Very odd Sudanese sword for discussion

[Iain]

Thanks guys for all the comments and detective work. Certainly looks like Timo is spot on with the Del Tin hilt.

This is one of the reasons I wanted to post this here - something just felt off about it. I always get nervous when a one of a kind sword shows up that's supposedly genuine in a culture that stuck to a particular pattern pretty rigidly. I'd actually done a little photoshoped image without the knobs on this hilt to illustrate just how close, well now it appears identical, this was to a viking hilt. Obviously no need to post that now.

I guess this just goes to show the interest generated by thinking something is rare and unusual leads to some cloudy judgement and someone spending a lot of money for nothing - I am quite curious now where this ended up. The sad thing out of all this I think is that because Christie's sold it, it will probably knock around in the collecting world for quite a while longer as a genuine article.