Arms of Skanderbeg

It was also said to be so sharp that it could slice a man vertically from head to waist with little effort and cut a huge boulder in half with a single blow.

Currently, the weapons (helmet and swords) are on display in the Imperial Armoury, a collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, after having passed through the hands of countless noblemen since the 15th century when they were first brought over to Italy from Albania by Skanderbeg’s wife, Donika Kastrioti.

According to Dhimitër Frëngu, Skanderbeg's scribe and one of his biographers, the first sword was curved (In the original Italian: una scimitarra storta), with a sharp edge and elegantly made of Damascened steel.

It is also known that in Skanderbeg's last visit to the Holy See, Pope Paul II presented the Albanian hero with a sword and a cap (It: una spada ed un elmo).

This sword is fashioned after Ottoman styles of the time, and just as Dhimiter Frengu reported five centuries earlier, is a damascene steel, highly ornamented.

The bottom part bears a copper strip adorned with a monogram separated by rosettes ✽ IN ✽ PE ✽ RA ✽ TO ✽ RE ✽ BT ✽, which means: Jhezus Nazarenus ✽ Principi Emathie ✽ Regi Albaniae ✽ Terrori Osmanorum ✽ Regi Epirotarum ✽ Benedictat Te (Jesus Nazarene Blesses Thee [Skanderbeg], Prince of Emathia (since he was named after Alexander the Great), King of Albania, Terror of the Ottomans, King of Epirus).

Thus the inscriptions on the helmet may refer to the unsettled name by which Albania was known at the time, as a means to identify Skanderbeg's leadership over all Albanians across regional denominative identifications.

[2] According to a report by historian Shefqet Pllana, Sami Frasheri in his Kamus-al-Alam maintains that the wording "Dhu lKarnejn" (owner of the two horns) was an appellative attributed to Alexander the Great of Macedon, the very name which Skanderbeg bore in the Islamic form.

At the request of the pre-WWII Albanian government, an identical copy of the helmet of Skanderbeg lies now in the National Museum of Tirana, Albania.

Later, this prince erected the Museum of Ambras, near Tyrol, which he filled with all sorts of war-related material, as well as paintings and portraits of celebrities of that age.