. Catalog description reads as follows: “Although intended for ceremonial use, this dagger features discretely carved talismanic inscriptions of the kind found on arms and armor that were designed for battle. The hilt includes gold inscriptions that call upon ‘Ali and Allah.”. Culture of origin listed as “Indian”. Dated 19th century. Located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Note: All four Met daggers originate in are credited to the “Bequest of George C. Stone, 1935”. Might be worth following up on?
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some brief advice for characters with small scars from a head injury (from my specific experience) since i do see people give these types of scars to characters sometimes
mine is like this for reference:
specific info:
i didn't receive in-hospital treatment for it even though i lost consciousness
i was kicked by a horse, the metal horseshoe is what did it
it was a long time ago (over a decade now)
it doesn't effect me much day to day, it is always visible but it has become less prominent over time. certain expressions (anything eyebrow raising especially) make it very obvious.
it is physically raised and lacks pigment.
sensation wise, it used to itch but i haven't felt that for awhile now. if i pay attention when touching it, there's a slight difference in temperature from the rest of my skin. if i scrape it (even just lightly, like scratching with a fingernail) it feels like its bleeding even when its not.
if i accidentally hit it (i dont like doorways), it is extremely painful, it burns, my vision flashes white and i see stars, and it feels like its bleeding all over again of course. it feels like the irl equivalent of being stunned by an electric arrow. if your character has a scar like this, having them get hit on it in a fight is a good way to make them go down for a bit. the sensation also lingers for a decent amount of time afterwards, depending on how hard the hit was. the lingering feels like a heavy pulsing/throbbing, similar to a strong headache but localized on the scar. personally, it feels like even minor impacts can have a really strong effect still as long as its a pretty direct hit.
so yeah just my personal experience having a scar like this! i like seeing characters with similar scars but it often feels like it was just a cosmetic choice to show that they're tough. it's not something that is super high-impact for me, but it still has its effects, and when you aggravate them you can't really focus on anything else until it goes away.
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"Durge came back different", "Durge didn't really come back", "the person who Durge originally was is dead" are all good takes, but what if.
If Durge came back exactly as they were? The brain damage, additional trauma and memory loss are the big altering factors, but underneath that it's still them.
They didn't change drastically, their former self is not dead.
How about one single fragile mortal soul still keeping a hold on itself, how about Durge who was never allowed anything for themselves still retaining them.
How about Durge who has lost everything: power, memories, purpose, sense of self, still being themselves, despite it all.
How about not even Orin's daggers, tadpole and Bhaal combined being able to rob them of their core? How about all of that just revealed who Durge has always been underneath all those expectations Father dearest put on them?
How about: "After all this time, it's still you."
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