Old All Steel African Spear For Comment

[Lew]

Hi Guys

This just arrived today. A very nice all steel spear about 42" in length complete with a leather scabbard for the blade. It seems to be a thick hollow tube construction with some type of bead that rolls around inside the shaft? It seems quite old maybe 19th century. Let me know what and where you think it came from.

Lew

[tom hyle]

Wow! This is very similar to a spear I think is Tuarek (Berbese)? That Conogre has now. No sheath though! Very interesting. Conogre's one is a hollow shaft extending from the blade until a few inches before the flattened butt, where the tube ends, in a fairly hidden joint where it butts up to the base of the socket of the butt-piece. Conogre is electronicizing some pictures for me, and hopefully I'll be able to post them after that. The one I had was real nice. the engraving on the handle was of an unusual and really nice style, including two bands of the same kind of facetting I see on yours. Western folklore is that these short spears are javelins thrown from horseback, their mass and the motion of the horse driving them with great power, possibly at particularly close range, possibly related to the ones they use against bulls in Spain.
Note the area in the middle that seems to be marked out as a hand-grip; Conogre's has this same feature.

[Tim Simmons]

Excellent!!! I love the copper stud in spear end, really fantastic blade and with a scabbard, what could be better.Tim