<P> Most of the Regalia were recovered by the Allies at the end of the war, but the Nazis had hidden the five most important pieces in hopes of using them as political symbols to help them rally for a return to power, possibly at the command of Nazi Commander Heinrich Himmler . Walter Horn--a Medieval studies scholar who had fled Nazi Germany and served in the Third Army under General George S. Patton--became a special investigator in the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program after the end of the war, and was tasked with tracking the missing pieces down . After a series of interrogations and false rumors, Nuremberg city councilor Stadtrat Fries confessed that he, fellow - councilman Stadtrat Schmeiszner, and a SS official had hidden the Imperial Regalia on March 31, 1945, and he agreed to bring Horn's team to the site . On August 7, Horn and a U.S. army captain escorted Fries and Schmeiszner to the entrance of the Panier Platz Bunker, where they located the treasures hidden behind a wall of masonry in a small room off of a subterranean corridor, roughly eighty feet below ground . The Regalia were first brought back to Nuremberg castle to be reunited with the rest of the Reichskleinodien, and then transferred with the entire collection to Austrian officials the following January . </P> <P> The Museum dates the Lance to the eighth century . Robert Feather, an English metallurgist and technical engineering writer, tested the lance for a documentary in January 2003 . He was given unprecedented permission not only to examine the lance in a laboratory environment, but to remove the delicate bands of gold and silver that hold it together . Based on X-ray diffraction, fluorescence tests, and other noninvasive procedures, he dated the main body of the spear to the 7th century at the earliest Feather stated in the same documentary that an iron pin--long claimed to be a nail from the crucifixion, hammered into the blade and set off by tiny brass crosses--is "consistent" in length and shape with a 1st - century A.D. Roman nail . There was no residue of human blood on the lance . </P> <P> Not long afterward, researchers at the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for Archeology in Vienna used X-ray and other technology to examine a range of lances, and determined that the Vienna Lance dates from around the 8th to the beginning of the 9th century, with the nail apparently being of the same metal, and ruled out a connection with the time of the first century AD . </P> <P> A Holy Lance is conserved in Vagharshapat (previously known as Echmiadzin), the religious capital of Armenia . It was previously held in the monastery of Geghard . The first source that mentions it is a text Holy Relics of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in a thirteenth - century Armenian manuscript . According to this text, the spear which pierced Jesus was to have been brought to Armenia by the Apostle Thaddeus . The manuscript does not specify precisely where it was kept, but the Holy Lance gives a description that exactly matches the lance, the monastery gate, since the thirteenth century precisely, the name of Geghardavank (Monastery of the Holy Lance). </P>

Where was the spear of destiny last seen