An Egyptian Anomaly

segolden · An Egyptian Anomaly

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Egyptian tomb painting from 1183 B.C. Aside from the ironworking anvil and bellows (!) being carried by donkeys, note the archer in the upper lefthand corner of the first strip, and the archers on the lower left strip. These people are the famous "Hyksos", Semitic tribes who introduced various technological innovations from Mesopotamia into the Middle East, and who had even conquered Egypt for a time. The composite recurve they're illustrated carrying is often misinterpreted as a conventional "D"-shaped selfbow. Such is not the case, as the extract below shows:

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These bows are also seen in Assyrian carvings, as the text of the extract refers to their possible origin. This is interesting, as the Assyrian Empire bordered on Southwestern Russia and the Caucasus, where composite horsebows are reported by the Ancient Greeks. We often assume that much of Egyptian culture was developed without outside influence. In many instances such as this one, that may not be the case.

Blackcat

Facinating as a matter of interest where are you digging this stuff up from. The history of Archery is something my hubby is really interested in and good links are hard to find.

Robin Hood

this is very interesting i never really had much to do with egyptian archery basicaly everywhere else but theres,
but now i will have to look deeper into the subject.
thanks Segolden

segolden

The strip painting is from a provincial governor's tomb near the Valley of the Kings. The illustration is from an academic paper on the influence of early Semitic trade in iron and glass on the ancient world. The book extract is from "Archery and History", out-of-print New Zealand edition by Prof. L. Browne. I'm always raiding used book stores and public sales, which is where these came from. Some of the few historical websites I've found are these:

http://www.centenaryarchers.gil.com.au/history.htm See illustration from that site below.

http://anthromuseum.missouri.edu/grayson/grayson.shtml

http://www.archerylibrary.com/books/badminton/docs/description.html

The above pic is from about 7500 B.C., near Tassili in upper Egypt, but there are others from around 15,000 B.C. in Libya, showing both African and Caucasian hunters after game together.

Wish I had more web references for you, Blackcat, taken me some twenty years to put a lot of this together from very scattered sources. Unfortunately, it takes digging in libraries and microfilm for most of it. Below is a strung Assyrian bow as mentioned in the first post:

Liam

Fantastic stuff segolden, never looked into the history of archery much untill now, this is brilliant

Steve B

I love the fact that you do the home work and we learn the lessons

Keep up the great tutoring segolden it is great stuff.

segolden

Blackcat

Those sites are amazing. Going to make hubby join up or I will never get to or post on these forums again.

segolden

Glad you finally got him up here, Blackcat, hate to do without a little Scottish input.

As one small addendum, you'll find that general histories of archery include the assumption that the first composite bows originated in Egypt. An interesting conclusion, that, and based on the discovery of such bows in tombs like Tutankhamen's (see below):

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Like many products and industries attributed to ancient Egypt, these bows suddenly appear full blown out of nowhere, with little or no evidence of development. What is more, they're mostly made from materials not even found there. Though there's no doubt that these could be imported and in fact were, this does not argue for indigenous development of composite bows, but rather for their initial importation and adoption. The use of birch is just one example of such materials.