In her PhD dissertation ‘Crucible Steel in Central Asia: Production, Use, and Origin‘ presented at the University of London (available at Academia.edu), Anna Marie Feuerbach stated that “The earliest crucible steel blade is dated to the 1st century AD and was reported by Hadfield as composed of high-carbon steel with spheroidal cementite (Marshall, 1951, 536). This sword was not complete but was double-edged and said by Marshall to be of the same type found on the stone statue at Mathura of King Kanishka, a Kushan king (Marshall, 1951,545). It was during the first century that the Persians ruled Taxila (Dani, 1986,66-71). The second two crucible steel objects are a sword and an adze dated to the 5th century AD, when the White Huns ruled Taxila (Dani, 1986,75). Hadfield reported that two swords and adze were made of high-carbon steel with virtually no non-metallic inclusions or slag (Marshall, 1951,536), thus likely to be crucible steel.”
John M. Rosenfeld in his ‘Dynastic Arts of the Kushans‘ published in 1967 described King Kanishka’s sword in much detail: “…the great swords wielded by the Kushans were of Central and West Asian origin. The largest is the one carried by Kanishka in his Mathura portrait, nearly forty inches high in the statue, with a hilt in the shape of a bird neck and head. This sword is given much the same kind of symbolic prominence as those of the Sasanian Emperor Vaharam II, the bronze Sasanian statue of a prince, and the unidentified officer from Hatra, and must have been of basically the same design. These swords were held to the body primarily by a loose strap worn either over the shoulder or around the hip, but worn so loosely that the scabbard was often held by one hand of the wearer (see Ingholt nos. 63, 64). The strap passed through a separate notched plate of jade, gilt bronze, or the like, which was set into the scabbard. Otto Maenchen-Helfen has shown that this unusual scabbard slide is found in Sarmatian graves in the Volga region, that some are shown on Sasanian silver salvers and that others, of the late Chou and Han periods, have been found in China. They are commonly reproduced in the Kushan dynastic arts, most clearly in the Kanishka portrait, the Toronoto stair riser, in several of the Mathura Surya images, and in the coins of the later kings. According to Maenchen-Helfen, this scabbard slide probably originated among the nomads of Central Asia and was carried to the three directions by such nations as the Ytieh-chih. For the Kushans, it was part of the heritage of their nomadic origins; its appearance among the Arab aristocracy of Hatra, as elsewhere in West Asia, was probably the result of Parthian influence.”
Merv/ Khorasan steelmaking site that produced swords used by Kyiv Rus >
“Royal Scythia, Greece, Kyiv Rus” book has a little-known facts about Scythian and Sarmatian origins.
