November 11, 2025 • 54 mins
In this series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss various examples of sacred, sacrificial and novel daggers from various cultures and traditions.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
two in our series on sacred daggers. In the last episode,
we talked a bit about the role of daggers beyond
your average D and D campaign, how they figure into history,
how they often have cultural significance beyond their simple use
as weapons, and then we looked at a couple of
(00:36):
specific artifacts. Rob you talked about the rock crystal dagger
of the Ivory Lady. Wonderful sequence of words. There a
fascinating blade found in the grave of a woman in
modern day Spain who died and was buried during the
Iberian Copper Age, which would have been roughly thirty two
hundred twenty two hundred BCE. This dagger was interesting for
(00:57):
a number of reasons, not least of which because of
its beautiful, semi transparent rock crystal blade is a blade
you can kind of see through, and for its inclusion
as part of an assemblage of grave goods, indicating that
the woman buried there was probably a figure of great
importance and authority. And then we also talked about the
bush Barrow Dagger, a famous Bronze Age masterwork knife found
(01:22):
in a barrow grave about a kilometer away from stone Hinge.
You can kind of see stone Hinge from this barrow,
And that one was notable because it also came with
a particularly rich and interesting collection of other grave goods,
but also because of the almost unbelievable level of craft
that went into its manufacture, particularly the way the handle
(01:43):
had been decorated with around one hundred and forty thousand
microscopic gold pins, each no wider than a human hair,
made at a time before magnifying glasses, leading some researchers
to speculate that it really could only have been made
by children child goldsmiths, since only children would probably have
had eyesight sharp enough to see and place the studs.
(02:06):
And now we're back today to talk about more rob
Have you had dagger thoughts since our first episode?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah? Yeah, I look forward to getting into the dagger
that I'm going to pull out of the drawer next.
But yeah, I was thinking thinking a good bit about
it over the weekend. Did a little Dungeons and Dragons
playing over the weekend. Definitely thought about it then, and
you know, we called out in the last episode two
to our listeners and said, hey, do you have knives?
(02:33):
Do you want to show us your knives? And people
have already started doing so and it hasn't gotten weird yet.
So if you want to send us pictures of knives
that are of great importance to you or you know,
fascination points for you personally, you send us information about it.
We'd love to learn more.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Who sent us a picture of their knives? I was
just looking at our email, didn't see any knives.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Oh, somebody slipped a knife in there. I don't have
my email open in the moment, so I can't pull
it out. But yeah, somebody showed us some knives.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Did it go to my spam folder? What happened? I'll
have to figure that out.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, don't just reach blindly into your spam folder because
there may be knives in there, and I don't know
if there's sheathed or Notugh.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
This just reminds me of a horrible story of a
good friend of mine who used to work as a
buyer at a used book in music store, who would, like,
you know, take in and price the items people wanted
to sell. So he was looking through a bag of
like old books that somebody had brought in, and just
like among the books in there was a food processor blade.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Stuck. Isn't it used as a bookmark?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I don't know. I don't know why it was in
the bag, but yeah, you got to watch out, got
agers of the profession.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah all right, Well, like we said last time, we
put together a whole list of knives, knowing that we
would not have time in space to cover all of them.
But we each sorted around in there and tried to
find a dagger or something like a dagger that we
wanted to dig into and discuss. Joe, what did you
(04:04):
pick for today?
Speaker 3 (04:05):
So I would like to talk today about a style
of blade known as a tumi, which was made and
used by the pre Columbian indigenous peoples of the Central Andes,
particularly the coastal regions of modern day Peru. So this
would include the Moche people, the Scan also known as
the Lambayek, and the Chimu people. So this style of
(04:30):
knife is occasionally called a dagger in the literature, especially
older literature, though in more recent sources it seems people
more often just say knife or tumi. But as a dagger,
I think it's interesting because it challenges the boundaries of
the concept, both in shape and in function. So in function,
(04:51):
I think it challenges the idea of a dagger because
this item was clearly used for much more than just
offensive violence. In fact, that seems like if it was
used for that, that was one of its much less
common uses. Last time, we made the distinction that while
a knife usually refers to an all utility blade, a
dagger is usually understood to be something meant for violence.
(05:15):
The tome was used for all sorts of things, including
ritual sacrifices and as we'll get to, medicine. In shape,
it also challenges our idea of a dagger because the
particular to me tradition I'm talking about that the idea
the word to me actually just in a way means knife.
I'll get to that in a second. But the form
(05:36):
of to me I'm talking about challenges the idea of
a dagger because it is not long and pointy. In fact,
it's almost the exact opposite. The blade could be called
crescent shaped or semi lunar. Generally, it's a bent, semi
circular or half moon shape with the bend running perpendicular
(05:56):
to the length of the handle.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah. Looking at the vious images of this blade, it
reminds me a little. If I were to compare it
to a kitchen implement, and I do so with no
intended disrespect, I would think of one of these kind
of rolling blades that you use to cut I don't know,
sometimes like yeah, herbs, So, I guess would be the thing.
Not so much pizza, some of the PiZZ Some pizza
slicers have a little bit of a curve, but this
(06:19):
one is a sharper curve that. Yeah. If we were
to compare it to a kitchen implement, it would probably
be those yeah we used to slice up some herbs.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah. Or think the blade and the pit and the pendulum, yeah,
with the handle coming down the middle and a curved
blade running perpendicular to the handle. Yeah. So, as I
just alluded to. The word to me is a word
in the Ketchua language that just means knife, and so
it can be used to refer to a broad range
(06:48):
of sharp instruments or cutting tools made by the pre
Incan peoples of the Andes and sometimes by the Incas themselves.
So it is a word with a broader meaning, but
also it is used to refer to these half moon blades.
These half moon blades would have been called something else
by the pre Incan peoples who made them, but the
(07:08):
ketchwa word used by the Incas has been passed down
and used in the archaeological context, so that's what we
call them today. So I figure we should just look
at a couple of specific examples. Rob I've got some
pictures that you can look at in the outline here,
so we can discuss them. But folks at home, I'm
going to describe them in some detail and then talk
about what we know about these artifacts. So the first
(07:31):
one I want to look at is an example of
a beautiful ceremonial to me made by the Chimu culture
of northern coastal Peru sometime between eleven hundred and fourteen SEVENTYCE.
This is a highly ornamented dagger made of gold with
turquoise inlay. It's about thirty four centimeters long and thirteen
(07:54):
centimeters wide, with a half moon curved blade at the
bottom attached to a purpen deday killer shaft, and then
at the top of that shaft, coming up from the
half moon, a gold humanoid figure with a large broad
head and face in proportion to the body, topped with
a patterned gold head dress with inset turquoise discs and
(08:17):
also turquoise discs gauging the lobes of the figure's ears.
And then we see the posture of the figures. The
arms are folded in on the stomach, not across each other,
but just coming in toward the belly, button folded in
on the stomach, feet splayed outwards.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, it's quite splendid looking. I mean, it is the
very definition of a ceremonial implement, right, I mean you
can tell that. Not to say it had no utility.
I'm sure you're going to you're about to get into that,
but you can tell that, especially as far as the
handle is concerned, style was more. The aesthetics of the
thing were far more important than like, is this a
(08:54):
good grip? Can I hold this firmly in one hand
or two hands? And so forth?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yeah, this was a symbol of power. So this piece
is currently held by the Art Institute of Chicago, and
so I'm going to add some details from their exhibit materials.
The figure depicted on the Toomey handle that the person
here rendered in gold with the turquoise is thought to
be we don't know for sure, but is strongly suspected
(09:19):
by experts to be a legendary founding father known as
name Lap that is spelled in English Naymlap. I hope
I'm saying that right, and I apologize if I get
any other pronunciations wrong in this section. I'm doing my best.
Here a figure known as name Lap who is said
to have been the hero who settled or colonized the
(09:41):
region of the Lembayak Valley on the coast of Peru
and formed a powerful ruling dynasty that lasted many generations.
So I was looking up stories about this figure, name Lap,
and I found some more details in a UCLA Today
article by Cynthia Lee about the work of an archaeologist
(10:02):
named Christopher Donna And this article was from twenty twelve.
I believe Donnan studied the relationship between the oral tradition
of name Lap and the archaeological record at a couple
of sites in the Lumbayaka Valley. So it is said
that Name Lap arrived to the coast of Peru on
a fleet of balsa wood rafts with a large entourage
(10:25):
that included his wife and many concubines, as well as
a host of warriors and lieutenants. And he brought with
him a holy idol made of green stone that I
think in some tellings is said to be his own
image in a way, that was kept in his palace.
And he seems to have been honored in ways that
are symbolically associated with the sea, receiving fanfare on seashell trumpets,
(10:50):
and I thought this was interesting. He was so powerful
and revered that his servants would spread a carpet of
ground up seashells on the earth wherever he walked.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Ooh nice, I mean that would also just be good
for grip.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah. So it said that when he died in his palace,
his servants originally kept his death a secret for fear
of dismaying the people, and when news of his death
finally spread, people went out wandering the mountains to look
for him. So, coming back to this specific to me,
assuming that that is the figure depicted on it, name
(11:25):
lap does seem to have often been depicted in gold
with these turquoise inlays in other representations as well, and
many of the indigenous peoples of Peru used turquoise to
symbolize the spiritual power of water and the sky, kind
of in the same way that gold might symbolize the
spiritual power of the sun.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
The museum material here says that this ceremonial to me
would be carried by rulers of the royal dynasty, and
the way I understand what I'm reading about it, it
sounds like it was a highly value symbolic kingly replica
of the regular semi circular copper alloy or bronze knives
(12:08):
that would have been used to carry out animal sacrifices.
So I was thinking about this like a tool of
religious ritual in form. But the question is would this
specific one, this one held by a member of the
royal dynasty, be used in practice. I couldn't find a
(12:29):
definitive answer to that, but my best guess based on
what I'm reading is probably not. It might be symbolic,
so as a as a gold version of a tool
used in ritual, it would kind of symbolize the king's
power over the whole religious enterprise of the culture. Rough analogy,
(12:49):
but kind of like if a Christian king had a
gold communion chalice and people don't actually drink the wine
out of this one at the church services, but it
might symbolize the King's power and relationship to the central
ritual of the church.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah. Or here's there's another rougher comparison. Again, no disrespect
intended to anyone out there, but it's kind of like
if if you go into a kitchen from the late seventies,
early eighties and there is a decorative jello mold hanging
on the wall that is not actually used to make.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Jello, Okay, yeah, but it doesn't have to.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Be clear, probably doesn't have any kind of religious sentiments
tied up in it, but is purely decorative. Meanwhile, in
a drawer somewhere, there is some sort of an implement
that is used to make jello, an actual cello mold,
a functional jello mold.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Oh yeah. Another one I would think of along those
lines is like a decorative tea set. Nobody ever actually
drinks tea out of these, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, and sometimes it's some cases it's not safe to
drink tea out of a decorative teapots. Then they might
have a little bit too much lead in them, and
so forth.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
So in terms of how this specific Toomey dagger was
put together. The museum explains as follows quote. The tomu
was made with diverse metal working techniques. Solid casting was
used to produce the blade, the face and body, with annealing, heating, shaping,
and then cooling and repousee in which the relief design
is hammered into a mold from the reverse side. Finally,
(14:18):
the small ornaments around the top of the headdress were
separately hammered or cast then soldered into place. All right,
so that is the very very impressive gold ceremonial to me.
(14:41):
But I've got another to me for us to look at,
rob a new one. You can see the picture in
the outline here. I will describe now. This is a
later artifact from the Inca from some time between fourteen
hundred and fifteen thirty five, also from Peru, made of bronze.
This one is held by the met Museum in New York,
and it's far less elaborate than the gold knife from
(15:03):
the earlier Chimu culture. A sort of a simple bronze
blade curved like a slice from a circle, though it's
actually by volume less than half of the circle. You know,
it's not a semicircle. It's I don't know, by volume,
it looks like maybe a fourth of a circle, but
it's the outer edge, so it's still the curve.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Now, this one really does remind me of the pizza
slice or the bread slicer that we have in our kitchen.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, especially because I'm sure it looks more utilitarian. Yeah,
it has less of the decoration, though it's not entirely
without decoration. So again, it's got a perpendicular handle to
the blade, and then at the end of that handle
there are four curved talons curling in like the claws
of an eagle. So the met exhibit points out the
(15:49):
diverse skills on display in the metal working industry that
took place at the Incan capital of Cusco, with items
being made of gold, silver, copper, and bronze, and with
Toomey's being one of the most commonly represented metal tools
from that industry. Many of these everyday Toomey's have loops
at the top of the handle. I guess kind of
(16:10):
like what we see here with the curved bird talons,
and this is taken as an indication that they probably
hung from something, so people might hang a to me
maybe on the necklace or on a belt something like that.
The tome is commonly associated with ritual sacrifice, for example
the sacrifice of lamas during the harvest festival, and this
(16:33):
association with blood sacrifice goes back thousands of years in
Indian cultures between the toomey and the animal sacrifice. The
museum explains the raptor talent motif on the handle in
terms of the association with sacrifice by saying, quote, the
eating habits of raptors and vultures give them a natural
symbolic connection to sacrifice and the world of the dead.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Another thing worth noting is that the half moon tumis
are not only used by humans, at least in storytelling
and artistic representation. They are depicted in the art of
pre Incan and Deean cultures such as the Moche, the
chi Mu, and the sikhan as wielded by gods, demi,
(17:18):
gods and supernatural beings, sometimes threatening other beings with the
tumei or indicating that the tumei might be used for decapitation,
which also had ritual significance to multiple pre Incan cultures
of the region as an act that could bring about
agricultural and ecological rejuvenation. But earlier I mentioned that, apart
(17:40):
from its role in animal sacrifices and religious purposes, the
half moon shaped tume was also important in indigenous medicines,
specifically indigenous surgical techniques, including trepanation.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Oh, a topic we've covered on the show before.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Right, so we've talked about treppenne at some length. I'm
not going to do a full rehash of the whole
story here, but the short version is Trepenation is a
medical procedure practice not only in Indian cultures. Definitely in
Indian cultures, as we're going to talk about, but it
practiced in all kinds of cultures around the world all
throughout history. A very common thing. It is where a
(18:21):
surgeon cuts or bores or scrapes a hole in the
skull of a living person, not with the goal of
killing them, but with the goal of treating a medical
complaint or supposedly enhancing them in some way. The reasoning
behind the procedure varies, but trepienation has been used especially
(18:42):
to treat head injuries that might lead to swelling inside
the brain inflammation in the head. So like head injuries
that involve the fracture of the skull arising from accidents
or violence. This is a big thing that would cause
somebody to seek trepenation and maybe they get hit in
the head. There's a fracture and there's some swelling. Some
(19:02):
bits of bone can be removed and a hole can
be cut to allegedly relieve the swelling. It's also been
speculated that it may have been used to treat headaches,
you know, bad headaches, or other things that were thought
to be the swelling of the brain. Maybe as a
hypothetical treatment for a variety of mental and neurological conditions,
(19:23):
such as epilepsy. But one of the really startling things
about trepnation is in certain times and places, how often
this procedure was survivable. You know, I would just assume
that before modern medicine, this is just one hundred percent
death rate on drilling a hole in the skull.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because you hear you hear dire stories
about about other pre modern surgical procedures, and you would
just assume messing around in the skull essentially with the brain,
you're going to you're going to run up against the
high death rate.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah, And to be clear, the the survival rate of
a trepidation procedure is wildly different at different times and
places in history, so you can tell from looking at
human remains, even before written records, of how successful surgical
procedures were. You can just tell from looking at remains
(20:18):
of people who have had this procedure done. Sometimes bone
has healed over after a trepidation procedure, other times it
has not. But in cases where the bone has healed over,
it proves that the patient survived the operation for a
significant time afterwards, dead people don't heal, So of course
(20:38):
there are lots of times where you know it might
be a coin flip whether you would survive trepanation. But
some estimates based on surveys of tripand remains, indicate that
during the late Incan period they had gotten really good
at this Somewhere around eighty percent of trepanning patients probably
survived the operation.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
As a point of comparison, in some of the articles
I was looking at, they compared that to craniotomy similar
you know, like a removing part of the skull procedures
in field hospitals during the US Civil War, So you know,
hundreds of years later where survival rates were roughly half
of that. Oh wow, so yeah, like they had really
(21:19):
gotten quite good at this procedure in the late Incan period.
So what tools were used to conduct a tripanning? It
could be any number of things. You would need some
kinds of scrapers and blades, These would be any number
of obsidian or bronze implements. But the semi circular bronze
to me was absolutely a common part of the tripanning toolkit.
(21:42):
And this connects to an article I was reading an
ARS Technica article from twenty twenty two by Keona N.
Smith called ancient Peruvian was buried with tools for cranial
surgery and then good subheader quote. He was also buried
with the partial skulls of two former patients, taking a
(22:02):
little keepsake. Yeah yeah, So the article describes it was
at the time a recent discovery from a tomb excavated
in a temple complex at Waca Las Ventanas, which is
an archaeological site in Peru, and this would have been
a site from the Sican culture or the Lumbayak culture.
(22:23):
The body in the tomb appears to have been that
of a secon brain surgeon, a person specializing in trepanning,
and we can tell that in part because of the
tools that were buried with him. These include bronze awls
with wooden handles, needles, and blades, as well also non
occupation grave goods indicating the burial of a relatively rich
(22:47):
and high status person. These non occupational grave goods would
be a gold mask with feathers around the eyes, big
bronze breastplate, and copper bowls lined with gold. But specifically
addressing the Toomey, the author of this article rights quote.
Most of the knives were single edge blades, but one
was clearly special. The semi circular blade called a toume,
(23:12):
was a staple in both surgery and ritual sacrifice for
the Sicon. Their predecessors, the Moche and later the Inca,
ritual tomes were large and elaborate, but ancient surgeons used
a smaller, more utilitarian version for trepanation. So you might
have your big, gorgeous gold ceremonial to me that's got
the picture of a you know, a founding culture hero
(23:34):
on it, or you might have a smaller bronze when
that you actually used to cut holes in people's skulls.
The article here quotes Sicon National Museum Director Carlos Alera,
who says that the museum is trying to compare the
instruments found in this grave to those that would be
used by a modern surgeon. One big difference that gets
(23:54):
called out is material. Of course, you know modern surgeons
are going to be using modern probably steel surgical knives.
Actually I didn't even look this up. What are knives
usually made out of for surgery? I assume their steel anyway,
whatever that material would be. But these surgical knives are
made of copper with a high arsenic content. The reason
(24:15):
there was high arsenic content was that it helped strengthen
the metal, so like a copper arsenic alloy is stronger
than a copper one alone.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
This will be interesting because we'll get back into this
and the knife we'll talk about in the second half
of this episode.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
To read from the article again, quote two examples of
the surgeon's work also joined him In his grave. Archaeologists
found two frontal bones, the bone that makes up the forehead.
One belonged to an adult, one belonged to a child,
and neither originally belonged to the surgeon. His was still
attached to the rest of his skull. Both had been
carefully cut using a classic trepanation technique. So those are
(24:53):
the two keepsakes, you know, pieces of other people's skulls
taken with him. I wonder what that means. Is that
just like a you know, oh this is a time
I did a really good job, or well.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
One wonders if they might have been teaching implements. You know,
if you're bringing your tools, maybe you're bringing your knowledge
with you. I think of how in various medical professions,
you know, you will practice using you know, some real teeth,
real bones, some sort or you know, or real other
actual pieces of a body in order to practice your craft,
(25:25):
and if it's not something that decays, you may keep
that potentially as a as a as a teaching implement
So yeah, maybe with something like that.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, I could see that. I mean, I don't know
if it really work this way, but I wonder that
sort of thing would be useful, almost like tracing paper,
you know, Oh yeah, this is the kind of I mean,
I guess every every injury would be different, though I
know part of the skill of the surgeon involved here
would be knowing where and how to cut, knowing like
(25:54):
what the size of the cut in the skull should
be where to cut to avoid excess bleeding. You know,
these are all important things to know to help the
patient survive the procedure. And it must have been like
part of the answer of like how did these did
the late INCA period end up with these relatively high
survival rates for trepidation because again, think about these other
(26:17):
times when all throughout history where like maybe half the
people who did this died. The skill of the surgeon
was probably a very big deal. But another factor cited
in this article I was talking about is hygiene. They
must have somehow been practicing a relatively strong hygiene regimen
to do successful surgery without deadly infections on the regular.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing like that they would, Yeah,
they would have to at least lock into it, if
not make significant discoveries about what they should or be
doing before conducting you know, cranial operations.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Another interesting question is anesthesia. What did what, if anything
did they use for anesthesia? We don't really know the
answer is kind of an interesting mystery, though this article
points to a discovery within the surgeons to him at
Wacallas Fintanas that might contribute knowledge to that, and it
was that the kit that was buried with the surgeon
(27:14):
also included a piece of tree bark, which the curator
at that museum, Alera, had said, you know, we wonder
if this might be a medicinal bark of some kind,
because of course medicinal barks do exist. We don't know that,
to be clear, but we don't We know that there
are some medicinal barks like willow bark, of course is
(27:34):
anti inflammatory, and so I guess there are questions about
whether this bark might have been something like that.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, I mean we're talking about a part of the
world that has rich biodiversity. Yeah, with any number of known,
unknown or erased, you know, examples of botanical substances that
can be used medicinally. You know what, what sort of
material to they know about that have been completely forgotten
(28:02):
and need to be rediscovered and so forth.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Totally, So that's the to me, unlike the dagger you
have in mind in many ways in shape and in function,
but I think still a pretty fascinating artifact.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Yes, that's a great one and definitely gets into I
think we kind of tease the idea of sacrificial blades
a little bit, and this one I think checks off
that box at least in part. All Right, the blade
(28:35):
that I'm going to talk about next, it is a
specific blade, and out of talking about the specific blade,
going to sort of pull out and talk more about
this style of blade in its entirety. This is one
of the blades that inspired this series that I was like, Oh,
I should really cover this, But when I started looking
(28:57):
at it, I realized it was just such a huge
topic because the specific blade I'm going to reference here
is a chris that is a type of traditional, highly
stylized Indonesian blade. Generally it's associated with Java, but also
other parts of Indonesia. And when I first started looking
into it, I was like, oh, this could maybe make
(29:18):
for a nice artifact episode, and then I was like,
oh no, there's too much here. This would have to
be at least a full episode. And then I quickly
realized like it would have to be like multiple episodes
because one is tempted to compare it to say the
Samurai sword in terms of the artistry, the technique, the history,
(29:39):
but in other ways it seems even more complicated than that,
because you have a lot of diverse imagery, and it's
going to depend on exactly where it was produced, when
it was produced, the details of what everything symbolizes. But
it is such a fascinating blade because you've probably seen
(30:00):
examples of it out there, listener, at the very least
you would recognize it. The version that is often depicted
and certainly catches the eye is a very wavy blade,
like a highly stylized almost snake shaped dagger, often with
a highly stylized hilt and a highly stylized sheath, and
(30:22):
just looking at it like you you know, the mind
run wild, runs wild, you know, whether you know anything
about the traditions involved here or you know, or you're
you're just coming in completely cold. You know, it's like
why is it shaped like that? And you know, why
is the handle like that? And then what are all
these little images that are a part of the blade,
(30:44):
So that in many ways it feels like the ultimate
transformation of a utilitarian implement of some sort of a
tool or weapon into a thing that is just pure
symbol and meaning. Though you to be clear, you still
could absolutely top somebody with one of these. So I'm
going to be talking about Chris's, but I want to
(31:06):
and that is generally spelled kr I S and in English.
I'm going to talk specifically though, about the Chris of Nod,
also known as the Keras of Nod because sometimes Keras
instead of Chris is used, also known as just Nod's Chris.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Take me off to the land of Nod.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Okay, let's start with the name. Who is this nod
fellow spelled k n a U D and I'm I'm
assuming I'm pronouncing that correctly. I looked around for some
pronunciation guides on this. This is a Dutch name, and
most of what I got back were either specific mentions
of this blade or insistences that I was misspelling the name,
which I'm not. In this case, Well, this was the
(31:49):
name of a nineteenth century Dutch physician, and his name
is only attached to the dagger in question because it
was gifted to him by paku Alum, the fifth Duke
of the Javanese Duchy of paku Aliman. The duchy still
co rules in the special region of Jagi Karta in Indonesia,
(32:11):
and the current Duke is Pacu Alum the tenth. The
Dutch were, of course highly invested in the region, to
say the least, first via the colonial influences of the
Dutch East India Company. The British then occupied Java from
eighteen eleven through eighteen sixteen, and the Duchy of Pacu
Aliman was established during this period, and when the Dutch
(32:33):
regained control of Java in eighteen sixteen, the Duchy became
an independent state of the Kingdom of the Netherlands under
the Dutch East Indies administration until Indonesia's independence in nineteen
forty five. Okay, So obviously there is a lot of
history that I just skimmed pasted really quickly. There's obviously
(32:54):
a lot of back and forth in a lot of
nuance there. But hopefully this gives you just an idea
of why a re old Javanese ruler would have gifted
an elaborate dagger to a dutch Man.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Doctor Charles Nod here reportedly treated the Duke's son and
helped him overcome an illness that had some associations with
black magic, and in thanks for treating the sun and
because nod was apparently a student of Javanese mysticism, Pacu
alumn the fifth gifted him this particular Chris I included
(33:25):
images here of both Pacu Alum the fifth and Charles Nod.
I think you'll agree. Charles Nod in this image anyway,
absolutely looks like a haunted portrait in a haunted mansion.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
I assume he's the guy on the left, yes, the
tilting his head slightly forward and looking up with his
eyes like he's doing an Aphex Twin album cover.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah, yeah, maybe it's just a product of the scan.
I think this was I cut this out of a
book I was I was referencing. But yeah, he looks
a little creepy here.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Flake one of those pictures penny Wise in the book
that comes alive exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
So what does this blade look like? While there are
a lot of images online, you can look up Chris
of Nod and you can see various images for yourself.
The remains of the iron blade and the blade alone,
it lacks a hill to or a sheath, are still
covered by a thin decorative layer of copper, and it
is decorated with illustrations from the Hindu epic the Ramayana,
(34:27):
so one sees figures and vegetation. You can see chariots
in battle, characters from the Hindu epic and so forth.
According to author and expert David van Duran in his
book Charles Nod's Karis. Some of the identifiable elements include
the monkey warrior Hahneman, the demon king, Ravna dwarfs or
(34:50):
paquin Kawan. These are the like the clown dwarf servants
of the hero in Javanese puppet theater, but they're also snakes,
possibly nagas dogs. There's a demon army, there's a monkey army,
and more. I know that sounds like a lot to
fit on a single blade that again does not have
an intact hilt anymore, a Hilton handle or anything. It's
(35:14):
just the blade. But yes, they really do pack that
much detail into this, into this, this highly stylized blade.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
It's busy, it's very busy, very Yes, it's like a
spiritual Wearswaldo.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Yeah. And we don't even necessarily have all of it.
There are pieces of it that have fallen away. It
is not in pristine condition by you know, any stretch.
But what we do have is absolutely remarkable, gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
So we'll get more into just what a Chris is
here in a bit. And again this is a topic
where I'm only going to be able to really dip
our toes into it. But again, the short version is
that it's a highly decorative, highly stylized, highly symbolic dagger.
The most famous of these have wavy blades, but they're
not all wavy, some are st and the Cris of
(36:01):
Nod is, to be clear, a rather straight blade as well.
It does not have any of the signature waves that
are often associated with the Chris. The Cris blade has
been produced throughout the islands of Indonesia, but they're especially
prominent in Java, also prominent to a degree in Bali
as well. So the history of this particular Chris roughly
(36:24):
breaks down as fall. These are some of the main
the main points in its known history, so according to
an inscription on the blade itself, it was forged in
at least thirteen forty two CE. This would make it
a product of the Majapahi Empire, a Hindu Buddhist empire
(36:46):
that ruled Java in some surrounding territory, ultimately lasting from
twelve ninety two through fifteen twenty seven, when it was
conquered by the Demak Sultanate. This was just a little
more than a decade fallollowing first contact in this region
with Europeans. I believe it would have been the Portuguese.
Then at a much later date it is gifted to
(37:08):
Charles Nod and this would have been the late eighteen hundreds,
and then it was presumed lost around nineteen oh three,
but it apparently remained in the family's possession in Indonesia,
was hidden during the Japanese occupation that's forty two through
forty five, and then the family took the blade to
the Netherlands during the Indonesian National Revolution that immediately followed,
(37:29):
and it remains to this day time to understand in
Amsterdam's kit Royal Tropical Institute. So this blade is apparently
the oldest surviving Chris that has a verifiable age. So
again that's not to say this is definitely the oldest,
like may there are other blades that may be older,
(37:49):
but this is the one that currently has a verifiable
age according to most experts.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Very helpful that its origins are actually inscribed on it.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Right or it's thought that this is the origin dat.
I've also read that it's possible that it's older, but
given that the dates on there, or at least in
some form is on there, it would mean okay, it
has to be at least this old. Maybe it's older,
but this it has to be this old, okay. And
now I have to admit I was a bit dubious
of this claim at first, again knowing nothing about this previously,
(38:21):
you know, could the oldest surviving example of this tradition
really have been given away to a foreigner as a
gift and eventually sent away to a European museum. As
it turns out, though, there seems to be a case
for this, a strong case for this, for a few
different reasons, and with a few different caveats For starters,
there's the base fact that we're dealing with iron based artifacts,
(38:43):
and some of these I should also mention to call
back to an episode we did previously. Sometimes they use
meteoric iron in these artifacts as well, But at any rate,
we were talking iron based artifacts in a humid tropical climate.
So if a blade is not properly protected, it's just
going to naturally deteriorate. Also, as we see in other
(39:03):
blade cultures, such as that of the Samurai sword, the
blade itself was considered the most important and the most
sacred part, and additional parts such as hill sheath so forth,
these were interchangeable and so they might change multiple times
during the lifetime of a particular blade, and this can
apparently complicate accurate datings of a blade as well. And then,
(39:28):
as our brief history overview might have suggested to listeners
were also dealing with the region, they saw a great
deal of upheaval during the colonial period. You had the
Dutch East India Company, the British and the French were
also involved at different points, and the ensuing conflicts also
pitted various factions against each other. Artifacts were destroyed, lost,
(39:49):
absconded with, sometimes into private collections. Also, you had blades
that were just outright and neglected. And all of this,
as we've seen with various cultures impacted by colonialism, led
to a great deal of cultural loss, including material loss.
So the fact that the Chris of Nod could survive
six centuries despite all of this is generally quite remarkable, again,
(40:14):
especially given all the pivotal moments in its timeline where
it could have just been lost, it could have just
remained buried, it could have been more neglected than it was.
So apparently we're rather lucky to have this one at all. Now,
at this point, I want to back up a little
bit sort of widen and talk a little more generally
about the chris as a type of blade. One of
(40:36):
the main sources I turned to for this, in addition
to the aforementioned book, is Introduction to Chris, a Traditional
Weapon of Indonesia Preserved Lingering Issues of Facts by Purwatou
and Nurhamada, published in twenty twenty one in the Indonesian
Journal of English Educational Literature and Culture. So the name
(40:58):
Chris or sometimes keras this is apparently this apparently stems
from an older Javanese word that meant to slice, and
the blade is again often identified by its highly asymmetrical design.
Generally it's stylized hilt and sheath and in some cases
that wavy snake like blade. Again, not every Chris is wavy,
(41:21):
but many are. And it's one of those things like
if you pull up like a Wikipedia article about it,
you're gonna you're definitely gonna see images, or you just
do an image search for Chris, you're going to see
that wavy blade almost saw Like I guess.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
If you if you're looking at an image, I would
say it almost suggests you're looking at it through water.
The rippling back and forth of the blade the way
the way it often looks. But yeah, like you said,
this one does not have that appearance.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
The water ripple comparison, I think is really apt considering
the amount of skill that went into creating these, and
so there is that kind of precision that you get,
that wave like precision. Even more so, like I think
the snake comparison is all so really important. But yeah,
way like water ripples, that's nice. And also the snake,
(42:07):
the naga is also associated with water, so that's that's
a solid comparison as well. So it's said that the
blade was originally a close combat weapon that was treated
(42:27):
with poison. The poison here was known as warrengon, also
known as arsenic. Oh yeah, And the interesting bit here
is that we have there seemed to be a couple
of different dimensions to this. So on one hand, there
was the idea, Okay, the blade is ritually treated with
this arsenic, but apparently like not a situation where like, okay,
(42:50):
you're going into battle rubs some arsenic on the blade. No,
the arsenic is used in the creation of the blade,
treatment of the blades tip, it's forging, and this process
would bring out the contrast apparently between the dark black
iron and the light colored silvery nickel layers.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
So my understanding that right, is saying that you could
put a poison, a permanent poisonous element into the metal
when it was forged, and that would still be effective
as a poison for somebody getting cut by it. I
don't so it just seems kind of hard to believe chemically, right.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
I think it's more of a supernatural idea of the
poison here, because again we're getting into we're talking about
an implement that is it's almost like a blessing of
the blade. That's my understanding of it here. I might
have to come back and see if there are sources
out there that really get into the possibility of any
kind of like permanently poisoned blade. But that's one of
(43:49):
the interesting things about poison. We just discussed this on
the show before in the past, talking about poisons and
various East Asian belief systems, where yes, there were definitely
real poisons then as there are today, but poison also
takes on the connotation of curse, and not only curse,
(44:12):
but sort of like accusations of poison, and we see
this in belief systems throughout the world, like the idea
that if something evil has happened, illness or or something else,
it must be a poison that was used by evil doers,
the poisons of witches. So the poisons and curses of
magic users are kind of interchangeable, and therefore we might
(44:33):
think of this as kind of like a holy poison
in some respects a wholly magical poison.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Now, again, the Chris, like other long lived ceremonial knives,
is highly symbolic. Every detail of the blade often grounded
in some sort of function, such as the blood gutters,
which I think we've pointed this out on the show before.
Blood gutters are not actually for allowing blood to blurt
out of a wound there, it's about reducing blade weight,
(45:01):
you know, things like that, or again this specially treated
blade tip. They take on various religious and philosophical meanings.
For example, the shape of the blade apparently has different meanings.
The wavy blade symbolizes wisdom and is linked to the
iconography of the serpent Naga in motion. And furthermore, the
(45:21):
exact number of curves in the blade is tied to
precise ideas about theology and power. Ones in the relationship
between kings and the gods, that sort of thing. In
that paper publishing the Journal of English Educational Literature and Culture,
there's like a whole chart of like, okay, two waves
it means this, three waves it means that, and they're
all They're all very to my eye complex ideas about
(45:45):
again the theology of the theological properties of power. The
straight Cris blade, on the other hand, is said to
symbolize determination to maintain principles, and it's tied to the
idea of the Naga at rest. So the Naga is
not moving, it's not waving, you know, it's not slithering,
but it is straight. The exact period of production is
(46:09):
also going to dictate exactly how one might read a
Chris like this, And this is again not even getting
to all the various outright illustrations and inscriptions are going
to be on the blade as well. One example of
the differences you encounter. So if it was created within
a Hindu Buddhist culture, you're going to have, you know,
(46:30):
you probably have a lot more illustrations of gods and
beings and animals. Meanwhile, Islamic cultures, as you can well imagine,
under Islamic cultures, you're going to have Islamic crises that
typically employ fewer of these elements.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Let's representation a m. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Now, another tidbit I ran across is this idea, and
this has been referenced in multiple works that a long
form of the straight chris was also reportedly used in
ritual executions or Hu Kuman saloon. And this would have
been achieved allegedly by having the execution victim assume a
(47:09):
squatting position, and then the executioner stands behind the victim
and then would drive the crisp down through the clavicle
to the heart. I mean, that's what I said. All
most of these execution techniques, I don't know. I couldn't find.
I didn't find any papers that like really dug into
(47:30):
how effective this would be. But I guess on paper,
if someone's like, hey, this guy knows what he's doing.
He's going to stick it right through your neck straight
to the heart and then it's done, I guess I'm
okay with that. Certainly better than some of the horror
stories we've discussed involving multiple strikes of the headman's axe. Right. Yes, Now,
this does lead me to another issue that comes up.
(47:50):
There are some arguments that that curvy wavy blade, the
snake like blade, the snake in motion, that this would
be an ideal blade because it might produce a wider
wound channel when it's actually used in battle, or that
you would encounter less friction and suction inside the wound,
so allowing for like a deeper and faster stab, like
(48:12):
you'd be able to stab in and then pull it
back out, save time and then you can move on
to your in the next battlefield stabbing that sort of thing.
As far as I can tell, a lot of these
arguments seem to be kind of speculative. I couldn't find
an example of anyone like actually testing them out on
some sort of you know, you know, cadaver or animal body.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
Though, stick dummy with the Chris.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yeah. But if if one does, and certainly if anybody
knows of one out there, send it my way and
we'll come back to the topic. So these ideas, though
I'm not going to dismiss them out of hand, could
be true, but most accounts really seem to focus on again,
all of these stylistic and symbolic meanings of say the
curvy blade, and I mean you can kind of get
(48:55):
this too by just looking at it. It just it
just you know, enraptures you to look at a curvy Chris.
So it seems more likely that these that it's a
you know, a major esthetic factor here rather than a
performance design. Yeah, finally, this is this is a somewhat
lesser cultural value. But if you listen to our Weird
(49:16):
House Cinema episodes, you might remember a few months back
we discussed the nineteen eighty eight Indonesian supernatural action movie
Lady Terminator. That film does feature a holy demon slaying
Chris in it, which I think, you know, again that's
a that's an exploitation action film, but it does give
(49:36):
you an idea of just how important the Chris is
within these different Indonesian traditions, like it is the holy blade,
it is the of course, it is the blade that
you would use to eliminate some sort of supernatural evil.
Speaker 3 (49:48):
Do I remember right that in that movie there is
a snake or an eel that turns into the Chris.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
You were correct, Yeah, and that would also tie into
these ideas of the cur rev blade or even the
straight blade again being connected to a snake or a naga.
So and again, and also to water and to water creatures,
the wavy movement and wave forms in the water.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Well done, mythologically valid.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yeah yeah, so again, there is so much out there
about about the Chris. You know, whole books have been
written about it. And in fact, the one author, the
Dutch author that I alluded to here, David von Duren,
has written multiple books about the Chris. Some of them
aren't as easy to get a hold of, but they're
out there. I think you generally have to like order
(50:38):
them from Amsterdam. But again, deep topic. I didn't want
to just go on and on about the Chris here,
but hopefully I've given you just a sample of just
how rich and amazing these blades are.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
Very cool. This is not something I think about most blades.
You know, you ever see the scene in a lot,
don't know the story where the sword expert it like,
picks it up and wants to feel the edge of
the blade. They like put their thumb on the sharp part,
And I don't know what. I don't have that impulse
with knives. I mean, I like a good knife in
the kitchen. I'm a fan of good knives, but I
don't always want to go touching the blade to feel
(51:15):
how sharp it is, Chris, for some reason like I
want to get my hands on that. I want to
put that right on the pad of my thumb and
see how sharp it feels.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah. Yeah, it is something about the how organic it looks.
It looks like a living thing, And I believe that
is part like there is an idea that they are
kind of like living things, you know, the idea that
is kind of getting back to what we discussed in
the first episode what Borges said about knives and especially
weapons of that have shed blood. How they kind of
(51:46):
take on a life of their own, and they have
their own their own ambitions and their own grudges, and
we as mortal humans just we occasionally get to hold them,
We occasionally wield them. We occasionally rub our thumb against
their edge to see how sharp they are.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
They must seek out a meat host to carry them along.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
Yeah, all right, we're gonna close out this episode. But
Joe and I were just talking about this off mic,
I believe we have one more episode in this series
for you. We're gonna reach into the into the blade
drawer one more time and.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Greet into that bag of books. If there's a Chris
in there.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
See what see what pricks us, and we're gonna pull
out at least two more. We'll see. We'll see what
they're like once we actually get our hands on them
and start to rubbing our thumb against the blade. So
tune in on Thursday for what should probably be the
final episode in this three part series. But in the meantime, again,
we'd love to hear from you out there. Do you
(52:44):
have expertise or information about either of the blades and
blade types that we discussed here today, If so, write
in we'd love to hear from you. Or if you
just have blades that are of personal cultural importance to
you and you would like to share them with us. Yeah,
(53:05):
send us your story, send us some pictures of that night.
We would love to hear from you.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
two in our series on sacred daggers. In the last episode,
we talked a bit about the role of daggers beyond
your average D and D campaign, how they figure into history,
how they often have cultural significance beyond their simple use
as weapons, and then we looked at a couple of
(00:36):
specific artifacts. Rob you talked about the rock crystal dagger
of the Ivory Lady. Wonderful sequence of words. There a
fascinating blade found in the grave of a woman in
modern day Spain who died and was buried during the
Iberian Copper Age, which would have been roughly thirty two
hundred twenty two hundred BCE. This dagger was interesting for
(00:57):
a number of reasons, not least of which because of
its beautiful, semi transparent rock crystal blade is a blade
you can kind of see through, and for its inclusion
as part of an assemblage of grave goods, indicating that
the woman buried there was probably a figure of great
importance and authority. And then we also talked about the
bush Barrow Dagger, a famous Bronze Age masterwork knife found
(01:22):
in a barrow grave about a kilometer away from stone Hinge.
You can kind of see stone Hinge from this barrow,
And that one was notable because it also came with
a particularly rich and interesting collection of other grave goods,
but also because of the almost unbelievable level of craft
that went into its manufacture, particularly the way the handle
(01:43):
had been decorated with around one hundred and forty thousand
microscopic gold pins, each no wider than a human hair,
made at a time before magnifying glasses, leading some researchers
to speculate that it really could only have been made
by children child goldsmiths, since only children would probably have
had eyesight sharp enough to see and place the studs.
(02:06):
And now we're back today to talk about more rob
Have you had dagger thoughts since our first episode?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah? Yeah, I look forward to getting into the dagger
that I'm going to pull out of the drawer next.
But yeah, I was thinking thinking a good bit about
it over the weekend. Did a little Dungeons and Dragons
playing over the weekend. Definitely thought about it then, and
you know, we called out in the last episode two
to our listeners and said, hey, do you have knives?
(02:33):
Do you want to show us your knives? And people
have already started doing so and it hasn't gotten weird yet.
So if you want to send us pictures of knives
that are of great importance to you or you know,
fascination points for you personally, you send us information about it.
We'd love to learn more.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Who sent us a picture of their knives? I was
just looking at our email, didn't see any knives.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Oh, somebody slipped a knife in there. I don't have
my email open in the moment, so I can't pull
it out. But yeah, somebody showed us some knives.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Did it go to my spam folder? What happened? I'll
have to figure that out.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, don't just reach blindly into your spam folder because
there may be knives in there, and I don't know
if there's sheathed or Notugh.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
This just reminds me of a horrible story of a
good friend of mine who used to work as a
buyer at a used book in music store, who would, like,
you know, take in and price the items people wanted
to sell. So he was looking through a bag of
like old books that somebody had brought in, and just
like among the books in there was a food processor blade.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Stuck. Isn't it used as a bookmark?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I don't know. I don't know why it was in
the bag, but yeah, you got to watch out, got
agers of the profession.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah all right, Well, like we said last time, we
put together a whole list of knives, knowing that we
would not have time in space to cover all of them.
But we each sorted around in there and tried to
find a dagger or something like a dagger that we
wanted to dig into and discuss. Joe, what did you
(04:04):
pick for today?
Speaker 3 (04:05):
So I would like to talk today about a style
of blade known as a tumi, which was made and
used by the pre Columbian indigenous peoples of the Central Andes,
particularly the coastal regions of modern day Peru. So this
would include the Moche people, the Scan also known as
the Lambayek, and the Chimu people. So this style of
(04:30):
knife is occasionally called a dagger in the literature, especially
older literature, though in more recent sources it seems people
more often just say knife or tumi. But as a dagger,
I think it's interesting because it challenges the boundaries of
the concept, both in shape and in function. So in function,
(04:51):
I think it challenges the idea of a dagger because
this item was clearly used for much more than just
offensive violence. In fact, that seems like if it was
used for that, that was one of its much less
common uses. Last time, we made the distinction that while
a knife usually refers to an all utility blade, a
dagger is usually understood to be something meant for violence.
(05:15):
The tome was used for all sorts of things, including
ritual sacrifices and as we'll get to, medicine. In shape,
it also challenges our idea of a dagger because the
particular to me tradition I'm talking about that the idea
the word to me actually just in a way means knife.
I'll get to that in a second. But the form
(05:36):
of to me I'm talking about challenges the idea of
a dagger because it is not long and pointy. In fact,
it's almost the exact opposite. The blade could be called
crescent shaped or semi lunar. Generally, it's a bent, semi
circular or half moon shape with the bend running perpendicular
(05:56):
to the length of the handle.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah. Looking at the vious images of this blade, it
reminds me a little. If I were to compare it
to a kitchen implement, and I do so with no
intended disrespect, I would think of one of these kind
of rolling blades that you use to cut I don't know,
sometimes like yeah, herbs, So, I guess would be the thing.
Not so much pizza, some of the PiZZ Some pizza
slicers have a little bit of a curve, but this
(06:19):
one is a sharper curve that. Yeah. If we were
to compare it to a kitchen implement, it would probably
be those yeah we used to slice up some herbs.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah. Or think the blade and the pit and the pendulum, yeah,
with the handle coming down the middle and a curved
blade running perpendicular to the handle. Yeah. So, as I
just alluded to. The word to me is a word
in the Ketchua language that just means knife, and so
it can be used to refer to a broad range
(06:48):
of sharp instruments or cutting tools made by the pre
Incan peoples of the Andes and sometimes by the Incas themselves.
So it is a word with a broader meaning, but
also it is used to refer to these half moon blades.
These half moon blades would have been called something else
by the pre Incan peoples who made them, but the
(07:08):
ketchwa word used by the Incas has been passed down
and used in the archaeological context, so that's what we
call them today. So I figure we should just look
at a couple of specific examples. Rob I've got some
pictures that you can look at in the outline here,
so we can discuss them. But folks at home, I'm
going to describe them in some detail and then talk
about what we know about these artifacts. So the first
(07:31):
one I want to look at is an example of
a beautiful ceremonial to me made by the Chimu culture
of northern coastal Peru sometime between eleven hundred and fourteen SEVENTYCE.
This is a highly ornamented dagger made of gold with
turquoise inlay. It's about thirty four centimeters long and thirteen
(07:54):
centimeters wide, with a half moon curved blade at the
bottom attached to a purpen deday killer shaft, and then
at the top of that shaft, coming up from the
half moon, a gold humanoid figure with a large broad
head and face in proportion to the body, topped with
a patterned gold head dress with inset turquoise discs and
(08:17):
also turquoise discs gauging the lobes of the figure's ears.
And then we see the posture of the figures. The
arms are folded in on the stomach, not across each other,
but just coming in toward the belly, button folded in
on the stomach, feet splayed outwards.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, it's quite splendid looking. I mean, it is the
very definition of a ceremonial implement, right, I mean you
can tell that. Not to say it had no utility.
I'm sure you're going to you're about to get into that,
but you can tell that, especially as far as the
handle is concerned, style was more. The aesthetics of the
thing were far more important than like, is this a
(08:54):
good grip? Can I hold this firmly in one hand
or two hands? And so forth?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yeah, this was a symbol of power. So this piece
is currently held by the Art Institute of Chicago, and
so I'm going to add some details from their exhibit materials.
The figure depicted on the Toomey handle that the person
here rendered in gold with the turquoise is thought to
be we don't know for sure, but is strongly suspected
(09:19):
by experts to be a legendary founding father known as
name Lap that is spelled in English Naymlap. I hope
I'm saying that right, and I apologize if I get
any other pronunciations wrong in this section. I'm doing my best.
Here a figure known as name Lap who is said
to have been the hero who settled or colonized the
(09:41):
region of the Lembayak Valley on the coast of Peru
and formed a powerful ruling dynasty that lasted many generations.
So I was looking up stories about this figure, name Lap,
and I found some more details in a UCLA Today
article by Cynthia Lee about the work of an archaeologist
(10:02):
named Christopher Donna And this article was from twenty twelve.
I believe Donnan studied the relationship between the oral tradition
of name Lap and the archaeological record at a couple
of sites in the Lumbayaka Valley. So it is said
that Name Lap arrived to the coast of Peru on
a fleet of balsa wood rafts with a large entourage
(10:25):
that included his wife and many concubines, as well as
a host of warriors and lieutenants. And he brought with
him a holy idol made of green stone that I
think in some tellings is said to be his own
image in a way, that was kept in his palace.
And he seems to have been honored in ways that
are symbolically associated with the sea, receiving fanfare on seashell trumpets,
(10:50):
and I thought this was interesting. He was so powerful
and revered that his servants would spread a carpet of
ground up seashells on the earth wherever he walked.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Ooh nice, I mean that would also just be good
for grip.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah. So it said that when he died in his palace,
his servants originally kept his death a secret for fear
of dismaying the people, and when news of his death
finally spread, people went out wandering the mountains to look
for him. So, coming back to this specific to me,
assuming that that is the figure depicted on it, name
(11:25):
lap does seem to have often been depicted in gold
with these turquoise inlays in other representations as well, and
many of the indigenous peoples of Peru used turquoise to
symbolize the spiritual power of water and the sky, kind
of in the same way that gold might symbolize the
spiritual power of the sun.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
The museum material here says that this ceremonial to me
would be carried by rulers of the royal dynasty, and
the way I understand what I'm reading about it, it
sounds like it was a highly value symbolic kingly replica
of the regular semi circular copper alloy or bronze knives
(12:08):
that would have been used to carry out animal sacrifices.
So I was thinking about this like a tool of
religious ritual in form. But the question is would this
specific one, this one held by a member of the
royal dynasty, be used in practice. I couldn't find a
(12:29):
definitive answer to that, but my best guess based on
what I'm reading is probably not. It might be symbolic,
so as a as a gold version of a tool
used in ritual, it would kind of symbolize the king's
power over the whole religious enterprise of the culture. Rough analogy,
(12:49):
but kind of like if a Christian king had a
gold communion chalice and people don't actually drink the wine
out of this one at the church services, but it
might symbolize the King's power and relationship to the central
ritual of the church.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah. Or here's there's another rougher comparison. Again, no disrespect
intended to anyone out there, but it's kind of like
if if you go into a kitchen from the late seventies,
early eighties and there is a decorative jello mold hanging
on the wall that is not actually used to make.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Jello, Okay, yeah, but it doesn't have to.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Be clear, probably doesn't have any kind of religious sentiments
tied up in it, but is purely decorative. Meanwhile, in
a drawer somewhere, there is some sort of an implement
that is used to make jello, an actual cello mold,
a functional jello mold.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Oh yeah. Another one I would think of along those
lines is like a decorative tea set. Nobody ever actually
drinks tea out of these, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, and sometimes it's some cases it's not safe to
drink tea out of a decorative teapots. Then they might
have a little bit too much lead in them, and
so forth.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
So in terms of how this specific Toomey dagger was
put together. The museum explains as follows quote. The tomu
was made with diverse metal working techniques. Solid casting was
used to produce the blade, the face and body, with annealing, heating, shaping,
and then cooling and repousee in which the relief design
is hammered into a mold from the reverse side. Finally,
(14:18):
the small ornaments around the top of the headdress were
separately hammered or cast then soldered into place. All right,
so that is the very very impressive gold ceremonial to me.
(14:41):
But I've got another to me for us to look at,
rob a new one. You can see the picture in
the outline here. I will describe now. This is a
later artifact from the Inca from some time between fourteen
hundred and fifteen thirty five, also from Peru, made of bronze.
This one is held by the met Museum in New York,
and it's far less elaborate than the gold knife from
(15:03):
the earlier Chimu culture. A sort of a simple bronze
blade curved like a slice from a circle, though it's
actually by volume less than half of the circle. You know,
it's not a semicircle. It's I don't know, by volume,
it looks like maybe a fourth of a circle, but
it's the outer edge, so it's still the curve.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Now, this one really does remind me of the pizza
slice or the bread slicer that we have in our kitchen.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, especially because I'm sure it looks more utilitarian. Yeah,
it has less of the decoration, though it's not entirely
without decoration. So again, it's got a perpendicular handle to
the blade, and then at the end of that handle
there are four curved talons curling in like the claws
of an eagle. So the met exhibit points out the
(15:49):
diverse skills on display in the metal working industry that
took place at the Incan capital of Cusco, with items
being made of gold, silver, copper, and bronze, and with
Toomey's being one of the most commonly represented metal tools
from that industry. Many of these everyday Toomey's have loops
at the top of the handle. I guess kind of
(16:10):
like what we see here with the curved bird talons,
and this is taken as an indication that they probably
hung from something, so people might hang a to me
maybe on the necklace or on a belt something like that.
The tome is commonly associated with ritual sacrifice, for example
the sacrifice of lamas during the harvest festival, and this
(16:33):
association with blood sacrifice goes back thousands of years in
Indian cultures between the toomey and the animal sacrifice. The
museum explains the raptor talent motif on the handle in
terms of the association with sacrifice by saying, quote, the
eating habits of raptors and vultures give them a natural
symbolic connection to sacrifice and the world of the dead.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Another thing worth noting is that the half moon tumis
are not only used by humans, at least in storytelling
and artistic representation. They are depicted in the art of
pre Incan and Deean cultures such as the Moche, the
chi Mu, and the sikhan as wielded by gods, demi,
(17:18):
gods and supernatural beings, sometimes threatening other beings with the
tumei or indicating that the tumei might be used for decapitation,
which also had ritual significance to multiple pre Incan cultures
of the region as an act that could bring about
agricultural and ecological rejuvenation. But earlier I mentioned that, apart
(17:40):
from its role in animal sacrifices and religious purposes, the
half moon shaped tume was also important in indigenous medicines,
specifically indigenous surgical techniques, including trepanation.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Oh, a topic we've covered on the show before.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Right, so we've talked about treppenne at some length. I'm
not going to do a full rehash of the whole
story here, but the short version is Trepenation is a
medical procedure practice not only in Indian cultures. Definitely in
Indian cultures, as we're going to talk about, but it
practiced in all kinds of cultures around the world all
throughout history. A very common thing. It is where a
(18:21):
surgeon cuts or bores or scrapes a hole in the
skull of a living person, not with the goal of
killing them, but with the goal of treating a medical
complaint or supposedly enhancing them in some way. The reasoning
behind the procedure varies, but trepienation has been used especially
(18:42):
to treat head injuries that might lead to swelling inside
the brain inflammation in the head. So like head injuries
that involve the fracture of the skull arising from accidents
or violence. This is a big thing that would cause
somebody to seek trepenation and maybe they get hit in
the head. There's a fracture and there's some swelling. Some
(19:02):
bits of bone can be removed and a hole can
be cut to allegedly relieve the swelling. It's also been
speculated that it may have been used to treat headaches,
you know, bad headaches, or other things that were thought
to be the swelling of the brain. Maybe as a
hypothetical treatment for a variety of mental and neurological conditions,
(19:23):
such as epilepsy. But one of the really startling things
about trepnation is in certain times and places, how often
this procedure was survivable. You know, I would just assume
that before modern medicine, this is just one hundred percent
death rate on drilling a hole in the skull.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because you hear you hear dire stories
about about other pre modern surgical procedures, and you would
just assume messing around in the skull essentially with the brain,
you're going to you're going to run up against the
high death rate.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah, And to be clear, the the survival rate of
a trepidation procedure is wildly different at different times and
places in history, so you can tell from looking at
human remains, even before written records, of how successful surgical
procedures were. You can just tell from looking at remains
(20:18):
of people who have had this procedure done. Sometimes bone
has healed over after a trepidation procedure, other times it
has not. But in cases where the bone has healed over,
it proves that the patient survived the operation for a
significant time afterwards, dead people don't heal, So of course
(20:38):
there are lots of times where you know it might
be a coin flip whether you would survive trepanation. But
some estimates based on surveys of tripand remains, indicate that
during the late Incan period they had gotten really good
at this Somewhere around eighty percent of trepanning patients probably
survived the operation.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
As a point of comparison, in some of the articles
I was looking at, they compared that to craniotomy similar
you know, like a removing part of the skull procedures
in field hospitals during the US Civil War, So you know,
hundreds of years later where survival rates were roughly half
of that. Oh wow, so yeah, like they had really
(21:19):
gotten quite good at this procedure in the late Incan period.
So what tools were used to conduct a tripanning? It
could be any number of things. You would need some
kinds of scrapers and blades, These would be any number
of obsidian or bronze implements. But the semi circular bronze
to me was absolutely a common part of the tripanning toolkit.
(21:42):
And this connects to an article I was reading an
ARS Technica article from twenty twenty two by Keona N.
Smith called ancient Peruvian was buried with tools for cranial
surgery and then good subheader quote. He was also buried
with the partial skulls of two former patients, taking a
(22:02):
little keepsake. Yeah yeah, So the article describes it was
at the time a recent discovery from a tomb excavated
in a temple complex at Waca Las Ventanas, which is
an archaeological site in Peru, and this would have been
a site from the Sican culture or the Lumbayak culture.
(22:23):
The body in the tomb appears to have been that
of a secon brain surgeon, a person specializing in trepanning,
and we can tell that in part because of the
tools that were buried with him. These include bronze awls
with wooden handles, needles, and blades, as well also non
occupation grave goods indicating the burial of a relatively rich
(22:47):
and high status person. These non occupational grave goods would
be a gold mask with feathers around the eyes, big
bronze breastplate, and copper bowls lined with gold. But specifically
addressing the Toomey, the author of this article rights quote.
Most of the knives were single edge blades, but one
was clearly special. The semi circular blade called a toume,
(23:12):
was a staple in both surgery and ritual sacrifice for
the Sicon. Their predecessors, the Moche and later the Inca,
ritual tomes were large and elaborate, but ancient surgeons used
a smaller, more utilitarian version for trepanation. So you might
have your big, gorgeous gold ceremonial to me that's got
the picture of a you know, a founding culture hero
(23:34):
on it, or you might have a smaller bronze when
that you actually used to cut holes in people's skulls.
The article here quotes Sicon National Museum Director Carlos Alera,
who says that the museum is trying to compare the
instruments found in this grave to those that would be
used by a modern surgeon. One big difference that gets
(23:54):
called out is material. Of course, you know modern surgeons
are going to be using modern probably steel surgical knives.
Actually I didn't even look this up. What are knives
usually made out of for surgery? I assume their steel anyway,
whatever that material would be. But these surgical knives are
made of copper with a high arsenic content. The reason
(24:15):
there was high arsenic content was that it helped strengthen
the metal, so like a copper arsenic alloy is stronger
than a copper one alone.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
This will be interesting because we'll get back into this
and the knife we'll talk about in the second half
of this episode.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
To read from the article again, quote two examples of
the surgeon's work also joined him In his grave. Archaeologists
found two frontal bones, the bone that makes up the forehead.
One belonged to an adult, one belonged to a child,
and neither originally belonged to the surgeon. His was still
attached to the rest of his skull. Both had been
carefully cut using a classic trepanation technique. So those are
(24:53):
the two keepsakes, you know, pieces of other people's skulls
taken with him. I wonder what that means. Is that
just like a you know, oh this is a time
I did a really good job, or well.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
One wonders if they might have been teaching implements. You know,
if you're bringing your tools, maybe you're bringing your knowledge
with you. I think of how in various medical professions,
you know, you will practice using you know, some real teeth,
real bones, some sort or you know, or real other
actual pieces of a body in order to practice your craft,
(25:25):
and if it's not something that decays, you may keep
that potentially as a as a as a teaching implement
So yeah, maybe with something like that.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, I could see that. I mean, I don't know
if it really work this way, but I wonder that
sort of thing would be useful, almost like tracing paper,
you know, Oh yeah, this is the kind of I mean,
I guess every every injury would be different, though I
know part of the skill of the surgeon involved here
would be knowing where and how to cut, knowing like
(25:54):
what the size of the cut in the skull should
be where to cut to avoid excess bleeding. You know,
these are all important things to know to help the
patient survive the procedure. And it must have been like
part of the answer of like how did these did
the late INCA period end up with these relatively high
survival rates for trepidation because again, think about these other
(26:17):
times when all throughout history where like maybe half the
people who did this died. The skill of the surgeon
was probably a very big deal. But another factor cited
in this article I was talking about is hygiene. They
must have somehow been practicing a relatively strong hygiene regimen
to do successful surgery without deadly infections on the regular.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing like that they would, Yeah,
they would have to at least lock into it, if
not make significant discoveries about what they should or be
doing before conducting you know, cranial operations.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Another interesting question is anesthesia. What did what, if anything
did they use for anesthesia? We don't really know the
answer is kind of an interesting mystery, though this article
points to a discovery within the surgeons to him at
Wacallas Fintanas that might contribute knowledge to that, and it
was that the kit that was buried with the surgeon
(27:14):
also included a piece of tree bark, which the curator
at that museum, Alera, had said, you know, we wonder
if this might be a medicinal bark of some kind,
because of course medicinal barks do exist. We don't know that,
to be clear, but we don't We know that there
are some medicinal barks like willow bark, of course is
(27:34):
anti inflammatory, and so I guess there are questions about
whether this bark might have been something like that.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, I mean we're talking about a part of the
world that has rich biodiversity. Yeah, with any number of known,
unknown or erased, you know, examples of botanical substances that
can be used medicinally. You know what, what sort of
material to they know about that have been completely forgotten
(28:02):
and need to be rediscovered and so forth.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Totally, So that's the to me, unlike the dagger you
have in mind in many ways in shape and in function,
but I think still a pretty fascinating artifact.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Yes, that's a great one and definitely gets into I
think we kind of tease the idea of sacrificial blades
a little bit, and this one I think checks off
that box at least in part. All Right, the blade
(28:35):
that I'm going to talk about next, it is a
specific blade, and out of talking about the specific blade,
going to sort of pull out and talk more about
this style of blade in its entirety. This is one
of the blades that inspired this series that I was like, Oh,
I should really cover this, But when I started looking
(28:57):
at it, I realized it was just such a huge
topic because the specific blade I'm going to reference here
is a chris that is a type of traditional, highly
stylized Indonesian blade. Generally it's associated with Java, but also
other parts of Indonesia. And when I first started looking
into it, I was like, oh, this could maybe make
(29:18):
for a nice artifact episode, and then I was like,
oh no, there's too much here. This would have to
be at least a full episode. And then I quickly
realized like it would have to be like multiple episodes
because one is tempted to compare it to say the
Samurai sword in terms of the artistry, the technique, the history,
(29:39):
but in other ways it seems even more complicated than that,
because you have a lot of diverse imagery, and it's
going to depend on exactly where it was produced, when
it was produced, the details of what everything symbolizes. But
it is such a fascinating blade because you've probably seen
(30:00):
examples of it out there, listener, at the very least
you would recognize it. The version that is often depicted
and certainly catches the eye is a very wavy blade,
like a highly stylized almost snake shaped dagger, often with
a highly stylized hilt and a highly stylized sheath, and
(30:22):
just looking at it like you you know, the mind
run wild, runs wild, you know, whether you know anything
about the traditions involved here or you know, or you're
you're just coming in completely cold. You know, it's like
why is it shaped like that? And you know, why
is the handle like that? And then what are all
these little images that are a part of the blade,
(30:44):
So that in many ways it feels like the ultimate
transformation of a utilitarian implement of some sort of a
tool or weapon into a thing that is just pure
symbol and meaning. Though you to be clear, you still
could absolutely top somebody with one of these. So I'm
going to be talking about Chris's, but I want to
(31:06):
and that is generally spelled kr I S and in English.
I'm going to talk specifically though, about the Chris of Nod,
also known as the Keras of Nod because sometimes Keras
instead of Chris is used, also known as just Nod's Chris.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Take me off to the land of Nod.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Okay, let's start with the name. Who is this nod
fellow spelled k n a U D and I'm I'm
assuming I'm pronouncing that correctly. I looked around for some
pronunciation guides on this. This is a Dutch name, and
most of what I got back were either specific mentions
of this blade or insistences that I was misspelling the name,
which I'm not. In this case, Well, this was the
(31:49):
name of a nineteenth century Dutch physician, and his name
is only attached to the dagger in question because it
was gifted to him by paku Alum, the fifth Duke
of the Javanese Duchy of paku Aliman. The duchy still
co rules in the special region of Jagi Karta in Indonesia,
(32:11):
and the current Duke is Pacu Alum the tenth. The
Dutch were, of course highly invested in the region, to
say the least, first via the colonial influences of the
Dutch East India Company. The British then occupied Java from
eighteen eleven through eighteen sixteen, and the Duchy of Pacu
Aliman was established during this period, and when the Dutch
(32:33):
regained control of Java in eighteen sixteen, the Duchy became
an independent state of the Kingdom of the Netherlands under
the Dutch East Indies administration until Indonesia's independence in nineteen
forty five. Okay, So obviously there is a lot of
history that I just skimmed pasted really quickly. There's obviously
(32:54):
a lot of back and forth in a lot of
nuance there. But hopefully this gives you just an idea
of why a re old Javanese ruler would have gifted
an elaborate dagger to a dutch Man.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Doctor Charles Nod here reportedly treated the Duke's son and
helped him overcome an illness that had some associations with
black magic, and in thanks for treating the sun and
because nod was apparently a student of Javanese mysticism, Pacu
alumn the fifth gifted him this particular Chris I included
(33:25):
images here of both Pacu Alum the fifth and Charles Nod.
I think you'll agree. Charles Nod in this image anyway,
absolutely looks like a haunted portrait in a haunted mansion.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
I assume he's the guy on the left, yes, the
tilting his head slightly forward and looking up with his
eyes like he's doing an Aphex Twin album cover.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah, yeah, maybe it's just a product of the scan.
I think this was I cut this out of a
book I was I was referencing. But yeah, he looks
a little creepy here.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Flake one of those pictures penny Wise in the book
that comes alive exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
So what does this blade look like? While there are
a lot of images online, you can look up Chris
of Nod and you can see various images for yourself.
The remains of the iron blade and the blade alone,
it lacks a hill to or a sheath, are still
covered by a thin decorative layer of copper, and it
is decorated with illustrations from the Hindu epic the Ramayana,
(34:27):
so one sees figures and vegetation. You can see chariots
in battle, characters from the Hindu epic and so forth.
According to author and expert David van Duran in his
book Charles Nod's Karis. Some of the identifiable elements include
the monkey warrior Hahneman, the demon king, Ravna dwarfs or
(34:50):
paquin Kawan. These are the like the clown dwarf servants
of the hero in Javanese puppet theater, but they're also snakes,
possibly nagas dogs. There's a demon army, there's a monkey army,
and more. I know that sounds like a lot to
fit on a single blade that again does not have
an intact hilt anymore, a Hilton handle or anything. It's
(35:14):
just the blade. But yes, they really do pack that
much detail into this, into this, this highly stylized blade.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
It's busy, it's very busy, very Yes, it's like a
spiritual Wearswaldo.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Yeah. And we don't even necessarily have all of it.
There are pieces of it that have fallen away. It
is not in pristine condition by you know, any stretch.
But what we do have is absolutely remarkable, gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
So we'll get more into just what a Chris is
here in a bit. And again this is a topic
where I'm only going to be able to really dip
our toes into it. But again, the short version is
that it's a highly decorative, highly stylized, highly symbolic dagger.
The most famous of these have wavy blades, but they're
not all wavy, some are st and the Cris of
(36:01):
Nod is, to be clear, a rather straight blade as well.
It does not have any of the signature waves that
are often associated with the Chris. The Cris blade has
been produced throughout the islands of Indonesia, but they're especially
prominent in Java, also prominent to a degree in Bali
as well. So the history of this particular Chris roughly
(36:24):
breaks down as fall. These are some of the main
the main points in its known history, so according to
an inscription on the blade itself, it was forged in
at least thirteen forty two CE. This would make it
a product of the Majapahi Empire, a Hindu Buddhist empire
(36:46):
that ruled Java in some surrounding territory, ultimately lasting from
twelve ninety two through fifteen twenty seven, when it was
conquered by the Demak Sultanate. This was just a little
more than a decade fallollowing first contact in this region
with Europeans. I believe it would have been the Portuguese.
Then at a much later date it is gifted to
(37:08):
Charles Nod and this would have been the late eighteen hundreds,
and then it was presumed lost around nineteen oh three,
but it apparently remained in the family's possession in Indonesia,
was hidden during the Japanese occupation that's forty two through
forty five, and then the family took the blade to
the Netherlands during the Indonesian National Revolution that immediately followed,
(37:29):
and it remains to this day time to understand in
Amsterdam's kit Royal Tropical Institute. So this blade is apparently
the oldest surviving Chris that has a verifiable age. So
again that's not to say this is definitely the oldest,
like may there are other blades that may be older,
(37:49):
but this is the one that currently has a verifiable
age according to most experts.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Very helpful that its origins are actually inscribed on it.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Right or it's thought that this is the origin dat.
I've also read that it's possible that it's older, but
given that the dates on there, or at least in
some form is on there, it would mean okay, it
has to be at least this old. Maybe it's older,
but this it has to be this old, okay. And
now I have to admit I was a bit dubious
of this claim at first, again knowing nothing about this previously,
(38:21):
you know, could the oldest surviving example of this tradition
really have been given away to a foreigner as a
gift and eventually sent away to a European museum. As
it turns out, though, there seems to be a case
for this, a strong case for this, for a few
different reasons, and with a few different caveats For starters,
there's the base fact that we're dealing with iron based artifacts,
(38:43):
and some of these I should also mention to call
back to an episode we did previously. Sometimes they use
meteoric iron in these artifacts as well, But at any rate,
we were talking iron based artifacts in a humid tropical climate.
So if a blade is not properly protected, it's just
going to naturally deteriorate. Also, as we see in other
(39:03):
blade cultures, such as that of the Samurai sword, the
blade itself was considered the most important and the most
sacred part, and additional parts such as hill sheath so forth,
these were interchangeable and so they might change multiple times
during the lifetime of a particular blade, and this can
apparently complicate accurate datings of a blade as well. And then,
(39:28):
as our brief history overview might have suggested to listeners
were also dealing with the region, they saw a great
deal of upheaval during the colonial period. You had the
Dutch East India Company, the British and the French were
also involved at different points, and the ensuing conflicts also
pitted various factions against each other. Artifacts were destroyed, lost,
(39:49):
absconded with, sometimes into private collections. Also, you had blades
that were just outright and neglected. And all of this,
as we've seen with various cultures impacted by colonialism, led
to a great deal of cultural loss, including material loss.
So the fact that the Chris of Nod could survive
six centuries despite all of this is generally quite remarkable, again,
(40:14):
especially given all the pivotal moments in its timeline where
it could have just been lost, it could have just
remained buried, it could have been more neglected than it was.
So apparently we're rather lucky to have this one at all. Now,
at this point, I want to back up a little
bit sort of widen and talk a little more generally
about the chris as a type of blade. One of
(40:36):
the main sources I turned to for this, in addition
to the aforementioned book, is Introduction to Chris, a Traditional
Weapon of Indonesia Preserved Lingering Issues of Facts by Purwatou
and Nurhamada, published in twenty twenty one in the Indonesian
Journal of English Educational Literature and Culture. So the name
(40:58):
Chris or sometimes keras this is apparently this apparently stems
from an older Javanese word that meant to slice, and
the blade is again often identified by its highly asymmetrical design.
Generally it's stylized hilt and sheath and in some cases
that wavy snake like blade. Again, not every Chris is wavy,
(41:21):
but many are. And it's one of those things like
if you pull up like a Wikipedia article about it,
you're gonna you're definitely gonna see images, or you just
do an image search for Chris, you're going to see
that wavy blade almost saw Like I guess.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
If you if you're looking at an image, I would
say it almost suggests you're looking at it through water.
The rippling back and forth of the blade the way
the way it often looks. But yeah, like you said,
this one does not have that appearance.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
The water ripple comparison, I think is really apt considering
the amount of skill that went into creating these, and
so there is that kind of precision that you get,
that wave like precision. Even more so, like I think
the snake comparison is all so really important. But yeah,
way like water ripples, that's nice. And also the snake,
(42:07):
the naga is also associated with water, so that's that's
a solid comparison as well. So it's said that the
blade was originally a close combat weapon that was treated
(42:27):
with poison. The poison here was known as warrengon, also
known as arsenic. Oh yeah, And the interesting bit here
is that we have there seemed to be a couple
of different dimensions to this. So on one hand, there
was the idea, Okay, the blade is ritually treated with
this arsenic, but apparently like not a situation where like, okay,
(42:50):
you're going into battle rubs some arsenic on the blade. No,
the arsenic is used in the creation of the blade,
treatment of the blades tip, it's forging, and this process
would bring out the contrast apparently between the dark black
iron and the light colored silvery nickel layers.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
So my understanding that right, is saying that you could
put a poison, a permanent poisonous element into the metal
when it was forged, and that would still be effective
as a poison for somebody getting cut by it. I
don't so it just seems kind of hard to believe chemically, right.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
I think it's more of a supernatural idea of the
poison here, because again we're getting into we're talking about
an implement that is it's almost like a blessing of
the blade. That's my understanding of it here. I might
have to come back and see if there are sources
out there that really get into the possibility of any
kind of like permanently poisoned blade. But that's one of
(43:49):
the interesting things about poison. We just discussed this on
the show before in the past, talking about poisons and
various East Asian belief systems, where yes, there were definitely
real poisons then as there are today, but poison also
takes on the connotation of curse, and not only curse,
(44:12):
but sort of like accusations of poison, and we see
this in belief systems throughout the world, like the idea
that if something evil has happened, illness or or something else,
it must be a poison that was used by evil doers,
the poisons of witches. So the poisons and curses of
magic users are kind of interchangeable, and therefore we might
(44:33):
think of this as kind of like a holy poison
in some respects a wholly magical poison.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Now, again, the Chris, like other long lived ceremonial knives,
is highly symbolic. Every detail of the blade often grounded
in some sort of function, such as the blood gutters,
which I think we've pointed this out on the show before.
Blood gutters are not actually for allowing blood to blurt
out of a wound there, it's about reducing blade weight,
(45:01):
you know, things like that, or again this specially treated
blade tip. They take on various religious and philosophical meanings.
For example, the shape of the blade apparently has different meanings.
The wavy blade symbolizes wisdom and is linked to the
iconography of the serpent Naga in motion. And furthermore, the
(45:21):
exact number of curves in the blade is tied to
precise ideas about theology and power. Ones in the relationship
between kings and the gods, that sort of thing. In
that paper publishing the Journal of English Educational Literature and Culture,
there's like a whole chart of like, okay, two waves
it means this, three waves it means that, and they're
all They're all very to my eye complex ideas about
(45:45):
again the theology of the theological properties of power. The
straight Cris blade, on the other hand, is said to
symbolize determination to maintain principles, and it's tied to the
idea of the Naga at rest. So the Naga is
not moving, it's not waving, you know, it's not slithering,
but it is straight. The exact period of production is
(46:09):
also going to dictate exactly how one might read a
Chris like this, And this is again not even getting
to all the various outright illustrations and inscriptions are going
to be on the blade as well. One example of
the differences you encounter. So if it was created within
a Hindu Buddhist culture, you're going to have, you know,
(46:30):
you probably have a lot more illustrations of gods and
beings and animals. Meanwhile, Islamic cultures, as you can well imagine,
under Islamic cultures, you're going to have Islamic crises that
typically employ fewer of these elements.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Let's representation a m. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Now, another tidbit I ran across is this idea, and
this has been referenced in multiple works that a long
form of the straight chris was also reportedly used in
ritual executions or Hu Kuman saloon. And this would have
been achieved allegedly by having the execution victim assume a
(47:09):
squatting position, and then the executioner stands behind the victim
and then would drive the crisp down through the clavicle
to the heart. I mean, that's what I said. All
most of these execution techniques, I don't know. I couldn't find.
I didn't find any papers that like really dug into
(47:30):
how effective this would be. But I guess on paper,
if someone's like, hey, this guy knows what he's doing.
He's going to stick it right through your neck straight
to the heart and then it's done, I guess I'm
okay with that. Certainly better than some of the horror
stories we've discussed involving multiple strikes of the headman's axe. Right. Yes, Now,
this does lead me to another issue that comes up.
(47:50):
There are some arguments that that curvy wavy blade, the
snake like blade, the snake in motion, that this would
be an ideal blade because it might produce a wider
wound channel when it's actually used in battle, or that
you would encounter less friction and suction inside the wound,
so allowing for like a deeper and faster stab, like
(48:12):
you'd be able to stab in and then pull it
back out, save time and then you can move on
to your in the next battlefield stabbing that sort of thing.
As far as I can tell, a lot of these
arguments seem to be kind of speculative. I couldn't find
an example of anyone like actually testing them out on
some sort of you know, you know, cadaver or animal body.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
Though, stick dummy with the Chris.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yeah. But if if one does, and certainly if anybody
knows of one out there, send it my way and
we'll come back to the topic. So these ideas, though
I'm not going to dismiss them out of hand, could
be true, but most accounts really seem to focus on again,
all of these stylistic and symbolic meanings of say the
curvy blade, and I mean you can kind of get
(48:55):
this too by just looking at it. It just it
just you know, enraptures you to look at a curvy Chris.
So it seems more likely that these that it's a
you know, a major esthetic factor here rather than a
performance design. Yeah, finally, this is this is a somewhat
lesser cultural value. But if you listen to our Weird
(49:16):
House Cinema episodes, you might remember a few months back
we discussed the nineteen eighty eight Indonesian supernatural action movie
Lady Terminator. That film does feature a holy demon slaying
Chris in it, which I think, you know, again that's
a that's an exploitation action film, but it does give
(49:36):
you an idea of just how important the Chris is
within these different Indonesian traditions, like it is the holy blade,
it is the of course, it is the blade that
you would use to eliminate some sort of supernatural evil.
Speaker 3 (49:48):
Do I remember right that in that movie there is
a snake or an eel that turns into the Chris.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
You were correct, Yeah, and that would also tie into
these ideas of the cur rev blade or even the
straight blade again being connected to a snake or a naga.
So and again, and also to water and to water creatures,
the wavy movement and wave forms in the water.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Well done, mythologically valid.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yeah yeah, so again, there is so much out there
about about the Chris. You know, whole books have been
written about it. And in fact, the one author, the
Dutch author that I alluded to here, David von Duren,
has written multiple books about the Chris. Some of them
aren't as easy to get a hold of, but they're
out there. I think you generally have to like order
(50:38):
them from Amsterdam. But again, deep topic. I didn't want
to just go on and on about the Chris here,
but hopefully I've given you just a sample of just
how rich and amazing these blades are.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
Very cool. This is not something I think about most blades.
You know, you ever see the scene in a lot,
don't know the story where the sword expert it like,
picks it up and wants to feel the edge of
the blade. They like put their thumb on the sharp part,
And I don't know what. I don't have that impulse
with knives. I mean, I like a good knife in
the kitchen. I'm a fan of good knives, but I
don't always want to go touching the blade to feel
(51:15):
how sharp it is, Chris, for some reason like I
want to get my hands on that. I want to
put that right on the pad of my thumb and
see how sharp it feels.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah. Yeah, it is something about the how organic it looks.
It looks like a living thing, And I believe that
is part like there is an idea that they are
kind of like living things, you know, the idea that
is kind of getting back to what we discussed in
the first episode what Borges said about knives and especially
weapons of that have shed blood. How they kind of
(51:46):
take on a life of their own, and they have
their own their own ambitions and their own grudges, and
we as mortal humans just we occasionally get to hold them,
We occasionally wield them. We occasionally rub our thumb against
their edge to see how sharp they are.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
They must seek out a meat host to carry them along.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
Yeah, all right, we're gonna close out this episode. But
Joe and I were just talking about this off mic,
I believe we have one more episode in this series
for you. We're gonna reach into the into the blade
drawer one more time and.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Greet into that bag of books. If there's a Chris
in there.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
See what see what pricks us, and we're gonna pull
out at least two more. We'll see. We'll see what
they're like once we actually get our hands on them
and start to rubbing our thumb against the blade. So
tune in on Thursday for what should probably be the
final episode in this three part series. But in the meantime, again,
we'd love to hear from you out there. Do you
(52:44):
have expertise or information about either of the blades and
blade types that we discussed here today, If so, write
in we'd love to hear from you. Or if you
just have blades that are of personal cultural importance to
you and you would like to share them with us. Yeah,
(53:05):
send us your story, send us some pictures of that night.
We would love to hear from you.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
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Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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