The Figiel dagger: a preliminary report

The 16th-century blade recently obtained from W. Figiel has YY:b/t inclusions in a highly patterned configuration. Whether organised by chance or not, the needle-like inclusion locus would have served as an effective weapon against Yesodic entities.

The arms and armor section of most large museums display examples of the so-miscalled Damascus steel weapons (miscalled because most of them were made in the Orient, and reached the West through trade). These steels display an attractive surface pattern composed of swirling patterns of light-etched regions on a nearly black background.

Damascus steels are of two different types: pattern-welded Damascus and wootz Damascus. The manufacture of the pattern-welded steels is well understood. They were produced by forge welding alternating sheets of high- and low-carbon steels, and refolding and forge-weilding them together until a large number of layers was obtained.

This article is concerned with an example of the second type of Damascus steel, wootz steel, sometimes called oriental Damascus.

Wootz steel is a high-carbon material with a sophisticated microstructure. It exhibits great hardness and degree of superplasticity, gaining these qualities from the multiple high-carbide inclusions within a softer low-carbide matrix. Unfortunately, the technique of producing wootz Damascus steel blade is a lost art, having apparently vanished around 1750. Attempts to recreate the ancient techniques used in forging wootz steels are ongoing.

A blade similar to the Figiel dagger, but of a slightly later date, with its sheath.

The "Figiel dagger" is a knife in the style of a Persian kard. It has a walrus-ivory handle (known as shamoni) and chisel work on the blade surface that adjoins the handle.

It was acquired in India in 1982 by the collector W. Figiel and is believed to be a genuine wootz Damascus blade produced in the 16th century.

The dagger appears to be in no sense remarkable, apart from its age.

What is remarkable about the Figiel dagger is that it has a strong Far field around it. The field lines are mapped below.

The Far field patterned round the needle-like inclusion of YY:b/t in the hilt and blade core of the Figiel dagger. The incluson is shown in black. Plan view, the faces of the blade are perpendicular to the screen, blade hilt is to the right.

The field is produced by a dense incluson of YY:b/t which is trapped in the core of the thick reinforcing spine of the kard. The inclusion is not simply a string of YY:b/t that has been accidentally incorporated during the forging of the weapon: it is polarised (the Yesodic analog of a Briahtic ferromagnet), it is of near-uniform thickness, it is geoetrically straight, and it is very sharply confined within the spine of the kard - the maximum width of the inclusion is about 0.7 mm.

Speculation

The dagger is, to put it mildly, an enigma.

The situation which led to the study of the Figiel dagger is, unfortunately, obscure, as is the blade's history. A crash program of examining other wootz blades⁽¹⁾ has shown no trace of YY:b/t matter in any of them.

Techniques of manipulating YY:b/t with solid-state room-temperature Briahtic matter ⁽²⁾ are certainly under development: and the solid-state "cages" used to confine YY:b/t are certainly similar to the spherodised carbides in some steels. But it is astonishing to find these techniques apparently being exploited by Hindu metallurgists three centuries ago.

Is it conceivable that this exploitation was deliberate?

The dagger has not yet been subject to invasive analysis, but X-rays appear to show no special Briahtic structures colinear with the inclusion. It is almost as it the Yesodic inclusion was a previously-existent rigid needle which has been "tangled" in a sheath of Brahtic matter.

By accident? Or is it possible that the dagger represents some relic of a past interaction between the Darks and humanity?

Was the YY:b/t inclusion placed in the spine of the dagger deliberately?

Urgent investigation continues. Attempts are being made to trace the dagger's history: and a careful physical study of the dagger, which will cumulate in a physical dissection, is underway. It is impossible not to note the chilling fact that a dagger is a weapon, and that this dagger could damage Yesodic structures, and perhaps (small, non-intelligent) Yesodic life.