For well-known reasons, March 2020 was a slow month in many ways, as the world almost stopped. The archaeological activities were also very limited in the past month, with the most impressive discovery announced by Italian archaeologist Vittoria Dall'Armellina, who discovered that a mislabeled sword in the Venetian Saint Lazarus Monastery is actually 5,000 years old. The chemical composition of the sword matches that of other specimens found in the Royal Palace of Arslantepe, an archaeological site in Eastern Anatolia, and the sword found in the Tokat Museum in Turkey, originating in the Sivas region. Their shapes are also remarkably similar.

The nine swords from the archaeological site of Arslantepe (Melid) attest the use of this weapon for the first time in the world – at least a millennium before the already known examples. They date back to the Early Bronze Age (c. 33rd to 31st centuries). A cache of nine swords and daggers was found in the 1980s by Marcella Frangipane's team of Rome University. They are composed of arsenic-copper alloy. Among them, three swords were beautifully inlaid with silver. These weapons have a total length of 45 to 60 cm which suggests their description as either short swords or long daggers. Some of these swords are now on display at the Archaeological Museum in Malatya.