DID THE LEGENDARY SWORD Excalibur REALLY EXIST?

“The one who can draw the magic sword from the stone will be the next king of England.” This prophecy would certainly have motivated the country’s ambitious knights and soldiers at the time. In the end, however, legend only says Arthur was able to draw Excalibur from the stone. The story has been part of English folklore ever since Sir Thomas Malory penned his work Le Morte d'arthur around 1470. However researchers today dispute whether King Arthur even existed. Someone named Arthur may have lived in the distant past. If so, he was probably a military leader fighting marauding invaders in the early centuries of the Common Era, but sources are scarce for that period of British history. One candidate considered a possible inspiration for the figure of Arthur is the Roman military leader Lucius Artorius Castus, who commanded a cavalry unit with ethnic roots in Iran. After his death, descendants could have kept the commander’s legacy alive, combining it with Iranian myths about magical swords. The Romans withdrew from Britain in 410, leaving a power vacuum that the invading Anglo-saxons had willingly filled. A possible connection: The Welsh fought off successive incursions mounted by the Anglo-saxons, and in the late sixth century the Saxons had captured a strategic fortress in modern Gloucestershire. When the Welsh sought to retake it, three of their kings were killed in the fighting. Since Arthur is the Welsh version of the Roman name Artorius and the Arthurian tales originate with Welsh writers, the growing popularity of the name during the late sixth century may have been inspired by bravery that was reminiscent of the storied Roman hero Artorius. And indeed, historians speculate that the legend took on new life during that period. A related theory is that a mistaken translation led to the legend of the sword Excalibur. “Ex saxone” (“from a Saxon”) may have been confused with “ex saxo” (“from a stone”), and in fact there is an old legend from Jutland (i.e., continental Denmark) in which a Saxon warrior loses his sword to an English king. The sword was probably made from the metal ore of a meteorite, which according to myth would’ve conferred a power that rendered its bearer invincible. And thus a new legend was born.