A sword dating to the Crusades spent centuries entombed in sand and barnacles off the Mediterranean coast of Israel, until a university student spotted its hilt jutting from the seabed.
Shlomi Katzin, a graduate student in the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa, saw a group of divers with metal detectors while swimming and worried that they could be antiquity thieves, according to a translated statement from the university. After driving the group away, Katzin noticed the sword's hilt in the sand.
