From the recovered bag, Wang then produced a curved martial-arts sword, with a sheath.
On some models, a sheath is placed over the needle or the needle retracts into the barrel following injection to protect healthcare workers and others from accidental needlestick injuries.
Observations by Boris Piotrovsky suggest that decoration and production techniques of Scythian belts and scabbards were borrowed from Urartu.
In an embarrassing incident at the 1943 Tehran Conference, during a ceremony to receive the "Sword of Stalingrad" from Winston Churchill, he took the sword from Stalin but then allowed the sword to fall from its scabbard onto his toes in the presence of the Big Three wartime leaders.
Sir John Boardman regards the gold scabbard, decorated with tiny figures showing a lion hunt, as pre-Achaemenid Median work of about 600 BC, drawing on Assyrian styles, though other scholars disagree, and the British Museum continues to date it to the 5th or 4th centuries.
Lebeck became well known in 1960 after his report on the independence of the Congo "Afrika im Jahre Null" ("Africa in Year Zero") which included a photograph of an African boy, Ambroise Boimbo, standing beside the steel scabbard of Belgian King Baudouin.