Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Weapons gathers four objects, three swords and one spearhead, and every member follows the same pattern: each is inseparable from one founding figure or founding event, and each object's physical authenticity is a matter of tradition rather than of proof.

Excalibur is Arthur's sword, carried in two distinct origin stories that later tellings sometimes run together, the sword drawn from a stone that only the true king can pass and the sword given by the Lady of the Lake and returned to her at Arthur's death. Malory's Le Morte Darthur, the most complete and influential English telling, keeps both as separate blades. The name traces through the Welsh Caledfwlch to the Irish Caladbolg, a legendary weapon of the Ulster Cycle, pointing to a shared Insular Celtic root for the story of an unbreakable magic sword that predates Arthur's own literary form.

Zulfiqar is the sword tradition holds the Prophet Muhammad gave to Ali ibn Abi Talib at the Battle of Uhud, immortalised in the saying that there is no hero but Ali and no sword but Zulfiqar, and shown in art with its distinctive forked blade; no physical object can be verified as the sword itself. The Swords of the Prophet Muhammad at Topkapi Palace are a further set of blades revered as the Prophet's and his companions', kept in Cairo under the Mamluks before being brought to Istanbul in 1517; their blades are old, but their gold and gem mountings are later work, and attribution rests on tradition.

The Holy Lance of Vienna departs from the other three in naming no founder of a faith but the instrument of Christ's death, venerated since the thirteenth century as the spear that pierced the crucified Jesus and honoured, alongside it, as carrying a nail of the True Cross.