What does excalibur officially look like?

Question

I mean the handle, the scabbard.. any other engravings possibly on the blade itself... the hilt.. the whole works. If anyone has a picture for me, i'd appreciate it.

Answer 1

The correct time period for Arthur is the Dark Ages, sometime in the two hundred years after the removal of Romes' Legions from Brittania. Arthur himself, if he existed, would have used the best arms and armour available, and that was still Roman lorica, and the two signature swords of the Empire: the gladius and spatha. Since Excalibur is always described as a sword that Arthur could use from horseback, it would have been a spatha, and was probably made of Damascus pattern welded iron to provide a springy core, with a tack-welded steel edge for strength and sharpness. Such a weapon would have been vastly superior to anything the northern tribes had, and would have cleaved through the native hide armors like a hot knife thru butter.

Answer 2

No ones certain....go with what you like/imagine.

Answer 3

From the medieval Welsh romance “The Dream of Rhonabwy”, translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones:

“Thereupon they could hear Cadwr earl of Cornwall called for. Lo, he arising, and Arthur’s sword in his hand, and the image of two serpents on the sword in gold; and when the sword was drawn from its sheath, as it were two flames of fire might be seen from the mouths of the serpents, and exceeding dreadful was it, that it was not easy for any to look thereon.”

From the medieval French romance commonly called “The Vulgate Merlin”, as translated by Rupert T. Pickens, 5:94 in “Lancelot-Grail: Volume 1, edited by Norris J. Lacy”:

“After King Arthur had been brought back to his senses, he drew his sword from its scabbard, and it cast a great light, as though two tapers had been lit. This was the sword he had pulled out of the stone. And the letters that were written on the sword said that it was called Excalibur—this is a Hebrew word that means in French ‘cuts though iron and steel, and wood,’ and the inscription told the truth, as you will hear in the story a little farther along.”

I believe these two quotations are the only descriptions of Arthur’s sword in medieval texts.

Pickens has here normalized the text, as in Old French of the period the name actually appears as “Escalibor” or “Escaliborc” or “Calibourne” or “Escalibourne” and the index to the work indicates the common spelling was “Escalibor”.

Sir Thomas Malory shortened and changed this passage in his “Le Morte d’Arthur” to:

“... then he drewe his swerd Excalibur, but it was so bryght in his enemyes eyen that it gaf light lyke thirty torchys, ....”

H. Oskar Sommers’ text reads “escalibor”, See http://www.archive.org/details/arthurian... page 94. In the English translation by Henry Wheatley the form is “Escaliboure” (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/tex... , page 118).

The sword is earlier named “Caliburno” in the ablative case by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his “Historia Regum Brittaniae” and referenced as “Caliburn” by his translator Wace. The sword appears as Caliburn in other early French romances. So the preceding “Es-” in later romances appears to be an augmentation of the name, sometimes found with other names beginning with “C”.

“Caliburn” is perhaps a corruption of the Welsh name for Arthur’s sword, rendered “Caledfwlch” in modern, normalized form, representing forms such as “Kaletvwlch” and “Kaletwulch” in the manuscripts. This may be Welsh form of the Irish name Caladbolg (“hard belly”, or possibly “hard lightning”), sometimes written Caladcholg (“hard blade”). “Caladbolg” appears in Irish texts as the name of the sword of King Fergus mac Roich and as the name of the sword of King Fergus mac Leide. One might expect that in the late 5th century the name “Kaletvwlch” would be written in Latin as CALETBOLCUS, perhaps then to be written in Hebrew characters as something like כלטבולכס.

However no-one has yet to explain Caladcholch, Caladbolg, Kaletvwlch, Caliburn, or Escalibur has meaning anything like “cuts thrugh iron, steel, and wood” in Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek or Latin or British or Irish. Possibly an author has remembered that Latin “chalybs” means “steel'. That’s as close as one can get.

Also, accepting the text’s assumption that Escalibor is identical to the sword Arthur pulled from the stone, it ought to have written somewhere on the hilt (presumably in Latin) words that fit Robert de Boron’s statement that whoever could draw the sword from the stone would be king by choice of Jesus Christ [Nigel Bryant’s translation]. Note that this is in indirect speech. The actual message on the sword can be imagined to have been no more than REX PER ☧ “King through Christ”.

Of course, though it is reasonable to assume that Robert de Boron intended the sword in the stone to be identified with Caliburn when he wrote the story, and it is reasonable to assume that most readers made that identification, the “Vulgate Merlin’' is the only French romance that explicitly identifies the two. Malory, drawing from “Vulgate Merlin” of course makes the same identification, and it can also be found in a Welsh retelling of Robert de Boron’s “Merlin”. See http://www.geocities.com/branwaedd/kaled... .

But one French romance, sometimes known as the “Post-Vulgate Merlin”. does not identify Escalibor with the sword in the stone but tells how Arthur got the sword from a hand in lake by the help of a Fay. Later on the Fay comes to court and Arthur only then asks her the name of the sword, which she says is Escalibor. This account also appears in Malory despite its disagreement with Malory’s earlier account. It is, of course, quite normal in legends that when two different texts tell what should be the same story, they disagree, sometimes radically disagree.

Could the sword according to this version have something written on it meaning “King through Christ”? I see no reason why not. Could it have the name of the sword written on it in Hebrew. That seems to me more doubtful, as while we probably should not imagine that Arthur could read Hebrew, the King of Logres ought to have been able to call on someone who could. But if we want to preserve the name, we can imagine that Arthur just hadn’t got around to it. This is only imagination anyway.

The Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson wrote a poem named “Gareth and Lynette" (later included in his “Idyls of the King”) in which it is said that Excalibur has “Take me!” written on one side and “Cast me away!” written on the other. This does not correspond to any known earlier source. However, if one is imagining Arthur’s sword, one could imagine these words on the sword blade, only changing the words to Latin.

Or one might choose not to imagine any of this if one wishes and so forget about the serpents in one text and the inscriptions in another text.

The historical Arthur, if he existed, would indeed probably have used a spatha, However the 6th century was the time when the spatha was going out of use and other types were emerging, or to put it another way, archaelogists choose not to include the slightly variant new types of swords among those called spathas. Those using them may not have changed whatever word they used and in many cases didn’t. But the type of iron and steel available and the competence of the smith along with good luck would have had more to do with whether a particular sword was “good” than whether that sword exactly fit the parameters drawn up for a spatha in the nineteenth century.

As to Arthur’s scabbard, it is only mentioned in medieval romances in the “Post-Vulgate Merlin” when Arthur receives it from the lake. The romance tells nothing more than that Arthur “saw that the scabbard was marvellously rich, and he valued it highly.” (Translation is by Margaret Asher in “Lancelot-Grail: Volume IV, edited by Norris J. Lacy.) Then the scabbard is stolen by Morgaine the Fay.

Answer 4

Since nobody is sure that Excalibur (or Arthur) existed, the best you can do is an artist's rendition. Google some images of Excalibur and see what you come up with.