700-year-old sword called 'real-life Excalibur' was found stuck inside a rock

A 700-year-old sword that was founded embedded in a rock at the bottom of a river in Bosnia and Herzegovina is being called the 'real-life Excalibur'.

The medieval weapon is being compared to King Arthur's legendary magical sword because of the similar ways in which they were both discovered and extracted, reports The Sun.

Ancient legend says King Arthur was the only person who could pull Excalibur from a stone which made him the rightful heir to Britain in the 5th and 6th Centuries.

Archaeologists made the discovery at the bottom of the Vrbas River and managed to extract it with their find being described as archaeologically significant.

It was found during an excavation near the ruins of a castle in Zvecaj and 36 feet underwater, embedded in solid rock.

Ivana Pandzic, archaeologist and curator at the Museum of the Republika Srpska, said: "The sword was stuck in a solid rock, so special care was needed when pulling it out."

It's understood there's only one other sword like this to have been found in the Balkans in the past 90 years.

The sword is the first of its kind to be found near the medieval city of Zveca and has been dated back to around the time of the 14th Century.

The nearby castle was destroyed in the 18th Century but is likely to have been home to medieval nobility that ruled the local village.

Experts are trying to work out the history of the weapon, how it came to be stuck deep down in the riverbed's rock and why this happened.

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