Gold sword found in Scythian grave

"An early grave of a Scythian warrior buried with a golden sword has been unearthed in the Mount Mamai cemetery near the village Velyka Znamyanka in Zaporizhia Oblast, central Ukraine."

The grave was one of two recently discovered. Both graves had been looted, one to a great degree, but the other "still contained the skeletal remains of a young man about 18-20 years old. He was interred with a rare large grey clay amphorae, fittings from a horse’s bridle, an iron battle axe, bronze and bone arrows and the star of the funerary show: an akinakes (a Scythian dagger or short sword) with a gold plated scabbard, a grip with a leaf motif and a cross-guard with granulation details.

"The Mount Mamai burial grounds, the largest barrow cemetery in the region and one of the largest in Europe, has been excavated for 32 years, a long-term salvage operation to recover as much archaeological material as possible before the site is destroyed by erosion from the construction of the Khakhovka Reservoir. Already a quarter mile of the shore has fallen into the lake in just three decades, so archaeologists are fighting a battle against time. Artifacts and remains dating as far back as the Neolithic era through the Middle Ages have been unearthed there. Of the 700 burials thus far excavated, around 400 are Scythian.

"The objects have been cleaned and will be conserved at the Museum of Local History in Kamianets-Dniprovsky."

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/56842

Velyka Znamyanka is the sixth largest village in Ukraine, with a population of almost 9,000.