Thread: Elephant swords
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Old 2nd December 2018, 06:03 PM   #2
fernando
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Great picture, Jens.
Indeed citations of weapons mounted on elephant tusks may be read here and there but, seeing a picture of one of those, is a rare opportunity.
Probably there were more than one (sword) version; Alvaro Velho, for one, (1297-1490) speaks of (SIC)"a wooden house, in which four men fit in. And this elephant brings in each tooth five armed swords; so that in both teeth brings ten armed swords. The way they walk frightfuly, no one that can run will wait for them. And everything that they are ordered to do by the ones on top of them, they do it so thorougly like a rational creature; in a way that, if they are told to kill that one or do this or that, so they do it".
Whreas Grcia de Orta (1501-1568) speaks of adorned weapons similar to plow irons.
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