w00t2!
Damascus steel made for some very beautiful swords - I remember seeing some knives purportedly made by the same process and wanting to buy one. There was a tale - probably apocryphal - of Richard I meeting one of Saladin's subordinates. To demonstrate the strength of his sword, Richard arose and hacked a block of wood apart. Saladin's emissary responded by demonstrating the subtlety of his sword - tossing a silk pillow in the air and letting it fall on the edge of his Damascus steel, which sliced it apart.
There is a wonderful, if imaginative, description of the creation of wootz in the middle book of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, "Confusion", in which the author claims that wootz was the creation of a caste of Hindoos who sold the eggs of steel to swordsmiths.