A dagger is a knife fighting weapon with a very sharp point designed or capable of being
used as a thrusting or stabbing weapon.
The design dates to human prehistory, and daggers have been used throughout human experience
to the modern day in close combat confrontations.
Many ancient cultures used adorned daggers in ritual and ceremonial purposes, a trend
which continues to the present time in the form of art knives.
The distinctive shape and historic usage of the dagger have made it iconic and symbolic.
Over the years, the term has been used to describe a wide variety of thrusting knives,
including knives that feature only a single cutting edge, such as the European rondel
dagger or the Persian pesh-kabz, or, in some instances, no cutting edge at all, such as
the stiletto of the Renaissance.
However, over the last hundred years or so, authorities have recognized that the dagger,
in its contemporary or mature form, has certain definable characteristics, including a short
blade with a sharply tapered point, a central spine or fuller, and two cutting edges sharpened
the full length of the blade, or nearly so.
Most daggers also feature a full crossguard to keep the hand from riding forwards onto
the sharpened blade edges.
Another distinctive feature of the modern dagger is that it is designed to position
the blade horizontally when using a conventional palm grip, enabling the user to slash right
or left as well as thrust the blade between an opponent's ribs.
The twin full-length edges enable the user to make broad slashes using either a forehand
or backhand arm movement, while the sharp, acutely pointed tip makes the knife an effective
thrusting or stabbing weapon.
This versatility distinguishes the modern dagger from more specialized thrusting knives,
such as the stiletto.
Early history
Much like battle axes, daggers evolved out of prehistoric tools.
In Neolithic times, daggers were made of materials such as flint, ivory or bone and were used
as weapons since the earliest periods of human civilization.
The earliest metal daggers are of copper and appear in the early Bronze Age, in the 3rd
millennium BCE, predating the Bronze Age sword.
From pre-dynastic Egypt, daggers were adorned as ceremonial objects with golden hilts and
later even more ornate and varied construction.
One early silver dagger was recovered with midrib design.
Traditionally, some military and naval officers wore dress daggers as symbols of power, and
modern soldiers are still equipped with combat knives and knife bayonets.
Copper daggers of Early Minoan III were recovered at Knossos.
In ancient Egypt, daggers were usually made of copper or bronze, while royalty had gold
weapons.
The 1924 opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun revealed two daggers, one with a gold blade,
and one of smelted iron.
Iron ore was not found in Egypt, making the iron dagger rare, and the context suggests
that the iron dagger was valued on a level equal to that of its ceremonial gold counterpart.
The iron dagger is actually a majority iron content alloy that is considered to be of
meteoric origin.
One of the earliest objects made of smelted iron dates is a dagger dating to before 2000
BCE, found in a context that suggests it was treated as an ornamental object of great value.
Found in a Hattic royal tomb dated about 2500 BCE, at Alaca Höyük in northern Anatolia,
the dagger has a smelted iron blade and a gold handle.
Antiquity The artisans and blacksmiths of Iberia in
what is now southern Spain and southwestern France produced various iron daggers and swords
of high quality from the 5th to the 3rd century BCE, in ornamentation and patterns influenced
by Greek, Punic, and Phoenician culture.
The exceptional purity of Iberian iron and the sophisticated method of forging, which
included cold hammering, produced double-edged weapons of excellent quality.
One can find technologically advanced designs such as folding knives rusted among the artifacts
of many Second Iberian Iron Age cremation burials or in Roman Empire excavations all
around Spain and the Mediterranean.
Iberian infantrymen carried several types of iron daggers, most of them based on shortened
versions of double-edged swords, but the true Iberian dagger had a triangular-shaped blade.
Iberian daggers and swords were later adopted by Hannibal and his Carthaginian armies.
The Lusitanii, a pre-Celtic people dominating the lands northwest of Iberia successfully
held off the Roman Empire for many years with a variety of innovative tactics and light
weapons, including iron-bladed short spears and daggers modeled after Iberian patterns.
During the Roman Empire, legionaries were issued a pugio, a double-edged iron thrusting
dagger with a blade of 7–12 inches.
The design and fabrication of the pugio was taken directly from Iberian daggers and short
swords; the Romans even adopted the triangular-bladed Iberian dagger, which they called the parazonium.
Like the gladius, the pugio was most often used as a thrusting.
As an extreme close-quarter combat weapon, the pugio was the Roman soldier's last line
of defense.
When not in battle, the pugio served as a convenient utility knife.
Middle Ages
The term dagger appears only in the Late Middle Ages, reflecting the fact that while the dagger
had been known in antiquity, it had disappeared during the Early Middle Ages, replaced by
the hewing knife or seax.
The dagger reappeared in the 12th century as the "knightly dagger", or more properly
cross-hilt or quillon dagger, and was developed into a common arm and tool for civilian use
by the late medieval period.
The earliest known depiction of a cross-hilt dagger is the so-called "Guido relief" inside
the Grossmünster of Zürich.
A number of depictions of the fully developed cross-hilt dagger are found in the Morgan
Bible.
Many of these cross-hilt daggers resemble miniature swords, with cross guards and pommels
very similar in form to swords of the period.
Others, however, are not an exact match to known sword designs, having for example pommel
caps, large hollow star shaped pommels on so-called “Burgundian Heraldic daggers”
or antenna style cross and pommel, reminiscent of Hallstatt era daggers.
The cross-hilt type persisted well into the Renaissance
The Old French term dague appears to have referred to these weapons in the 13th century,
alongside other terms such as poignal and basilard.
The Middle English dagger is used from the 1380s.
During this time, the dagger was often employed in the role of a secondary defense weapon
in close combat.
The knightly dagger evolved into the larger baselard knife in the 14th century.
The baselard was considered an intermediate between a short sword and a long dagger, and
became popular also as a civilian weapon.
Sloane MS.
2593 records a song satirizing the use of oversized baselard knives as fashion accessories.
In the Late Middle Ages, knives with blade designs that emphasized thrusting attacks,
such as the stiletto, became increasingly popular, and some thrusting knives commonly
referred to as 'daggers' ceased to have a cutting edge.
This was a response to the deployment of heavy armor, such as maille and plate armour, where
cutting attacks were ineffective and focus was on thrusts with narrow blades to punch
through mail or aim at armour plate intersections.
These late medieval thrusting weapons are sometimes classed by the shape of their hilt
as either roundel, bollock or ear daggers.
The term dagger is coined in this time, as are the Early Modern German equivalents dolch
and degen.
In the German school of fencing, Johannes Liechtenauer and his successors taught fighting
with the dagger.
These techniques in some respects resemble modern knife fighting, but emphasized thrusting
strokes almost exclusively, instead of slashes and cuts.
When used offensively, a standard attack frequently employed the reverse or icepick grip, stabbing
downward with the blade to increase thrust and penetrative force.
This was done primarily because the blade point frequently had to penetrate or push
apart an opponent's steel chain mail or plate armor in order to inflict an injury.
The disadvantage of employing the medieval dagger in this manner was that it could easily
be blocked by a variety of techniques, most notably by a block with the weaponless arm
while simultaneously attacking with a weapon held in the right hand.
Another disadvantage was the reduction in effective blade reach to the opponent when
using a reverse grip.
As the wearing of armor fell out of favor, dagger fighting techniques began to evolve
which emphasized the use of the dagger with a conventional or forward grip, while the
reverse or icepick grip was retained when attacking an unsuspecting opponent from behind,
such as an assassination.
Renaissance and Early Modern era
The dagger was very popular as a fencing and personal defense weapon in 17th- and 18th-century
Spain, where it was referred to as the daga or puñal.
During the Renaissance Age the dagger was used as part of everyday dress, and daggers
were the only weapon commoners were allowed to carry on their person.
In English, the terms poniard and dirk are loaned during the late 16th to early 17th
century, the latter in the spelling dork, durk, the modern spelling dirk dating to 18th-century
Scots.
Beginning with the 17th century, another form of dagger—the plug bayonet and later the
socket bayonet—was used to convert muskets and other longarms into spears by mounting
them on the barrel.
During the same time, highly elaborate and richly decorated daggers were produced in
India.
Modern
WW1 trench warfare caused daggers and fighting knives to come back in play.
They also replaced the sabres worn by officers, which were too long and clumsy for trench
warfare.
They were worn with pride as a sign of having served front line duty.
Daggers achieved public notoriety in the 20th century as ornamental uniform regalia during
the Fascist dictatorships of Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany.
The resurgence of these dress daggers and accoutrements in post-World War I Germany
gave a much needed boost to the flagging fortunes of the metalworking center Solingen.
Dress daggers were used by several other countries as well, including Japan, but never to the
same extent as those worn by the military and political bodies of the Third Reich or
Fascist Italy.
As combat equipment they were carried by many infantry and commando forces during the Second
World War.
British Commando and other elite units were issued an especially slender dagger, the Fairbairn-Sykes
fighting knife, developed by William E. Fairbairn and Eric A. Sykes from real-life close-combat
experiences gained while serving on the Shanghai Municipal Police Force.
The F-S dagger proved very popular with the commandos, who used it primarily for sentry
elimination.
Some units of the U.S. Marine Corps Raiders in the Pacific were issued a similar fighting
dagger, the Marine Raider Stiletto., though this modified design proved less than successful
when used in the type of knife combat encountered in the Pacific theater due to this version
using inferior materials and manufacturing techniques.
During the Vietnam War, the Gerber Mark II, designed by US Army Captain Bud Holzman and
Al Mar, was a popular fighting knife pattern that was privately purchased by many U.S.
soldiers and marines serving in that conflict.
Aside from military forces, most daggers are no longer carried openly, but concealed in
clothing.
One of the more popular forms of the concealable dagger is the boot knife.
The boot knife is nothing more than a shortened dagger that is compact enough to be worn on
the lower leg, usually by means of a sheath clipped or strapped to a boot or other footwear.
Cultural symbolism
The dagger is symbolically ambiguous.
Daggers are commonly used as part of the insignias of elite military units or special forces,
such as the US Army Airborne Special Operations unit or the Commando Dagger patch for those
who have completed the British All Arms Commando Course.
Daggers may be associated with deception, stealth, and/or treachery due to the ease
of concealment and surprise that someone could inflict with one on an unsuspecting victim,
and indeed many assassinations have been carried out with the use of a dagger, including that
of Julius Caesar.
A cloak and dagger attack is one in which a deceitful, traitorous, or concealed enemy
attacks a person.
On the other hand, for some cultures and military organizations the dagger symbolizes courage
and daring in combat.
Art knives
Daggers are a popular form of what is known as the "art knife", due in part to the symmetry
of the blade.
One of the most famous examples is knifemaker Buster Warenski's replication of the gold
dagger found in Tutankhamun's tomb.
Warenski's dagger was made with a cast gold blade and the knife contained 32 ounces of
pure gold in its construction.
One of the knives required of an American Bladesmith Society Mastersmith is the construction
of an "art knife" or a "European style" dagger.
See also Blade
Dagger Knife
Knife fight List of daggers
Push dagger Notes
References Capwell, Dr. Tobias.
The World Encyclopedia of Knives, Daggers, and Bayonets.
Hermes House.
Leicestershire. 2011.
Dean, Bashford.
Catalogue of European Daggers 1300–1800.
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
New York.
1929.
Edge, David and Paddock, John Miles.
Arms & Armor of the Medieval Knight - An Illustrated History of Weapons in the Middle Ages.
Crescent Books.
New York.
1988.
Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards, Cyril John Gadd, Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond.
The Cambridge Ancient History.
Cambridge University Press.
1970.
Peterson, Harold L. Daggers & Fighting Knives of the Western World.
Bonanza Books.
New York.
1970.
Thompson, Logan.
Daggers and Bayonets - A History.
Paladin Press.
Boulder.
1999.
Vail, Jason.
Medieval and Renaissance Dagger Combat.
Paladin Press.
Boulder.
2006.
External links Battle-ready, functional and decorative daggers
website Dagger website
Arms & Armor - makers of functional and historically accurate dagger reproductions