The End Of The Bronze Age

118

A MILITARY EXPLANATION

Homer's Achaeans were not themselves charioteers or chariot archers but instead were responsible for putting an end to chariot warfare and to the domination of the horse-tamers. They were, that is to say, infantrymen of the new type-Heet of foot, skilled with the javelin or throwing spear, and also carrying long swords-who spelled the doom of the great chariot forces of the Late Bronze Age. Integral to the thesis of this book is the tenet that in Greece chariot warfare virtually disappeared during the Catastrophe and that throughout the Dark Age it was nothing but a vague memory. The LH mc period seems in this respect to have been closer to the Dark Age than to the pre-Catastrophic Bronze Age: obviously there were still a number of chariots in the Argolid, on Euboea, and elsewhere in LH mc Greece, but the day of chariot warfare was over, and the day of the infantryman had arrived. That Homer knew very little about chariot warfare is precisely, it seems to me, what one should expect of a bard who stands at the end of a tradition that originated in a society of infantrymen. The thesis that during the palace period Mycenaean chariots served primarily as battle taxis is untenable not because we have evidence to the contrary (we do not) but because it makes no historical sense. The enormously expensive chariot and chariot horses, as Greenhalgh observed, would hardly have been risked by the palace in such a frivolous way, when the wounding of a horse "could easily put the whole apparatus out of action."5B The rulers of Pylos and Knossos devoted their resources to the maintenance of a chariotry of several hundred vehicles, keeping a large inventory of spare wheels, axles, and boxes and assigning a small bureaucracy to the supervision of the men, horses, and material. It is not reasonable to suppose that the rulers did all this merely to ensure that several hundred of their infantrymen could ride in comfort or dignity to the battlefield. Chariots as status symbols or as convenient means of transportation would have been a private concern: men with ample wealth may have chosen to spend some of it in purchasing a chariot and team and in raising the grain to keep the horses healthy. But a palace would hardly have-been so preoccupied with its chariotry if the chariots were nothing more than the personal luxuries of a few hundred foot soldiers. The rulers must have believed that the chariorry they were so diligently maintaining would in a crisis provide the regime and its subjects with protection and security. They must have believed, that is, that the kind of chariot warfare that had once been effective was still effective. In the event, of course, they were wrong. But if the pax Mycenaica provided few opportunities for putting' the old warfare into practice, the rulers of the Mycenaean palaces CJn hardly be blamed for imagining that the next war would be fought along the same lines as the last one. SR

Furly Greek WarfJrl!. 17.

THE CHARIOT WARFARE

119

There is, finJlly, a decisive argument that before the Catastrophe chariots in Mycenaean Greece were not used, or meant to be used, merely as battle taxis: prior to 1200, chariotry was not merely an adjunct to a Mycenaean king's military forces but the very basis of his army. Here I must anticipate the conclusion of chapter II. That chapter will show that in the centuries prior to the Catastrophe the armies of eastern Mediterranean kings included no offensive infantry formations: the only offensive foot soldiers in these armies were skirmishers or "runners" who fought in support of the chariot squadron to which they were attached . Our picture of heavily armed infantry units as the bulwark of the Mycenaean palace-states comes not from the archaeological evidence (and certainly not from the Linear B tablets) but from the Iliad, and for the period when the Pylos and Knossos palaces were still standing it is demonstrably wrong. How, then, were war chariots used in the Late Bronze Age kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean? The answer will be no surprise: as mobile platforms for archers.>" Throughout this area, when artists depict chariots on the attack, the chariot warrior is regularly shooting his bow from a car traveling at full speed. That is also how the war chariot was used elsewhere. Sanskrit scholars have known all along that the Aryan chariot warriors of India were bowmen, and recently it has become clear that in China too the war chariot carried an archer.v" Closer to home, there is no doubt that in Babylonia the chariot warriors of the Kassitcs depended on the how."! The Nuzi texts are unusually informative, since they detail the issuing of equipment to chariot crews; along with helmets, corslets, a whip, and a sword, bows and a quiver of thirty or forty arrows were standard.e- From first-millennium Mesopotamia, Assyrian archers in war chariots are familiar from Ashurnasirpal II's Nirnrud orthostats, from the bronze doors at Balawat that commemorate Shalmaneser llI's victories and from the war reliefs from Sargon II's palace at

Chorsabad.v' In the Levant, as in Mesopotamia, the war chariot carried an archer. The fact that the bow was the weapon of the chariot warriors who opposed Thutmose mat Megiddo is clear from that king's account, onrhe Gebel 59 Moorey, "Emergence," 208, likewise concludes that "from the outset archerv was fundamental to the role of the light horse-drawn chariot as a war vehicle." ' Ml Jacques Gerner, . . Note sur le char en Chine," in Vernant, Problemes de laguerre, 310; E. L. Shaughne-ssy, "Historical Perspectives on the Introduction of the Chariot into China," Harvard journal of Asiatic Studies 48 (1988): 195 JnJ 199.1 thank Professo r Sruart Piggorr for this reference. (.\ Cassin, "Char de guerre," 304. 02 KendJII, Warfare, 210-12; at p. 256 KenJJII CItes J rabler referring to J lot of twenty thousand arrows tqanatu). H YJJin, Warfare, vol. 2, 3B6-B7, 402-3, 416-17.

120

T HE C HA R I O T W A RF A R E

A MILI TAR Y EXPLAI'AT IO;-':

Bark al Stele, of the tribute that his def eated e nemies brought him.>' " All th eir horses whi ch were with th em , th eir g rea t c ha rio ts of gold and silve r, as well as th ose which were plain , all th eir co a ts of mail , their bow s, th eir a rro ws, and all their weapon s of warfar e. It wa s these with whi ch th ey had co me from afar to fight against my ma jest y, and now they were brin gin g them as tr ibute to my m a jest y." In his Karn ak annals, Thutmose specifies th at he captured 9 24 cha rio ts a nd 502 bow s from the en e my. Uga r itic texts ma ke freq ue nt mention of bo ws and arrows, and it will be recall ed th at t he Tale of Aq hat revolved a bo ut a n extraordinary co m pos ite bow. One Uga ritic tabl et rep orts that tw o cha rio ts br ou ght in for repairs "a re without quiver s," a n o bv ious impl icati on , as BeJI notes, " t ha t o ther chariot s did have quivers. "65 Anoth er Uga ritic tabl et records the deli very of eithe r harn esses o r teams of ho rses, of a rmo r for men and horses, a nd of forty bow s a nd a thousand arrows.e- Alth ou gh we have few gra phic re prese nta tions of the war chariot from th e Levant, an ivory plaque from M egiddodar ing from ca. 1200 B.c. - sh ow s ca ptives marching in fron t of a Ca na a nite c ha rio t, the cha rio t bein g eq uippe d with quiver and bow case. A ninth -century orthostat from th e Neo -Hirtire palace at Carch ern ish sho ws a cha rio t archer in the act of shooting , whil e his chariot roll s over an e nemy alr eady brought down by an a rro w.v? It is well known that Egypti an cha rio ts carried archers. Th ese ch a rio ts wer e outfitted with J bow cas e a nd occ asio na lly a quiver attached to the cha rio t box at a diagonal , th e mouth being at a level with the arch er's right hand . An Egyptian papyru s not es th e departure of a chariot for Syri a, th e . . ch ari ot having aquive rsro ckedw ith eigh ty a rrows .s" Egyptian inscription s rarely go into sufficient detail to clari fy what happened in J battl e (w h a t happened in th e battl es a t M egiddo a nd Kadesh will he loo ked a t in detail in th e following sec tio n), but such refer en ces as there are indicat e th at cas ua lites werenormall y inflicte d by c ha rio t a rchers.jv lerneptah' s acco unt 0'£ his victo ry over th e Lib yan s. in 1208 , for example, claim s th at " the cha rio t wa rrio rs wh o wer e upon th e ch ari ot s of his ma jesty p laced th em .selvesin PlJ~slJ~ii-.2f__~he..m (i .e., the broken Lib yan in vaders), th ey_~~i !1g .Qvert h row n b y arrows, ca rried off, a nd sla ugh tered . " 69 The ph ar aoh s th em selves to ok pr ide in th eir sk ill as cha r iot archers, Arnen hot ep II bo ast ed of th e rapidity, ran ge, a nd acc ur acy of his shootin g, claimin g th at from a speed ing chariot he had hit four ta rge ts, set thirty-four feet a pa rt, . 4 Wil, on 's tran slati on, ANET . p. 2.JH . ..~ Be:J), Orga nizatio n, 57H. ..... Helrzer. lnt ernal Urganiza tion, 113. ., YJJIO. Warfare, vol. 1, 243; JnJ vo l. 2, 366 . M!. Pap yr us Kulla 1.1-2; d . Schulman. "C h ariots, Ch ariorry, and the Hyk sos ," 124n. 5 7. t>~ Mc ruep ta h's Karn ak Inscr iptio n. J S tra nslated in Sch ulman. " Egyptia n C h ario rrv, " p. xS . For the full inscription . see Breasted, A R. vol. 3. 110 S. 569ft .

12 1

with such force that the arrow s wen t clean through each target' s three inch es o f co ppe r.?" E gyptian chariot a rche rs in battle appear not o nly in w all reliefs-c-as of Se ri 1\ battles, of Rarncsses H's battle at Kade sh in 1275, !)r of Rarn esses Ill 's victo ry ove r th e Lib yan s in 118 2-bm also in relief s etc hed o n th e sides of the fiftee nt h-ceu t ury cha rio t found in th e tom b of T hu t rnose IV and o n a painted pan el of a chest fro m 'Iutan kh amun 's

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Th e fact that H ittite ch ar iot warr iors we re bow men is not genera lly reco gni zed, but it is ne verth eless de mo nst ra ble. As noted ab o ve, the belief th at th e lan ce wa s the sta nda rd weap on of th e Hittite chariot warri or deri ves from Ram esscs the C rea r's rel iefs of the Battl e of Kades h. i? In th ose reli efs th e Egyptian chariot s ca rry a rc he rs b ut non e of th e Hittite char iots ca rries a n a rc he r, and in fact o n ly the ch ari ot of th e Hittite king has a bow case. In eac h of th e o t he r Hittite c ha r io ts is a crew of three. One of the three hol ds th e rein s, a second man regul arl y ca rr ies a sh ield, and the third man so metimes holds a lan ce. The Egyptian sc ulp to r, however, nowh ere depi cts th e Hittite cha rio ts in action (t hey a re eithe r headin g toward or retreating fro m th e battlefield). And as Richard Beal points out, as often J S not th e third man in a Hittite chariot is sho w n with out a weJpon of any kind. Since in th e inscr iption Rarnesses does mention th e a rche rs of the Hittite chari ot corps.i " Beal argues that the reliefs ar e "clearly a misrepresentation. " 7 4 Th e Egy ptia n sculpto rs have here chosen to portray the enemy armed o nly with defen sive weapons. In battl e sce nes th e ph araoh 's artists wer e car eful never to depict In Egyptian co rpse o r ind eed a n Egyptian in danger, As portrayed in Egyptian art, o nly Egy ptia n t ro op s tak e the offensive, th e o bliga tio n of th e artist bein g to propagate th e myth of the pharaoh's invincibility.f" Noting th at the relief of the Battl e of Kades h sho w s on e Hittite cha r io t warrior apparentl y a bo ut to th row a n a rro w at the Egypti an s, Beal See Wilson 's t ra nslatio n of Amenho tep's Giz eh stele, ANET, 244 . Th e [V. 'O vo lumes of 'rad in 's Wurfure pr ovid e excellent illu strations of these and .other sce nes cited ; see Warfare, vo l. 1, 104- 5; 192 - 93,216-1 7; 24 0-41 ; and vol. 2, 3 H -3 7. :-.: It also derives, as Mo o rey {"'Emergence ," 20 3) poi nt s o ut , [reun such an.ich ron isric so urces J S Xenophori 's Cyropued;u .rnd miscon ceived "analogies dra wn fro m tank warfare. " " In the inscri prion [G ard iner. Kadesb , 1'160- 65 Jl1J 1'2 00- 205 ) a demoral ized Hittite p roc lai m s that " o ne is una ble to ta ke Up;1 bow" when not." beh olds the glori ous Ra messes: and RJm c, <;, es him self boasts that " w hoeve r ... hot in m y di recti on , thei r arrows scattered as they rea ched me ." See al so Breas ted. A R. vo l. 3. nos. ] ] 7 .ind 3 43 . The latter is J cap tion fo r a s cene o f .1 gr ollp of p rrso ners: "Lis t o f tho se co u n tr ies which his rnaresry ..lew. while alo ne by h imself: corpses, hor ses, and chario ts. bow s. swords , all the wea po ns of warfa re." '74 Beal, O rgtllli:;u t ;on. 575 . 7 < lbid ., h 17. john Wilson , "Th e Royal M yth in Ancie nt Egyp t," Pro, udin-", of the Am.'n"f ull l'hilosnphical .\'{J,:'-efy 100 ( I ~5 6): 4JlJ-42. St udent s of anc ient wea ponry have also xuvpecte d th.ir th e Egypt iJ n ar t ists disto rTt"J th eir .l pp' l11e nt ,," wea po nr y. Srilli n .in and Tallis, Arnncs , 57, not e that in the Ne w KingJc1111 " rn In .IIl Y battle scen es on ly cncmic.. .rre ever s ho w n Jt:JJ o r WOII IIJI:J .lIlJ som et im es III1 ,lr l1lOUn.:d J ud withou t W':~lPOIl"" . " 70

71

122

A M J L J TAR Y E X r LAS A T JO N

suggest s th at for Rarnesses' a rt ists an enem y bow may have been " ideologically unp ortrayable , ~ and co ncludes that " the evidence seems to sho w th at bows a nd a rrows were th e primary weap o ns of the H ittite cha riotry. r r « Th e battl e reliefs of Rarn esses' father, Seti I, confirm this co nclusio n. When Seri campa igned against the Hittites, he evidently was o p pose d by Hittite cha riot a rchers, for the Karnak reliefs that celebrate his victory (see plate 1) depict Hittite cha riots equipped with bow cases, and in each chariot is a Hittite warrior with a quiv er o n his hack an d a bow in his hand.?? In sho rt , Hittite ch a riot warriors fou ght exactly as did th eir counterparts in Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and India. In all the Near Eastern kin gdom s of the Lat e Bron ze Age, th e cha riot served as an archer's mobil e firing platJgrll). From M ycena ean Greece, unfortunatel y, we have no pictori al repre sentat ion s of a cha riot battl e. For th at reason , and perh ap s becau se no com po site bow has ever been found in a M ycen aean tomb, Aegean a rchaeo logists have traditionally and stubbo rn ly insisted that the bow had no military imp ortance in th e Lat e Helladic period . 7 8 That view, however, was invalidated forty yea rs ago . Before the Linear B tablets were read , a nd when Hom er was still ta ken as a reliabl e guide to th ings M ycen aean , it was understandable that scho lars imagined the Myc enaeans as conte mptu o us of the bow. H. L. Lorimer summed up and lent her great autho rity to the cons ensu s: the composite bow was strictly O riental and Min oan, and althou gh th e M ycenaean s may now a nd th en have seen such a weapon " the re is no indi cation th at th ey learned how to use it." For Lor imer, the composite bows invento ried in Linear B tabl ets were of co urse ~ Minoan ~ rather th an M ycena ean , since she wrote befor e Ventris's deciph erm ent. On similar grounds she d ismissed th e imp ortan ce of the bow in th e O dyssey: the centra lity of Od ysseu s's great co mpos ite bow in the story of his return was " natura l when we co nside r the strong Creta n tinge of mu ch of the

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Beal, Cnganization, 5 78 and 6 17. Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak, Volume 4: Th e Battle Reliefs of King Sety I, O riental Institute Publicatio n no. !O7 (C h icago, 1986), plat es 34 and 35. 7' The Kriegsuesen fascicles of Archaeo /ogi" Hom erica thus far publi shed dea l wi th the swo rd, spea r, dagger, a nd e-ven the club, but no t the bow . In their discuss ions of M ycena ean warfare most J rCh~le(}log'iL.;tI su rveys either dism iss the bow in J few sente nces o r o mit it altoge t her. No t to mu ltipl y exa mp le'S, I cite o n ly Jan Bouzek, The Aegean , An atolia. and Europe: Cultural ln tcrreiation s in the Second Mi llennium R.C. (Gorebo rg and Prague, 1985 ). In the very la't paragrapb 01 his fifty·page survey of Late Hella.hc arm o r an d weapons, and after a meti cul ous analysis of swo rds, spears, daggers, knives, and axes of the period, Bouzek finally reaches (p. 142) the sub ject of bows and ar row s: • Arro wheads are mentioned o nly for the sake of co m pleteness. . . . In any case the how onl y pla yed a ma rgina l part in warfare J uring the period in qu e..no n." "4 Lorimer, Hom •." and the Monuments, 280 and 1~9 .

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We k no w now th at th e ta blet s from th e Knossos " Armoury " conta in a primi ti ve form of Gree k an d so m ust ack now ledge th at th e Mycen aeans not o n ly h ud learned how to use a co mposite bo w Out k new how to rn.ik c o ne, a nd did so by the hundreds. Th er e is o t he r evide nce th at the bow wa s th e prirn.rry we:lpo n of M ycen aea n cha rio t wa rrio rs. Knee- leng th corslets we re evide nt ly p rovid ed fo r cha rio t c rew s, a nd these mu st ha ve been mea nt fo r p rote ction agai ns t ene my mi ssiles (in 3 co rue sr of thru sti ng spea rs o r rapier s th e lon g co rslets woul d hav e offe red littl e pro tec tion and wo uld have gr ea tl y im pede d th e wearer's mov ement ). Alongside th e "cha rio t ta b lets" fo und at Knosso s were ta blets recordin g la rge lot s of a rro ws: 60 l Oin on e bat ch and 26 30 in ano ther, eno ugh fo r eac h of two h undre d chariot arche rs to rece ive forty. Near by we re fo un d stores of bron ze a rrow heads, w hich we re meant for d istri bu tion to M ycen aean rath er than (as Evans th ou ght ) Minoan warriors. Tablets also refer to bow making a nd to bowye rs (to-ko-sotoo-leo, which "h a un per fett o corrispo nde nte in greco in to~OFoQyo l). ""0 The di stribution of ill co rpore a rrow hea ds from pr eh is tor ic Greece a lso sugges ts th at the bow was far more im po rta nt fro m 16 00 to 1200 1J.e. th a n it had been in earl ier tim es o r wo uld eve r be again . Wh ereas no met al a r row heads have been found in EH o r MH co ntex ts, bron ze a r row heads of vario us kind s appear sudde n ly wit h the Sha ft C raves and cont inu e th rou gh th e LH I1IBperiod; then th ey va nish agai n , w ith only 3 handful a t resred for th e w hole of the Dark Age. HI Th us there is 3 great deal of evide nce th at in the armies of M ycen aea n G reece - as of kin gdom s every w here dur ing the Late Bron ze Age- t he co m pos ite bo w wa s th e p rin cip al offensive wea po n. That H om er h ud so me very wrong ideas abo ut how 3 co m po site bow was made (d. especia lly th e descrip tion of Panda ros's bow a t Iliad 4 .1 05ff. ) can no lo nger mean , as it did fo r Lorimer , th at suc h a bo w W3S " un- Mycenae a n." Rathe r, it shows how mu ch of M ycen aean warfare ha d been forgotten in the ep ic t radi tion. In a de ta iled ph ilological stud y De nys Page co ncl ude d th at H o m e r's limited rep ertory of for m ulas fo r bows a nd a rro ws is " the d isintegr at ing rel ic of a m uch wider a nd st ricter syste m," a nd th at " the evidence of fo rrn ula r usage is sufficient to carry th e bo w and a rrows bac k to a remote past. ,, ~ ! Alt ho ugh th e M yccnaean s m ay o nce have s ung a bo ut the exp loits of c ha r io t a rc he rs, no wri t ten acc o unt of cha rio t wa rfa re h as been fo un d a t Uga r it, H attu sns, o r th e M ycenaean pal aces. It is so me thing of 3 par ado x I'l l ) Adele Fr.mcesch ern , " Arnu e gue rra in resri m ice nei, ' S I ~ for a pe rcept ive a rguruenr t ha r t he bow wa s of m uch greater m ilitary im pu rtnnce in LH III G reec e th an Home r imJ~ined • and t ha n has gene ra lly been assu med. see Renate Ti)II(.~. K J. ... rcnbein. Pfeil und Bogen im alt en C riechenland (Boch um, 19S0 ), 24- 26 .InJ 4 1-42. 1f1 Sno JgrJss , Arms .ttld t\rnwllr, 40 . For J car.ilo g a n d rypnlogy of the:" Lire He ll.id ic .irrow he.rds see Avil.t, L.lfI U lI- und r /t·jlspi t:'I'fI. "1 Page, Hivtu rv <111, / the Homeric Ilid41 {fic:rkd ey .1OJ Los Angeles : 195Y;, 27 S-7Y .

C H A RIO T WA R FAR E

125

th at from the th ou sands of La te Bro nze Age tab lets from the Aegean and the Near E3St, so ma ny of whi ch refe r 10 c hariots, one lea rn s so littl e a bo ut how th ese vehicles we re used in battl e. •Mu ch more C3n be learned fro m Indi a . Th e h ymn s of th e Rig Veda o rigi na te d in th e lat e ce nt u ries of th e seco nd mill ennium, when in Ind ia too cha riots dom in ated th e battlefield ; a nd here, unl ike in G reece, o ra l t rad itio n ke p t th e wo rld of the cha rio t wa r rior a live far into th e first mill ennium , whe n fina lly th e h ym ns we re wri tten dow n. One hymn , recited o ve r the chario t crew ju st befo re they went int o ba u le, begi ns by invoki ng divine blessing up o n th e wa rrior's ar rnor.r-' " H is face is lik e a thu nde rclou d , w hen th e a rmo ure d warrior goes int o th e lap o f ba t tles. Con q uer with an unw ound ed bo dy; let th e powe r of a rmo ur kee p yo u sa fe." Th e invo cati on focu ses in turn up on th e ho rses, t he chario t, the reins. a nd th e whip but dwel ls especia lly up on th e bow : With the bow let us win cows, wirh the bow let us win the contest and violent batt les with the bow. The bow ruins the enemy's pleasure; with the bow let us conq uer all the comers of rhe world. She comes 3 11 the way up 10 your ear like a woman who wishes 10 say something, embracing her dear friend; humming like a woman, the bowstring stretched tight on the bow carries you safely across in the battle. These two who go forward like a woman going to an encounter hold the arrow in their lap as a mother holds a son. Let the two bow-tips, working together, pierce our enemies and scatter our foes. In the still lat er Mahabharat
3 ~. H M..zhJhhur,'lu 4 (4 :-; 31.6-7 (rr .m s. J.A.l\ . " lbid ., I S- 20.

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126

A MI L IT A RY E X P LA N A T I () N

From H ittite, Aegean , and even Egyptian sources there is noth ing remotel y resembling these vivid picture s of chariot battles in Indian literature . In summa ry, whatever evidence we have for cha rio ts in battle indi cates that th ey were used as mobile platforms for ar cher s. T his seems to have been tru e from the beginnin g of cha riot warf are in the seventeenth cent ury until th e Catastro phe. H omerdid not know how war chariots were used in the LH lllB period, but that is not surp rising since neither d id he know anything of the pala ce regimes that served and were served by the chariotries. In the Near East chariots continued to carry arch ers, armed with comp osite bows, down to the eighth century, although by th at time chariots played o nly an ancillary role in battle. We have onl y a little inform ation about th e o rga nization of cha rio tr ies. The smallest tactic al un it seems to have been a group of ten cha riots (w henever chariots are requ ested, they are requ ested in multiples of ten). Schul man assembled evidence that in Egypt, at least, five of th ese unit s-or fifty vehicles- no rmally mad e up a sq uad ro n. Th e autobio graphy of Mery pta h describ es th at wo rthy' s service in sq uadro ns named " the Phoenix " and "Manifest injustice " (a mo ng Meryptah 's position s were " sta nda rd-bea rer of th e cha rio t warrior s" a nd "first srabl crnaster" ).H6 Each squad ron had its own co mmander, as shown by the N uzi ta blets , and several squad ro ns tog eth er made up a " host of chariots. " It may be that th e color of the chariot boxes varied from sq uad ron to squ ad ron . Lejeune pointed out that the Linear B scribes co nsistently (except o n one tablet ) not ed the colo r of the cha riot box-vermillion , purple, red-and suggested th at the colo r was an " eleme nt de signalement. " 8 7 It may also be wo rt hy of note that th e Nu zi tablets (as well as occasio nal tablet s from elsewhere) designate vehicles as bein g eit her of "the right" o r of " the left. "88 T he designation is possibl y relat ed to th e fact that on Egyptian and Assyrian reliefs we see both right-handed and left-handed chariot archers, with th e qu iver co rrespondingly mounted o n the right or th e left side of th e cha riot box. Alth ough we have no evide nce o n the matter, we must suppose that all the archers of a given squadron shot their arr ows from the same side of the bo x and th at a squadron itself could therefore be described as belon ging" to the right" o r " to the left." In the Mahabharata o ne of the deadli est heroes is "the valian t Partha, the enemy-killing left-h and ed archer," wh o would not tum away even if faced by all the bands of th e M aruts.e" Finally, we mu st tr y to visua lize the chari ots in battl e. Th ose schola rs wh o have-correctly-im agined chariots as mob ile firing plat forms (rather th an as battle taxis o r propellants of thru stin g spea rs) have gener,. On a ll thi s see Schu lm an , " Egyptian C hariotry," 75-8 4. 107 Lejeune, "Chars et ro ues, " 29 . .. Kenda ll, Warf.Jre, 130- .31. "" M.,habharata 4 (47) .37, 10 (tr ans. J. A.B. van Buitenen).

TH E C H A R I O T WA RFA R E

127

ally pictur ed them as parti cipat ing in the preliminar ies and the con clu sion to wh at was essentially an infantry encounter. In T.G.E. Powell's recon struc tion, at th e outset of a battle chariots provide a thin screen for an infantry form ation, th e chariots moving latera lly across the front of the ir ow n infantry a nd the chariot a rchers shoot ing- at a right a nglc- their arrows against th e enemy 's infa nt ryme n. Th e cha riot s then remove themselves whi le the infant ries enga ge, and after the battle is wo n th e cha riots return to pur sue the enem y fugitives.'?' Trevor Wat kins, on th e o ther hand, suggested th at chariots were held in reserve until the infantry battl e had reached a decisive stage. At th at point the chari ot s would be com mitted, in order to tip th e scales of th e battl e."! Thes e recon structions, I am co nvinced , are qui te far from the mark ; as will be a rgued in the nex t ch apter, the assump tion th at Late Bron ze Age battles were essentia lly infantry co ntests is without foundation. Leavin g the infantr ies o ut of the picture, at least temp oraril y, we mu st apparently imagine that opp osing chariot for ces would hurtle to wa rd each other (chariot warr ior s a re regularl y shown sho oting over the head s of th eir hor ses), th e sq uad ro ns mainta ining an assigned o rde r and th e a rchers 90 Po well, "So me Imp lica tio ns of C ha riot ry," in I. Fost er and l.. Adco ck . eds.• Cultu re and Environ men t , Essa ys in Honour o( Sir Cyril Fox (Londo n, 1% 3),165-66:

It is clear th at in the opening stages uf the battle exc hang es o f arrows w ere made from chariot s moving up and down th eir ow n fro nts, but pro ba b ly at a ran ge wh ich di d not serio usly end ange r the ho rses. Th is WJ S the phase for display a nd iu rim id ario n, reco gniz able again in the Iliad, and in Irish epic. Later in til t"battle, if the o pposing side W3S ro uted , ch ario ts were again emplo yed fo r pursuit. To conceive of the:likeli ho od of massed chariots ch argi ng an enemy fo rm at ion , wh ethe r a lso in cha riots o r o n fo ot , is to ign o re p ractic al con sider atio ns. Wounds easily to be infl icted o n ho rses wo uld ens ure chaos, and cerrainly allow o f no recovery. As wa s said ear lier, the chariot in its Egypti an and Asia tic role provid ed J mob ile vant age po int fo r arch ery, In the Egyp tian rel ief s o f cha riot s in action there is no hea d -o n clas h, the sce ne is al ways that of pursuit, .m d Egyp tian JrrOWS pierce the ene my and his ho rses from beh ind . . . . C ha rio ts we re neve r so expe ndable rh ur o ne vio le nt co llisio n co uld have been allow ed to risk .ib.mdon rnenr on th e field . Pow ell's d escnpr ion assum es tha r Late Bronze Age battles were esse ntially infa ntry enco u nt ers (I sh a ll try to show in ch ap ter 11 th at they were not ) .1IIdigno res th e fact thor in th ese battles chariot s an d ho rses were ind eed lo st, by the hundred s. Wh :lt conrribution co u ld have bee n made by ch ariots that moved "up and down their ow n fronts, but proba bly at 3 runge w hic h did nut se rio us ly enda nger the ho rses," is di fficult to im agine since, in Powell 's view, the two in fantries were eve n brther a part than the two prom en ad ing ch.rriomes . It is tru e that in Egypt ian a rt "the re is no head ..t lll clash , the sce ne is al ways o f pursu it," b ut rhar is ve ry likel y beca us e in Egyp tia n ideolo gy e ne mies regular ly nee and Egypti an s pursu e. Th e mad, as indicated above , can not be used J-"i 3 guide to the cha riot tactics used before the Carastrophe. 9' So Wat kin s, " Beginnings of War b re: 3 1: "Chariorry was a hi ghl y pre st igio us, hu gely ex pe nsive and very vulne rab le P30 rt of ;lny a rmy, It wo uld not he used in barth: unti l the:cri tica l mo ment hJJ a rrived, then its task was to b unch ;J drive wh ich wou ld induce .1 b rea k ing of ranks in the opposing infant ry li nes . O nce the ride of J tu tt le IIJd been ru rued the ch.morry migh t then also h urrv and hunt do w n the disper sed enem y,"

128

A MILITARY EXPLANATION

beginning to discharge their arrows as soon as the enemy came within range (perhaps at a distance of two hundred meters or more). The archers must have shot ever more rapidly and vigorously as the opposing forces closed the distance between them. Of course many horses were killed or wounded: the whole point of the battle (as Egyptian reliefs show clearly enough) was to bring down as many of the opponent's chariots as possible. The typical chariot force was probably deployed in a formation broader than it was deep. On a flat plain, only the archers in a front rank of chariots could have had an uninterrupted view of their opponents. And a charioteer driving his horses at the gallop could not have followed too closely upon a chariot in front of him, since he would need to be able to maneuver around any sudden casualry, lest his own team should pile onto a comrade's immobilized vehicle. Perhaps a host of chariots was typically deployed in three or four ranks, ranged behind one another at intervals of twenty or thirty meters, but it is not impossible that on occasion all the chariots were deployed in a single rank. Since (as we shall see in the following section) Thutmose himself rode in the center of the frontline at Megiddo, we must infer that front-line chariots were not conspicuously at risk, and that in turn suggests that the chariot formation was wide and shallow. It probably was important to extend one's line far enough that it could not be outflanked by the enemies' vehicles. What happened when the opposing chariot forces charged against each other will be imagined in various ways. Horses, unlike men, cannot be driven to charge directly into their opponents, and so we must imagine that in a battle between two more or less equal chariotries the two lines slowed as they closed and then somehow slipped around or through each other (when a large chariotry met a small one, on the other hand, the small force would perhaps either have turned tail long before closing or would have been entirely enveloped, brought to a standstill, and thus destroyed). Perhaps a chariot force may have divided as it approached the enemy, the vehicles on the right pulling farther to the right in order to flank their opponents, while the chariots on the left (all carrying, perhaps, left-handed archers) pulled to the left. Contrarily, the objective may have been to drive wedges into the enemy line, a compact squadron splitting apart the enemy's unbroken line, and the successive ranks funneling into and stretching the gap. It is barely conceivable that all along the line the formation was loose enough that the two opposing lines could completely intermesh and thus pass through each other, but in that case the casualties would have been enormous. After the surviving teams had made their way past each other, the archers may have faced the rear of their vehicles and fired once or twice at their opponents as they receded. Then the two forces, if they were still cohesive, must have wheeled around and begun their second charge. this

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time from the opposite direction. Finally, when one of the forces had been heavily depleted or thrown into disorder, the survivors would have made no more return charges but would have tried to esc3pe to a citadel or a guarded position.

THE BArrLES AT MECIDDO AND KADESH

There are two battles in the Late Bronze Age abour which at least a lirtle is known. The Battle of Megiddo was commemorated by the victor, Thurmose III, on the walls of the temple of Amon at Karnak.v- In his twentysecond year (ca. 1460 B.C.) Thutmose led a great army into the Levant in order to establish his supremacy there and was opposed by a coalition of Canaanite kingdoms under the leadership of the king of Kadesh. On the ninth day after passing the Delta frontier fortress at Sile, Thutrnosc's army was at Gaza, 150 miles distant; by the standards of antiquity and the Middle Ages, he had moved very quickly,"! Learning that the Levanrine forces were massed at Megiddo, Thutmose's officers worried that if the Egyptian forces proceeded northward in a long column along the central road, the vanguard would be attacked and overwhelmed before the rear elements could catch up and be deployed. Thutrnose decided, however, to maintain the single column, and to put himself at the head of it: "[Every man] was made aware of his order of march, horse following horse, while [his majesty] was at the head of his army." Arriving at the Qinavalley, Thurrnose spread his force in order to span the entire valley and in early afternoon came within sight of Megiddo and the Canaanite forces. He decided to pitch a camp, however, and to delay the battle until the following day: "Prepare ye! Make your weapons ready, since one will engage in combat with that wretched enemy in the morning." After a night's sleep, Thutmose was advised that "the desert is well" and that all-was in readiness. At dawn Thurrnose rode forth in his goldcovered chariot. His battle line, according to the inscription, extended from the Qina brook to a point notthwest of Megiddo, "while his majesty was in the center, Amon being the protection of his person (in) the melee." Since Thutrnose's chariotry must have included more than a thousand vehicles (it routed a Levanrine chariotry of at least that size), we may suppose that his battle line was indeed a long one. If the chariots were

91

See Wilson's rransl.nion of the inscription. ANET. 234-8.

"' Willi3m Murnane. The Road to Kadcsh: A Historical lnterpretation o(the Battle Reliefs o( King Sety I at Karnak !ChIC3g0. 19S5). 145-50 (appendix 2. "Movements of Armies .md Timings of Travel in Egypt and the Levant"), notes rhar the armies of Assyrian kin~s
Alexander the Crear moved at a rate of between thirteen and tiftcen miles a day.

130

A MILITARY EXPLA~ATION

deployed in a single rank, the line would have extended for almost two miles. The battle then commenced. We have no details about the charge and are told only about its outcome: Thereupon his majesty prevailed over them at the head of his army. Then they saw his majesty prevailingover them, and they tled headlong [to] Megiddo with bees of fear.They abandoned their horses and their chariots of gold and silver,so that someone might draw them (up) into this town by hoisting on their garments. Now the people had shut this town against them, (but) they [let down] garments to hoist them up into this town. Possibly the Canaanite chariotry did not complete even its initial charge against the Egyptians, turning before the two lines neared each other and fleeing to the city. There the crews leaped from their chariots and began climbing the walls, undoubtedly protected by a covering barrage of arrows shot by bowmen stationed on the walls, and assisted in their climb by ropes and garment-lines let down from the top of the walls. The inscription regrets the fact that at this point Thutmose's men began collecting the enemy's horses and chariots ("an easy prey") instead of pressing on with the attack and killing the enemy as they were being hoisted up the walls of the city. Because of this shortsightedness, a siege of Megiddo was necessary. Thutmose ordered the construction of a fortress to the east of the city, to serve as the Egyptians' base during the siege, and divided the perimeter of the city into sectors, assigning a commander to each. The siege was successful, and the enemy princes eventually came out of the city "to kiss the ground to the glory of his majesty and to beg breath for their nostrils." The booty that Thutmose brought away from the campaign included 1,929 cows, 20,500 sheep, and many costly and beautiful things . More pertinent to our interests are the military personnel and material: [List of the booty which his majesty's army carried off from the town of] Megiddo: 340 livingprisoners and 83 hands; 2041 horses, 191 f0~ls, 6 stallions, and ... colts; I chariot worked with gold, with a hodyof gold, belongingto that enemy. [I] fine ch.inot worked with gold belonging to the Prince of IMegiddoj . . . and 892 chariots of his wretched army-total: 924; 1 fine bronze coat of mail belonging to that enemy; [ll fine bronze coat of mail belonging to the Prince of Meg[iddo, and] 200 [leather] coats of mail belonging to his wretched army; 502 bows; and 7 poles of meru-wood, worked with silver,of the tent of that enemy. The second Late Bronze Age battle about which we know at least a little is the battle that Rarncsses II fought against Muwatallis II of Hatti in 1275, when the young Ramesses was in the fifth of his sixty-seven years on the throne. The battle was fought within sight of the city of Kadesh, in northern Syria, and we know about it because Rarnesses II assiduously adver-

[HE CHARIOT WARFARE

131

tised his version of it. He ordered it to be portrayed, with reliefs and inscriptions, not only on his mortuary temple at Thebes (the Ramesseurn) but also on temples at Luxor, Abydos, and Abu Sirnbel.":' More complete texts of the inscription have also been found on two papyri, one of which runs to eleven pages. As Rarnesses recounted the battle, it was a victory and was won almost entirely by his own skill and bravery, his army having panicked and fled. In fact, the battle seems to have been at best-for the Egyptians-a draw, and several units in Rarncsses' army made their presence felt."> Great battles were uncommon through most of the thirteenth century B.C. The kings of Assur and Hattusas may have fought in the 1230s, but the matter is quite unclear. % In the Aegean, there seems to have been very little military activity from ca. 1375 to ca. 1225. For Egypt, the Kadesh campaign was apparently extraordinary, since we know of nothing remotely similar for the rest of Rnrnesscs' long reign. In his twenty-first year (1259) he and the Hittite king arranged a peace treaty, after which the Levant seems to have been mostly quiet until Ramesses' death in 1212. The Battle of Kadesh may therefore have been by far the greatest battle fought anywhere in the eastern Mediterranean during either the fourteenth or the thirteenth century, and we are fortunate to know something about it. Rarnesses' army spent exactly one month in traveling more than five hundred miles from Avaris, in the eastern Delta, to the vicinity of Kadesh, which was one of Muwatallis's most important vassal states in Syria. We do not know how many chariots and how many infantry Ramesses had assembled, since in describing his force Rarnesses' scribes say only that "His Majesty had made ready his infantry and his chariotry, and the Sherden of His Majesty's capturing whom he had brought back by the victory of his strong arm; supplied with all their weapons, .ind the plan of fighting having been given to them. "97 The army moved in four divisions, named after the gods Amon, Ptah, Re, and Seth, with Rarnesscs himself in the leading division of Amon. Upon reaching the vicinity of Kadesh, and having been given the false information that the Hittite army was far to the north, 94 For thereliefs seeWreszinski, Atlas, vol. 2. plates 63ff. (Luxor), R2ff. (Ramesseurn), and I76ff. (Abu Simbel), Fortranslation ofthetextsseeAlan Gardiner, The Kadcsh Inscriptions of Ramesscs II (Oxford, 1960). Gardiner's translations supersede- those of Breasted. AR, vol. 3, nos. 306-51. 9\ Forreconstructions of the battle seeBreasted, The Battle of Kadesh (Chicago, 1903): 'radm. Warfare, vel. 1, 103-10; Kitchen, Pharaoh Triumphant, 53-62. These reconstructions seem to me misleading only in the assumptions that the Hittites failed to achieve u dear-cut victory because their chariot warriors were armed with lances instead of composite bows (Yad iu, naturally enough, founJ this to be the major "weakness" of the Hittite cha norr-y) and because Muwarallis failed, for one reason or another, to commit his immense infantry. 9h ltamar Singer, "The Bartle ot ?.. [ih nyu andtheEnd oftheHittite Empire," ZA"S (I 98S,: 100-123. "17 Gardiner's translation, Kadcsh, P25-30.

132

A MILITARY EXPlAl'ATIO~

Amon division crossed the Orontes and proceeded north to a campsite. When the second division, Re, began fording the river, the Hittite king launched his chariots upon it from a concealed position near the city wall: "Bur the wretched Chief of Kharti stood in the midst of his arrnv which was with him and did not come our ro fight through fear of His Majesty. But he had sent men and horses exceeding many and multitudinous like the sand, and they were three men on a chariot and they were equipped with all weapons of warfare."?" In what follows we can deduce that the Re division, caught astride the Orontes, consisted of both chariotry and infantry, neither of which withsrood the onslaught. The Hittite chariots "came forth from the sourh side of Kadesh and broke into (?) the army of Pre' in its midst as they were marching and did not know nor were they prepared ro fight. Thereupon the infantry and the chariotry of His Majesty were discomfited before them. n99 With the Hittite chariots in hot pursuit, many of the Re chariots fled toward the Amon division, which was setting up camp under the supervision of Ramesses himself. The enemy chariots "hemmed in the followers of His Majesty who were by his side," but Ramesses quickly "assumed the accoutrements of battle and girded himself with his corslet. n 100 After ordering couriers ro rake a message ro the third division (Ptah), commanding it ro speed to assistance, Ramesses mounted his chariot and entered the fray, perhaps with little more than his own chariot squadron: His Majesty went ro'look about him and he found 2,500 chariots hemming him in on his outer side, consisting of all the champions of the fallen ones of Khatri..., they being three men on a chariot acting as a unit, whereas there was no high officerwith me, no charioteer, no soldier of the army, no shield-bearer, my infantry and my chariotry scampering away before them, and not nne of them stood firm to fight with them."" Rarncsscs claimed not only to have rushed into the thick of the Hittite squadrons bur to have wheeled abour and charged no less than six times: Then said His Majesty to his shield-bearer: "Stand firm, steady thy heart, my shield-bearer. ! will enter in among them like the pounce of a falcon, killing, slaughtering, and casting to the ground. What careth my heart for these effeminate ones at millions of whom! rake no pleasure?" Thereupon His Majesty st.r rted forth quickly and entered at a gallop into the midst of the battle for the n lbid., PbS-70. ". lbid., P70- 75. 100 lbid., BSO-B90. For reliefs of the camp scenes and the main chariot hattie see Wreszinski, AII,Is, vol. 2, plates 6.\ 70, 82, 84, 88, In. 101 Gardiner, Kadesb, )'80-90.

THE CHARIOT WARfARE

133

sixth time of entering in amongst rhem.I was after them like B"'31 at rhe moment of his powcr.ivWhatever the truth may be about Rarnesse-,' personal heroics, he and his fellow charioteers from Amon division and the fugitives from Re evidently held the field long enough ro enable the Prah chariots ro arrive. At that point the Hittite chariots too were reinforced, by a thousand chariots of Muwatallis's allies. While the battle had been raging, certain of the Hittite chariot crews had dismounted to begin plundering the Amon camp, which apparently had been abandoned by its defenders. Bur as the Hittites were engaged in looting, warriors whom Rarnesscs called "the nearim from Arnor" and whom Yadin described as "Canaanite mercenaries serving in the army of Rarneses Il" came to save what was left of the camp and fell upon the Hittite crews, killing them all.")] How many casualties there were on either side, and whether either side was in fact victorious, we do not know. Rarnesscs claimed victory, bur the Egyptians apparently lost little rime in moving sourh, perhaps to avoid another surprise attack. The size of the Hittite army can be pieced together from several statements in the inscriptions. Rarnesses reports that the chariorry that Muwatallis initially launched against the Re division and that followed up with an attack upon the Amon camp, consisted of twenty-five hundred vehicles, each carrying three men. Late in the battle, perhaps after the Ptah division had arrived on the scene, Muwatallis launched another thousand chariots, these apparently being allied squadrons.'?" We also have precise figures for the Hittite infantry. Ramesses' reliefs, and the accompanying legends, indicate that Muwarallis had one large body of warriors before him and another behind him. Breasted read the two figures as eight thousand and nine thousand respectively, bur Alan Gardiner corrected the reading to eighteen thousand and nineteen thousand.J''" Gardiner's readings are probably to be preferred, although there is not yet a clear consensus among Egyprologisrs.t't« Whether numbering seventeen thousand or thirty-seven thousand, the

1<" Ibid., P2IS-22S. I'"

lbid., RII; d. Yadin, Arl o(War(are, vol. 2. 267. Ibid., PI50-IS5. ros lbid., R43 and R44. llJ6 For discussion see Bell. Organization, 356-57. Beal consulted Murnane on the reading and at n. 1116 quotes from Murnane's response: "'"I don't think Gardiner is necessurilv wrong (and he Seems to have hecn accepted in this by more recent scholars) but I would still say that there is some uncerr.unrv." Murnane's own The Road to Kadesb deals with events le;1ding up to Rarnesses' campaign, but not with the campaign itself. Kitchen, Pharaoh Triumpbont, 53. accepts Gardiner's readings. 1(,4

134

A MILITARY EXPLANATIOl-:

Hittite infantry at Kadesh was substantial, and it is therefore all the more noteworthy that it took no part in the battle itself, the Hittite king sending only his chariorry (approximately ten thousand, five hundred men) to the attack. Not only do the inscriptions say that Muwatallis sent his chariots into battle, while he stayed at Kadesh with the infantry, but the reliefs tell the same story. The reliefs of the battle on the Ramesseum and the Luxor and Abu Simbel temples portray a massed infantry standing guard near the city of Kadesh, toward which the routed Hittite chariots flee.107 It would therefore appear that Muwatallis used his massed Infantry as a defensive force, forming a cordon around the city gates and the approaches to Kadesh, The size of Rarnesses' army is nowhere stated, but chariotry appears to have been its offensive element. Except for the Amorite ne'arim, who probably (as we shall see in chapter 11) were "runners" attached to the Amon division, no footsoldiers under Ramesses' command arc known to have engaged the enemy. When the king, with the Amon division, was informed that the Re division had been routed, he seems to have counterattacked with as many of the Amon chariots as could be got ready, charging and turning about to repeat the charge six times. Whatever infantry formation was included in the Amon division was evidently not part of its offensive force and in fact was not even sufficient to defend the camp. One may suppose that in Rarnesses' army, as in Muwatallis's army, the chariotry's charge was not coordinated with the charge of an infantry formation. 107

For the three reliefs see Yadin, Art ofWarfare, vol. 1,238.

Chapter Eleven FOOTSOLDIERS IN THE LATE BRONZE AGE

I

T IS SURPRISING to discover how little information survives about Late Bronze Age inf~~tries. No infa?,tryman's archive ha,~ been foun~ to compare with the chariot tablets from Knossos, the horse texts from Ugarit and Hattusas, and the many Nuzi tablets dealing with the chariot corps. As a result, in each of the text-based studies that have been done on things military at Nuzi, Hatrusas, Ugarit and Mycenaean Greece, the space devoted to infantry is only a small fraction of that devoted to chariotry.' A general study of Late Bronze Age infantry has yet to be made. In lieu of information, it has been widely assumed that Late Bronze Age infantries were much the same as infantries in other periods of antiquity. More particularly, it has been supposed that in battles all through the Late Bronze Age infantries played the primary role, with the chariotries in support. These assumptions do not seem to be borne out by the meager evidence that we have. In better-documented periods of antiquity, the infantry was central to an army's attack, and horse troops were peripheral. Horse troops operating independently were useful for reconnaissance, for harassing an enemy line of march (as the Syracusan cavalry harassed the Athenian hoplites on their retreat in 413 B.C.), or for small-scale action, but in a pitched battle horse troops regularly served to support the infantry', attack. Persian, Greek, and Roman battle tactics required that the movement of infantry and horse troops be coordinated, the infantry normally forming the center of a battle formation and the horse troops being posted at the infantry's right and left flanks or being held in reserve for commitment after the infantry battle had begun. Occasionally, as Hannibal did at the Trebia River, a commander might order his cavalry to initiate the battle, in order to draw the enemy infantry into a position of his choosing. But whatever role was assigned to the horse troops was chosen with the infantry battle in mind, since in classical antiquity an army's center of gravity was invariably its infantry. This "normal" balance has also been assumed for the Late Bronze Age. The thesis that Mycenaean chariots hauled infantrymen to and from a battlefielcf is based on the assumption (common in archaeological circles) 1 Chapter III of Kendall's \Varfare is a lexicon of military terms from Nuzi; approximately SOpercent of the terms refer to horses, chariots, and the chariot corps. In Bears Orgattization there are 36 p3ges {58-9J} on the chariotry JnJ only two (103-4) on the infantry. Lejeune's and Franccscherti's text-based studies of Mvcenae.m warfare deal primarily with two topics: chariots .mcl the o-lea tablets.

iJ6

A .\ 1 \ LI TAR Y E X I' L. A N A T \ II N

th at th e My ce naea ns fo ug h t on foot . So me scho la rs h ave in fact su pposed th at in the N ear East as w ell ch a r io ts we re mi lita rily usefu l o nly as infa ntry tr an sp orts. T h us Jacques G ern er. co m pa ri n g th e m ilitary ch ario ts o f C h in a w it h th o se of ules civilisatio ns oc cid en ra les," fou nd it noteworth y th at in C h ina th e cha riot wa s acr ua lIy used ill batt le: he assn rued th at in the Wes t it se rved o n ly as a ta xi fo r footso ld iers, es pecia lly th o se needi ng a fas t ge ta wa y fro m the buttlcfield.v Even Egyptol o gi st s h ave been in clined to see th e infa n try as basic to New Kin gdom w ar fare. As noted in ch ap te r 10, Schulm a n recently propo sed tha t in New Ki ngd om Egyp t th e cha riotry played a m arg in al ro le while th e infa nt ry bore th e brun t of th e fighting (he assumed t ha t th ere were fifry infa ntry m e n for eac h cha rio t). In R. O. Faulkne r's reconstru ct ion o f Ne w Kin gd om wa rfa re, cha riots a re more im po rt a nt but neverthele ss funct ion p r ima rily as a sc ree n fo r a massed infa ntry : " In a field ac t io n it se em s to h ave bee n th e ch a riotry wh o to o k th e firs t shock of battle , th e infantry advancing behind th em to ex p loi t a ta cti cal su ccess o r to stem th e ene m y's adva nce if m atters went a wry, so mewhat as in mo d ern warfa re the infantry o perat e behind a sc ree n o f a rmoured vehicles."] Similarl y, the th esis th at H ittite cha rio t wa rr iors fo ug h t wi th the thru sting s pe a r gene ra lly presupp o ses th at th e p ri mary o b jec tive aga ins t w h ich th e Hittite cha r io ts d elivered th eir fro n ta l charge wa s a n enem y infantry form ati on . The co n clusio ns reach ed in chapter 10 a bo ut the natu re of c ha r io t warfare lea ve little ro om fo r th e cla sh of clo se-order infantry fo rmatio ns . Ba ttles betwee n east ern Med ite rra nea n ki ngdo ms of th e Lat e Bron ze Age, like th o se de sc ribe d in th e /'..uihabharata, m ust h a ve consis ted p rima rily of tw o cha riot fo rces cha rg ing ag a ins t and past each othe r a n d th en ci rclin g bac k to ch a rge each o the r a ga in, the a rche rs a ll th e while shoot ing ag ai nst th e o p po sing squ a dro ns. H o w a m ass for ma tio n of offensive infa ntry co u ld h ave co ntrib uted so met h ing to such a battl e (o r even h ave kept abreas t of it ) is no t sel f-evid e nt, a nd tha t it d id ca n no t be taken for gra n ted . We have see n th a t at Kad esh th ere w as no e nco u nte r between o p pos ing in fantri es, nor d o es th er e see m to ha ve bee n o ne at M egidd o , the o nl y o the r Lat e Bron ze Age bat tle abou t which so m e d etails are known. In describin g hi s army 's march to M egiddo, Thutmo se III noted th e pres ence of an infa ntry," but he d oe s not me n tio n it in co n nect io n with th e b attle itself, a nd h is boory list impli es that th er e was no infa ntry e ngageme nt (t he Egy p t ian s, it w ill be recall ed , slew fewer th an a hundred men an d captured .1 Ge rne r, " No te su r le cha r en Chine, " J 10 : " Les indicatio ns qu 'on possede po ur lcs civilisations o cciden tale, laissenr pcnser qu e le char sert norrnalemen t J U trans port des co mba rta nts ;}pied d 'oe uvre et leur permet !Oi besom est de pre ndr e 1.1 Iuite. C c n'es t p J.S en cha r q ue sc der oulenr o rdiua irernent les co m b.irs, l.e co mbat en cha r est J U con rraire de reglc

en Clune." • Faul k ner, "Egvpn.m "l ilitary O rganizano n," ./1-:04 39 (1 9S3 ;: 4.L , AN t: T. 2.15 (tra ns . John W i!>on ).

r o o r S O L. DI E R S

137

o n ly 3 4 0 , w h ile seizi ng 92 4 cha riot s a n d 2041 h orses). Appa rently Th utmo se 's in fantry was not put to wo rk until th e seven-m o nt h sieg e of Megid do be ga n . O n th e Ca n a a n ite side th ere sur ely a lso wer e in fant rym en , but d ur ing th e ba tt le th ey m ay ha ve been stat io ned at Mcgiddo itsel f, servin g as defen sive bow me n at op the w alls a nd-u nti l th ey p ani cked a nd clo sed th em -before th e ga tes of th e c it y. Refe rence s to less famo us ba tt les al so co nsp icuous ly ign ore infantry enco u n te rs. In th e Nuzi text s ar e such remini scen ce s as "when th e ch a rio ts of Hanigal b ut ga ve battle at th e to WII of Lub ti" o r " w h e n th e ch a riots gave battle in Silliawa.I" Possibl y infa nt rym en als o g ave battle a t th ese times and pl aces ; but if th ey did , t hei r co nt rib uti on was a p pa ren tl y to o sma ll to h ave bee n ap p rec iated o r mentioned . lf one is lo o kin g fo r th e kin d o f ba tt le fam iliar fro m cl assical a n tiqu ity-e- heav y in fantri es fight in g h and- to -hand in th e cen ter, w ith horse t ro o ps en ga ged o n the w ings-one w ill sea rch in va in th e d o cum ents a nd picto rial representati ons th at h ave come dow n to us fro m th e Lat e Bronze Age k ing d o m s prio r to th e C a tast ro phe . T h e notion t ha t La te Bronze Age ch a rio t rics fo u gh t in su p po rt of m assed infan try fo rma tio ns is a misappreh e nsion a nd a n a nac hro nis m. T he re is n o d oubt th at so me N ear Easte rn kin gs rai sed su bsta nt ia l in fantries wh en th ey went to wa r. A lthou gh w e h ave no figures fo r Ne w Kingdom Egypt, it is probably sa fe to assume th at o n a major ca m pa ign the pharaoh to o k a lo ng severa l th ou sand in fantrym en. Egyptian footso ld ier s were eith er " shooters " (bow me n) o r nahhtu -aa, a term that liter all y mean s "s trong -a rm boys" a nd d eno tes h and-to -h an d fighters. 6 Th e "sho o ters," perh a ps a ll na ti ve Egypti an s, were gro uped in co m pa n ies of 20 0 o r 25 0 men , th e co mp anies bearin g n a mes s uc h as " At e n App ea rs fo r Him " o r " Pacifier of God s.? " The G rea t King of Hatti w as o fte n accomp an ied o n ca m pa ign by man y mo re m en o n foot th an in cha rio ts. Hi s vassa l, the k ing o f Kizzu watn a , brought to hi s lord a force of o ne th ousand in fant rymen a nd o ne hundred ch a riots ; eve n if each of th e cha riots h ad a three-m an c rew, the in fant ry would h ave o ut n u m be red th e men of th e cha r iot ry by more than three to one. A sim ila r ratio is attest ed in the forces of tw o kingdoms th at fough t against th e Hi t tires." And a t Kadesh, as we ha ve seen, M uwaralli s was accompan ied by a n infantry form ation of a t leas t sevent ee n th ousand a n d p ro ba bl y th ir ty-seven th o usan d me n. T h e Hittite vassals of ea stern Sy ria mu st h ave bro ug h t th ou san d s of troops to th eir confrontati on w ith Tu ku lti-Ni n u rta I o f Assu r, since h e claims to h ave ca p tu red twen ty-e ight th ousa nd o f th em ." , Kendall . W" rf" re. 114 and 132 . ,. Stillma n .1nJ Tallis, Armies, S. 7 IbiJ. See also f aul kner. " Eg y ptian :>.l ilit a l)· O rga n izatio n. " 45. II Beal, () rg iJm =J t i m l , 70 2.. q D. D. Luc kenbill. Ancien t RIt( nrds of A..>syrJil and H.llry/oHid. ve l . I. nov. 164 Jn J 17 1.

138

A M IL ITARY EXPLANAT ION

T he crucial qu est ion is not how man y foot sold iers there were in Egypt o r in Hatri but what th ey did. H irtirologists have recognized that despite its II size th e infa ntry seems not to have counted for mu ch in the typical H itt ite 1I,'tI,'{...L .~ batt le. Oliver Gurney concluded th at in most battles the Hitt ite infa ntry ~ played on ly " a subo rdinate part ," and Beal found th at " the key part of th e j ! to. ' ~"( ,,, H ittite armed forces was the cha riotry." 10 Th e reason why the tabl ets say 1; /) "'-'Y of! so little abo ur the infantry, I believe, is that in the typical battl e there was no i! c~'''f. engage ment of massed infa nt ries. ~' We have evidence for infantries going o n the attack in the Late Bron ze I Age pr ior to the Ca tastrophe but not in co njunctio n with a chariotry. A li ,, co nt ras t emerges, it seems, between warf are against civilized enemies and warf ar e aga inst men from the hinterland , who m I sha ll call barb ar ian s. Th e kingdom s, a nd cities genera lly,were sited in fertile plains, which co uld be dom inated and defended by cha rio ts. When o ne king attacked ano the r the co nfro nt atio n was therefore a cha rio t battle. Similarly, a ki ngdo m !i cou ld depend o n its cha riots against bar bar ian s who raided its perim eter. Th Egyptia n reliefs.illusrrabte battl es ihn w.hichdRdamhesski es thde Great leddhis •I cha rro rry agai nst vano us tri esmen w 0 inva e t e ing o m or its epende ncies. Reliefs o n a temp le at Beit-el-Weli show Ram esses in his cha rW~7 iot, shooting his arrows a t a crow d of Nu bian infantry bowmen . II No t I ,e. lei"'> • Egyptian infantry men are show n in the reliefs or menti on ed in the inscripJ.. .s tion s, and the relief depicts only Ram esses and two oth er Egyptian chariot , Ii h c.e./l¢.S archers, shoo ting into the crowd of retr eat ing Nubian s. A seco nd relief at Jc ...vt. Beit-el-Weli portray~ Ra rnesses' victo ry over Shos hu, o r Bedouin, trib esijo e « men . Th e Shoshu warrio r typically carries a single spea r (evidently a li et,.,: thrusti ng spea r) a nd a sho rt weapon whose function has not been ident i'1 tied } ZLike the N ubia ns, the Shoshu warrio rs carry no shield and wea r no 1! ' metal armor. Here too, it may be th at Ramesses depended in part o n offensive infantrymen ,. but they arc not show n or mention e.d. I',' , O n th e o the r hand , 11\ o rder to carry the batt le to mountamou s o r ro ugh 11' terr ain , where chariot s could not go . a king necessar ily depended o n an i I ,: infa ntry. '[here is o ne clear case of an Egyptia n infantry force co nfro nti ng a barb ar ian infantry pr ior to the Catas tro p he, alth ough .it is hypothetical :I rath er than real. Our so urce here IS th e Papyrus Anastasi, o ne of the most il illumi na ting pieces of evide nce we have for the milita ry Situatio n on th e eve of th e Ca rastrophe. t ' Thi s papyrus, dated to the end of the Nineteent h Dyna sty, is a letter w ritten by a royal official named H o ri to an ambi tio us

be.I: .

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II

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{;:>'It*'..J1 at.s

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Gurney. Th e Hittites (Harmondsworth: 1961 ), 106; Beal, Orgolniz,;ztio11, 698. Yadin. Art ofIVolr{olre, vol, 1, 234- 35. IL For rhe « lief see ibid., 232-33; YaJin suggests that the second wea pon of rhe Shoshu tribes me n may be a sidle sword . One Sh03U warrio r carries two short spears. presum ab ly 10

II

javeli ns . 11 See Wils«m\ rr.rnslntion of rhe papynl~ in AN ET, 475 - 7~ .

FOOT SOLD I ER S

139

but inexp erien ced and untu tored young man . IIIthe co urse of ridiculing his co rrespondent's ignor an ce of pra ctical affairs, Hori purs before him a hypoth et ical military situa tio n, aski ng him wh at sort of food sup plies he would need were he quarterm aster for an army of five thou sand men sent to cru sh a rising of the nc'arim in D jahan (the significance of this casus belli we sha ll exa mine in cha pte r 14). Hor i details wh at this hypoth etical exp edition ary force would co nsist of: "Th e bowmen of the army whi ch is before thee amo unt to 1900, the Sherde n 520 , the Qeheq 1600, the Me shwesh (100 ), and the N ubia ns 880- TOTAL 5000 in all, not co unt ing their officer s." Since food for the horses is not part of the problem, we may assum e th at the nineteen hundred bowm en are o n foot rath er th an in cha rio ts. And since the other th irty-on e hundred troop s-all ba rba rianare di fferent iated from the bowmen, they are presum abl y hand -to -hand warrior s. Th e Pap yrus Anastasi docs suggest that at the end of th e thirt eenth cent ury B.C . the Egypti an s could field an infa nt ry force of five thou sand men, most of these being profession al skir mishers. Th e pap yru s does no t, however, suggest a close-o rde r for ma tio n (each of the nat ion al contingents a pparently has its ow n officers, and th e type of battle en visaged must be a guerrilla since it will be fought against disor ga nized tribe smen ). And since no cha rio ts acco mpa ny the five thou sand infa nt rymen the pap yru s certainl y does not contradict o ur th esis that prio r to the Catastroph e chariots were not used to suppo rt mass formation s of offensive infantry. In battles 6 .../y I!: ~r ' fou ght close to hom e, o r agai nst another kingdo m, a palace co uld rely <4 t'r,'k"/ ;;; entirely upon its cha riot force. Onl y o n th ose occas ions whe n a kingdom Wolillj,'! fo ugh t aga inst barb arian tribesmen in the tribesmen's own hab itat wo uld be / 4 "" 1'>footsold iers bear most o r all of the burden . CD",,£ (,,;....... Alth ough we may generalize th at in the Late Bron ze Age men of the cities and kingdo ms normally relied o n cha rio try, an exception may-be inferred for th e kingdom of Assur, on the northeastern fro ntie r of the civilized world. In the thirteenth cent ury, as was noted in cha pter 2, the kings of Assur freque ntly fought aga inst barbarous enemies o n their no rthern and eastern borders, and here the mo unt ainous terr ain must have required the empl oyment of a sizeabl e Assyri an infantry. When Gutians, from Guri in the Zagros Mountains, came down into th e plain to raid Assyr ian dependenc ies, Sha lmaneser I (1274- 1245) left his infantry behind and swiftly rode o ut- with o nly a th ird of his cha riots-to ro ut the Gu tian s, " wh ose numbers arc co unt less as the sta rs of heaven , a nd wh o know how to plu nder." 14 Bur when Tukulti-N inurta I (1244- 1208) boasts of invading Guti itself and of sla ugh tering " the armies of the Kuri (in th eir ) mountai n

R. 1- ";

J.4

Luckenbill, An cia'll Records of Assyr i,;l Jnd Babyl onia, vol. I, no. 117.

140

A MIL I T A R Y E X

r

LA NAT I ON

fastnesses," 15 we mu st ass u me th a t th is was d one by a n in fantr y capab le o f han d-to- h and figh tin g. Perhaps th e Assyr ian s' long ex pe rience in in fa ntr y warfar e wa s not unre lat e d to th e fan th at th e k in gdo m of Assur was o ne o f th e few to su rvive th e C ata strop he . In ki ngdo ms o ther th an Assur d epe nde nce o n an o ffensive infa ntry mu st have been unusu al. In the Aegea n, the pa laces in th e pl ain s m ay have be e n o cc asio na lly rai d ed by m o u nt ai neers ea rly in th e Lat e H ell ad ic per iod ; a lt ho ug h th e pla ins co u ld be defen d ed by cha r iot s, ret ali ati on w o u ld have been u nd ertak en by infantr ies. T he famo us " Ca p ta in o f t he Black s " fresco from Kno sso s see ms to have show n a t ro o p of black spe ar men , le d b y a " M ino a n ~ ca p ta in . I '; W ha t re ma in s o f th e Pylos "B a ttle Scene ~ (see pl at e 2) shows the pal ace's wa rri or s overco m ing a gro u p o f sav ages clad in a n ima l sk ins. I ? T his is no t a barrle be tween in fan tr y fo rmat io ns but a guerrilla in whi ch each o f th e pa lace 's me n duel s w ith a n o p po ne n t. Sinc e t he Pylian s we a r bo ar's-rusk helmet s, th ey a re o bv io usly wa rrio rs o f h igh sta tus (the tu sk s of mo re tha n seve nt y bo a rs we re required to make a sing le helmet ). But wh eth er t he Pylos fresco re flec ts co ntemporary life o r recall s a legend ar y eve nt, we do not know - and a t a n y rat e it is d oub tful th a t in the pax My cenaica th e p alaces we re o fte n t hrea te ned by bar ba rous o p po ne n ts. T he Hittite kin gs ha d more o ppo rt u n ities to use an inf ant ry. Fro m tim e to time they campai gn ed ag ains t ba r ba r ia ns who fled into h illy o r m oun ta ino us country, and on such occas io ns the Hittite king bo asts of havi n g pursued the fugitives o n fool. It ma y be th at the first phase of s uc h a war fea tu re d the Hittite chari o t ry, a nd the seco nd phase-in ro ug h ter rai nthe infantry. Even for t he H ittites, howev er, inf antry figh tin g wa s unu su al. In hi s stu dy Richar d Beal ident ified th e Sumerogr am ER IN. MES Gi R. tJ L A as t he st rict eq uiva lent of o u r word "infa nt r y" (as in th e ex p ress io n " t he cha ri otry a nd th e infa n try " ) b u t fo u nd o n ly seve n inst an ces of th e term in th e Hittite texts.! " Referen ces to infa nt ry in d o cu ments from o the r Lat e Bro n ze Age kin gd oms see m to be eq ua lly sc a rce. In a ny case, w ha t evid enc e we have sugg es ts that p r io r to the C a tas t rop he infa nt ry ba tt les oc c ur red o n ly in pl aces t ha t char io ts co uld no t go . In t he pl a ins a nd in "no rm al " ter ra in, w here the ch ariot fo rces we re a t hom e, ,\ lbid., no . 152On th i-,fresco see Arthur EV.lJl"~ The ['oJlole/? ofA1illo :;at !\.JIUSSO:;;. ve l. 2., pa rt 2 (Lond o n, 1Y2Xl. 7S5 - 57 and the acco mpanying co lo r plate (p late xiii ]. T he black sold ier ru nning, beh ind the AL"~t.·3n " captain " seems to ca rr y 3. single spea r. T he da te of the fresco ca nno t be ascertained (ir W .I S founJ near-s-but not in- thc Ho use of the Frescoes). Evans no ted that the fn gl11t:nl s " d iner in chn ructer " from those In th e fresco crock and " seem ro have he lou ged to J so mew h.n la ter dare.,. 17 Fo r th e fLTr,m ellts in th eir o ri ~in ;l l st.ire J OlI fo r Pier de jo ng's reco nstru ctio n see ~b hel L in g, Th e [><11.,,--(' of N estor at P)'/o j 111 \X!{'st er n ,\ ft'5>senioJ. vol. 2 : The ir escnes (Pr ince ron . 1%9 ), pl.u c \ 1 '12 H 04,: for Lon):\ comment , sec pp. 42 -47. I f>

t

x BeJ.!. O rgJlIl ~oJtinl1 . 103 - 4 .

H JOTSOL DI E R S

141

." .f/~ ...

.-:-:-;«-:-"' .y...:~~~~:-:-:-:-:••-:.:.:.:-:.:.: .«.:-:-:-:-:-:-:«-;--.-;.,;-;.:-: . r LATE

2. Reconstr ucted " Battle Scene" fresco from Pylos

th e cha rio tries th em selves did the figh ti ng. In the Late Bron ze Age char io ts did net serve- w hether as a sc ree n in the fro nt or as pin cer s o n th e fla n ksto s up po rt mass infa nt ry form a tio ns.

" R UNNERS" : TH E ROLE O F I N FANT RYM EN I N C H A RIOT WA RFA RE

O n di e co nt ra ry, before the Ca tas t ro p he foor so ldie rs see m to have s u ppo rt ed th e cha rio tr y, O n th e ma rch , fo o tso ldiers ca n be assumed to have se rved as a n esco rt for th e cha rio ts movin g in co lu m n a nd as a gua rd for the nig htl y enc a m p ment (in w hi ch a cha rio t a r my, its horses a ll un yo ked a nd tethe red , wo uld have been excep tio na lly vulnera ble), In th e afterma th o f 01 vict ory, in fantr ymen wo u ld p ro ba bl y have pur sued fug itives w ho tled to

144

FOOT S O L D I ERS

A .\ 11 L I T A RYE X P LA S A T l O S

145

iots ; o r th e cas ua lty might be a n ent ire cha r iot .md its crew, on e of th e horses havin g been killed o r wounded, o r perh ap s the veh icle itself havin g been immo bilized b y a broken wheel o r ax le. The d isp at chin g o f th ese s tra nde d cas ua lties , it is clear from Egypti an picto rial evidence (see plat es J and 4 ), w as left to foor soldiers. Armed w ith a sho rr spea r and d irk . th e skirm is he r wa s indeed indi spen sabl e fo r " II ph ases of a chariot battle. W, mi ght say th at w hereas in G reek and Ro ma n tim es horse troops sup po rted th e infa ntry fo rma tio n, in cha riot wn rta rc in fant rymen as indi vidu a ls or in sma ll squ a ds s u p po rted the horse troop to w h ich th ey we re attach ed . Alt hough ve ry lit tle ca n be learned a bo ut the se runners, we ca n hardl y avo id su p po sing th at ever y cha rio t co rps held th em . Although detected in Egy p t by Sch u lma n, the y ha ve not yet been spo tt ed in the lexicographi ca l fog th at enve lo ps mil ita ry m atter s a t Knossos, Pyle s, and orh er sites wi th limited pictori al evidence on w ar fare . It is nevertheless possible that th e ahu in fourteenth -century N uz i was a cha rio t runner. Lit erall y, the ahu wa s a " b ro the r," but the designation w as in fact used for a certain kind o f warri or a nd most likel y for a ce rta in kind o f foorsoldier attached to th e

P LA T E

3. A sliardann skirmisher slaying

,1

Hittite charioteer at Kadesh . Abydos

relief

fortification ). Po ssibl y o n so me o ccasions s ki r m ishers rode in to battl e o n th eir co m ra d es' cha r iots (the G reek apobates comes to mind her e ) a nd di sm ounted when their veh icle s began to clo se with the en em y. Alt ernativel y, sk irm ishers ma y ha ve m oved as a troop. In reliefs, sq uad s o f four Egyptian infantrymen are so me times s ho w n m ar ching al on gsid e a cha rio t as it proceeds toward battl e, th e four ca rryi ng s h ields and eithe r spea rs o r sick le sw o rd s. The Arn orite ne'arim wh o sav ed the Amon ca m p in 12 7 5 s .c, see m to ha ve rea ch ed the ca mp as a co m p a ny. The unusu all y real isti c Abyd os reliefs of the Kad csh battl e show th at Egy p tian runner s mu st h ave worked clo sel y with their chario t sq uad ro n, their fun ct ion being to deal w ith th o se of th e enemy w ho were o n fo ot. In a cha r iot battle, the enemy o n fo ot wo uld have included not o nly the o p posing runn er s but als o cas ua lties from th e cha rio ts themselves: s kir m ishe rs mu st thus have been resp on sibl e for " fin ish ing off" an enemy c ha rio t cre w w hose vehicl e had been imm obili zed . We ca n assu me rh.rr in a ny cha riot barrlea r.ipidlv moving cha r io t ho st would lea ve its casua lties in its wak e. Th ese m igh t be indi vidu al men , wounded o r sim p ly fallen from th eir cha r-

A shurd.m.i skirmisher cut t ing off the hand of a slain Hittit e ch a riotee r at Kadesh, Ahydos relief

PLA T E 4 .

146

A M I L I TAR Y EX P LAN A T I O N

cha riorry. Kendall 's anal ysis sh ows th at th ese warriors were neith er cha riot eer s nor cha riot wa rrio rs but were attached to cha riot units, a nd th at there were two suc h brothers for every cha norcer.> It is certain that the Hitt ite kings used cha rio t runners, but littl e can be said a bo ut them . Beal's su rvey turned up seve ral referen ces to troo ps wh o we re to " run before" the Hittite king. 27 No Hittite term tor "c ha riot runn er " emerged from the texts, although the piran huyatalla (" fo rerunne r" ) may in seve ra l passages have so me such rneanin g.> It is a lso possible th at th e shariluuoa troop s, wh o seem to have been a tertium quid alongside " infa nt ry " and cha riotry, were skirrnishe rs.?" T he importance of runners in Hitt ite cha riot wa rfa re was after all grea t enou gh th at Rarne sses II ment ion ed them immedia tely afte r the cha riots th emselves. T he " poetic" acco unt of the Battle of Kad esh declar es th at Rarnesses ..fou nd twent y-five hundred cha rio t-teams sur ro unding him in his road, to geth er with a ll the runn ers belo ngi ng to the foes of H atti a nd the numerous count ries which we re with him . " 30 Th ese Hittite runn ers must be co nt ras ted wi th the s to lid ranks of infantry th at sta nd mot ionl ess, in the reliefs, around the fortress of Kadesh. In Linear B tablets no term has yet been int erpreted as th e equ ivalent of ski rmis her o r runner. Th e profession al warri or s emp loyed by th e Pylos and Knossos palaces, however, may very well have been intended to serve in th at ca paci ty. There may be a bit of pictorial evidence for My cen aean runn ers (o r, more accurately, walkers). O n a late thirteenth- or ea rly tw elfth- century krater from Tir yns two warri or s, each armed with a sho rt spea r a nd a sma ll, round shield, pro ceed on foot in front of a ch ari ot. 3 I It is ~ h Kendal l, \VtITfarc. 73. finds that " the ' b rothers' an d r11~ cha rioteers h.r..'e the same co rm na nding o fficers, a nd that the form e r are ge nera lly tw ice .1S" num ero us .l~ the: lar rer. " ! ' B<., I. O rganization. 23 4- 3 5. 1.3 7. 23 811.723. an d 555 . I N For references see ibid.. 554- 59; Ik:tl's own preference is to translate the ter m J S " lea der " o r " vanguurds ma n." ~ . . Bea t. ibi d.. 125 - 27, cires a number o f tex ts rh.rr refer to "rile infant ry, the ho rse rroopv, .ind rhe sha rik llwd ." but no te xt sU~e's. rs the ba sis for rhe d ifferent iatio n. Cf. Beal's su mma ry: .. If the sa rik u u sa- we re neit her infan try no r ho rse tr oops, w hat wert: th ey? . . . O n th e basis (.I f pr esenr evide nce ir is impossib le to SJy wh at so rt o f rroop s rhey were ," In p rivate co rrespo nd ence Beul wel com es the id enrificatio n o f the sharik uu -a tro o ps >IS cha rio t runne rs bur regr t.' rs th ar "ir canner be prove n o ne way o r another. " h' Kadcsh po em . lilies 84-8 5 . " tr anslated by Schu lma n, " Egyp tia n C hario try," 90 n. 11 1 (d. p. 89 n. 106 ); the Egypt ian term used he re is pbrr, accompanied by an ideog ra m of :I running ma n armed with shield a nd spe.u . In Gardi uer 's rranslan on (KJdt!5h, P85) the wo rd is rr.msl.ued no r AS "runners " but .1S " cha mpion s. " In his nore o n th e line G.lf uiner exp lai ns : " PI,TT m eans hrera lly 'runner,' but \'It''' , i 54 1. 14-I X sho ws that ir WJs A ge ner a l term for do ugh ry w arrio rs," O n the H ittite runn ers see .11500 Stillman a nd Talli s, Annie's , 41 . n Vcrm eu!e and K.lrJ.geo rghi\ . M y t-t'l hll'u H r ;t.'/()rt~11 \~ISt! PJill tillg, 108- 9, w ith plat e X , I . Althou gh the .m isr did not sho w th e warrio rs wi th ;lny o ther we apo ns, he mJ y have inten ded rhe .:; p e; l r\ .I S rh mw in g-vpea r-, o r i ~I \'d i n s ; the sha ft is ~ri p p(' J with the fingerrip s of .1 coc ked lu nd, T he .tut hor v J;He the vase [0 the tr.rnvirio n between LH JUB .1I1d me.

F OOTS O L D I E RS

147

also poss ible that the apobates kn own from first-m illennium athletic co ntests was the distant descendant of a seco nd- millenn ium chariot runner. V Let us summa rize what ca n be dedu ced abo ut the role of infa nt rymen in the Late Bronze Age kingdom s of the eastern M editerranean. Infant ry battl es of a guerrilla type were evide ntly fou ght in ba rba ria , o r in locales impas sab le for cha riots. Kings a lso requ ired a n infantry for such sta tionary assignm ent s as the siege or defense of a city. When the cha rio try was on the march, foorso ldie rs would have prov ided a n esco rt an d gua rded the encampment . During the battle itself footso ldiers were appa rently employed in one of two ways. Man y of them seem to have served as a co rdon, a haven to which wor sted cha riots could flee. O thers served as hand-to -hand skirmishers-or runners-who fought in immedia te su ppo rt of the cha riot squa dro n to which they were attac hed . Th ese vario us respon sibilities were all impo rta nt , but they were neverth eless ancillary: infantrymen supplement ed th e cha riotry, rath er th an the o ther way a roun d. Prior to th e Catastro phe there is no evidence for a clash of close-o rde r infantry form ations o r to r cha rio t warriors suppo rt ing their co mra des on foot.

THE R ECR UITMENT OF INFANTRYM EN IN THE LATE BRONZE A GE

Th e recruitment of footsoldiers by the eastern M editerranean kingdoms is consis tent with the secondary role that infant ry played in the Late Bronze Age. Th ere is, first of all, no evidenc e for a genera l ca ll-up of adult males in these kingdom s: nothing, that is, to par allel the citizen militias of Archai c Greece and Italy o r the tribal militi as of Israel and Ju dah in the earl y Iron Age. Before the Ca tastro phe, kings dep end ed upo n professional s rather th an upon mo bilized civilians, and man y infantrymen were appa rent ly just as professional (even though of relat ively low status) as were the chariot . crews. Assyria, agai n, may have been exceptio nal. Since Assyr ia was a fro nt ie-r kingdom , the tradition of a tri bal milit ia may have prevailed there in the secon d millennium, as it app arentl y did in the first (although th e pr act ice cannot be demon strated from th e few Mid dle Assyrian docum ent s that survive). At a ny rat e, in those kingdom s fo r wh ich there is substantia l evide nce the gene ra l popu lation was never mobili zed. So me kings ordered a conscriptio n o n occasio n, but th e num ber of men called up was sma ll. Levies in Egypt tr ad ition ally took o ne of every ten tem pleservitor s for military serv ice, but Rarnesses III pr ided himself o n II N. B. C rowther, "Th e Apob arcs Reco nsidered t Demo srhencs Ixi 23 -9)." j ll S III ! 1991 ): 174- 76 . bri ngs rogerher J II th e Greek tex ts referring 10 rbis o bscure athlete, wh o

lea pt fro m J. cha riot ro acco mplish several feJrs of ru nning .tud wa rfare . Crowrher (p. 174 j notes that fo urth -ce ntur y At heni an s irn.rgmed rh.rr rht' u/)011£lt,11 wh om t hey were watchi ng were replica ti ng rhe WJy that "G reeks :1110 burbn ri.mv In Homer ma de wa r Jg Jinst each ot her ."

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Brea sted. AR. vo l. 4 , no . 35 4 ; d. G ar din er. Egypt, 293. Ed gerto n an d Wi lso n, H isto rical Recor ds o f Ramscs III , p lat e 29 : "T h e ar my is nssem b led . an d rhey ar c the bu lls of rbe lan d : every pi cked m a n [of J a il [Egypt\ a nd the runn e rs." \,:: Be.il, O rgJ 1I iZJtio 1l, 220-40. I n O n H itt it e levies see ibid .• Ll3- 46. r- Helrze r, In ternal O rg<1"i: JtlO" . 108- 11. h i !\1. Die trich a nd O. Lo retz, " Die Sch a rd an a in d en Tex ren vo n Ugarir, " in R. St ieh l an d G . A. Leb m.m n. cds .. Annls c und Un ioersalge scb ichte : Festschr ift H ans Erich St ier (M unst er. 19 7 2), .; J, sugges t "Nah kimpfer " as a rra nsla rion of tnn rn, a te rm rhar ar Uga rit is a lm ost interc ha ng ea b le wi th sha rda n« . ,.. . Hclrze r, Int ernal () rg. m i ~ J tion , 105 - 8 . H

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L A N A T I () N

hav ing fo rgo ne even thi s mod est exacno n.P For his toorsoldi ers he will have relied up on rhe professiona ls whom he hired . T hese included both "picked men " of Egypt and bar bari an s. T he Egyptia ns were appa ren tly nor employed as runn ers, since a Mediner H a bu in scription differentiarcs rhe two grou ps.>' Th e H ittite kings depended pr imar ily up o n th eir regul ar a rmy, th e professio na l infa nt rymen known as UK U.US a nd sba rileutoa . When a serio us ca mpaign was plann..d, thi s " standin g ar rny ' W:lS ro uti nely sup plemented by troop s sent, u nder treaty, by pacified dis tricts on the front ier, espe cially to th e north of Harti (where thou san ds of Kasknns, renowned for thei r valo r, were to be found).3) Onl y in emerge ncies was it necessary for the G reat King to levy tro op s from th e civilian populati on of H arri itself; a nd when such levies were held, the recru its were disch a rged as soo n :IS possiblc.v' In Uga rit, Helrzer fo und so me eviden ce for co nscripnon.F indi vidu als fro m va rio us villages being issued bow s by the palace o r being assigned as rowers o n the king's ships. But agai n, th eir role W:lS mar ginal, a nd fo r th e most part the king of Uga rir relied up on his professio nals-the mdrglm gu ards and the tn nm (the latter seems to have meant so mething like " ha ndto -h an d w:lrri or s" ).·lHThe entire milita ry force at Uga rir, acco rding to Hclrzer 's calcularion , was o nly 20 77 men , with o ne-twe lfth- or about 175 men-serving in :lny given month. Altho ugh this figure may be much too low (He lrzcr him self not es that the king of Uga rir may have had a thou sand cha riots), Hclr zer 's winnowing of th e tabl ets has at least show n that th ere is no evide nce for any massed infantry in th at city. Th e single lar gest co nti ngent in his list a re th e mdrg!m-gua rds, who acco unt fo r over half (1050 men) of his roral.! " In the M ycenaean kingdo ms there may have been no consc riptio n at a ll. At Pyla s, wh ere the re were severa l hun dred cha riots, the cha riot crews mu st have been al most as num erou s as th e infa nt ry. As indicated above, the estima tes fo r the pop ulat ion rul ed b y the Pylos palace-range fro m 50 ,0 00 to 120 ,000 peo ple, b ur nowhere d o we hea r o f th ou san ds o f Me sscnia ns

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I L RS

149

being ca lled to th e colo rs. Th e five o-lea ra blets enume ra te 77 0 pediieue, a wo rd thor is pro babl y to be eq ua ted with classica l G reek pedieis a nd sho uld ther efo re mean " foorso ld iers" (altho ugh it mu st be said th at some M yceno logisrs have recentl y deni..d that the o-ka ta blets have a nything to do w ith milita ry matt ers).'!" At :lny rare, th e 770 men listed in th ese ta blets wo uld be by far the la rgest number of men arresrcd for militar y pur poses at Pylos, and the etbnica desig nati ng them suggest th at they were not Messcni nn nat ives."! That th ere were no militias in the palace-star..s of rhirr cenrh- cenru ry Gree ce ma y seem a her etical view, since th e M ycen aean !awagetas is usually thought of as being a Hom eri c "s hepherd of the host" and so as mar shal of a vast a rray of infantry format ions . But in all of the tablets the only reference to th e Iau/agetas in a contex t that might co nceiva bly be milita ry is a n ent ry menti on ing " the cha rio teer of the latoagetas. "4 2 At Knossos, cente r of a ki ngdom rulin g well over 100 ,00 0 peo ple, the largest num bers of men recor ded in the Linear B tablets a re 900 and 428. Here roo, as Jan Driessen has arg ued, what few infa nt ryme n a re attested a re very likely professio nal a nd non-C rera n.O O ne must suspect th at in those Nea r Eastern kingdo ms in which conscriptio n was practiced the ca libe r of the levied troo ps was not very high. Even in battl e the conscript may have been mor e a civilia n than a so ld ier. In Egypt, as noted, o ne our of ten temple servit or s might be con scripted for military du ty, and persons so infrequently levied a re not likel y ro have had prior milit a ry experience. Hi ttite records indi cate th at the men co llected in a royal levy might be assigned ro a variety of menial task s: serving as a too rsoldie r was o ne, but alte rna tively the dr aftee migh t be ass igned to ca rry ice o r har vest a vineya rd.":' At N uzi, the typic al sab shepi (" foo tso ldier ") was ap pa rently a co nscript: in o ne of the few referen ces to such a troo p, the

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O n th e pcd iieu e in the o-ira ta blets see Le jeu ne , " Ci vilisat ion. " 31. A lexa nd er Ucbi rel, " On th e ' M ilitary' Cha racte r of th e O · KA Tab lets ." Kadmos 23 (19 X4 ): 136-63. argues rhar the o-lea tablets have nothing to do with military matters and instead refer to "so me sort o f a gr icu lt ur al wo r k. pro bably plou gh ing" (p. 163). Uchirel's a rg ume n t has been str o ngl y e ndo rsed by ja mes T. Hoo ke r. "Title s a nd Functi o ns in th e Pylian State. " in Killen . Stud ies in M ycen ocJn and Classical G reek Present ed to John Chadw ick, 264- 65. If the o-i:a men we re " fo reigne rs, " ho wever, as they seem to ha ve been , it is likely tha t their occupan o n was "o mething mo re spec ial ized th an wor king in the field s.
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tabl et specifies th at of seven foot soldiers o ne was a full er, two were smiths, and one was a templ e official.4 \ How such recruitment might have been co nd ucted in th e Late Bro nze Age is not indi cated, so far as I know, in a ny of our records. In th e M iddle Bron ze Age, we cat ch a glim pse of how things might have proceed ed at M ar i. TIle officer in charge of recruitment there d ecided, as Watki ns o bserved.v' th at so mething must be don e " po ur -enco urager les autres ~ a nd so sent to King Zimri-Lim a mod est prop osal: " If my lord wi ll agree , let me execute a cr iminal in th e priso n, cut off his head a nd par ad e it all aro und th e to w n. . .to mak e the men afraid so that th ey w ill assemble qui ckly." How co nscripts were used in Lat e Bron ze Age warfar e is uncl ear. At Uga rit, as mentio ned , they were so metimes issued bo ws, a nd perhaps we may imagine th em employed in either assa ulting or defend ing a fixed positi on. Possibl y so me of the th irty-seven thou sand infant rym en who sto od wi th M uwata llis at the gat es of Kadesh were co nscr ipts , a ltho ugh Rarn esses' inscri ption does say th at the se men were all thrwarrior s, a term th at mean s som eth ing like " valia nt " a nd was applied to exp eri enced troops. N o text mention s the tr a inin g of co nsc rip ts, and we may su ppose th at th ey we re assigned du ties of a ro uti ne nature. Th ere is no reason to th ink th at co nscripts were expected - o r able- to engage in hand-to-h and com ba t. We may turn , the n, to the profession al foorso ldier s, wh o ap pea r und er a va riety of designation s. In th e first cent uries of th e Late Bron ze Age mos t prof essional foorsoldiers may have been natives of the kin gdom in which the y fou ght. In late fifteenth-centu ry Nu zi there is littl e eviden ce for fo reign infa ntry me n. In Eighreenth-Dynasry Egypt th e in fant rym en wh o su pported th e chariotry were pro babl y Egyptian ntnu, which liter all y may have meant "yo ung men " but whic h Schulm an tr an slate s as " elite tr o op s." On the Konosso stele, Thut mose IV described his force s as he attacked a Nubi an prin ce who had rebelle d : "The chariot ry was in ba ttl e-lines bes id e him, his infantry was with h im, the strong-of-a rm co nsis ting of th e nfru/ who were (usually) beside him o n both tlan ks." 47 "Even at th e end of th e Eightee nth Dynasty the ph ar aoh 's chariot runner s were proba bly still nat ive Egyptians. O n a ches t from the to m b of Tut ankhamun , fro m the middl e of th e fourtee n th cent ury, is a painting of a battle in th e Leva nt . TIle pharaoh, actin g as both chariot eer and chariot warri o r, domin ate s the scene, shooting the enemy's chariot horses. Bu t the wor k of d isp atchin g th e crews of those chariots th at have been imm o bilized is Perfo rmed by foo tso ldiers who attack with sho rt thrustin g spe a rs; a nd 4 ,~

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Ken d all, V'/aTfare, 148 ; It

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be co ntained on rhis one page. 4f, \'<' a tk ins, .. Begm nings ," 2 7; fo r rhe rext se e A rchives Royaies de Mar;, vol, 2, no . 4 8. 47 Trn nda rio n fro m Schu lma n . "E gypti a n Cha rio rry," 76,

15 1

fro m their ga rb, hair, and weapo ns o ne wou ld su ppos e th e men to be nat ive Egy prians.w Among fore ign p rofessio nals, the lowest level seems to have been th at of the hapiru (o r 'prw ), free-la ncers who were hired merely for a season or ca mpaign. Egypti an , Uga ritic, and Hittite text s all make menti on of hapiru, both as hired tro op s a nd 3S tr oublesom e elements agai nst whom actio n ha d to be tak en . Th e " Hebrew " tr adition s in ea rly Isr ael ind ica te th at man y o f the hapiru who fou gh t for the ph ar aoh were hired fro m th e less sett led population s in th e so uthern Levant. Etymo lo gica lly, the wo rd hap iru seems to have had no specifically milit ary conn ot ation, meanin g so methin g like "v agrants ~ o r "t hose who have crossed bo undarie s," and clearly not a ll bapi ru were wa rrio rs. 4~ But in the Late Bro nze Age many hapiru were associated with mer cenary milit ar y service, and app arentl y th ey were hired for han d- to-h and rather th an for lo ng-ran ge co mba t. T he Sumeria n ideo gra m th at is ofte n used a longside or in place of the wo rd hapiru is Sft GAZ, which seems o riginally to have meant " he wh o com mit s aggressio n," or "one who knocks down," or even " killer. "50 T he bapiru , or SA.GAZ, seem to have fo ught in con junction with cha riots but were not th emselves chariotee rs or char iot a rc hers.\ ) A p referable so ur ce of seaso ned infa nt rymen fo r tem por a ry servi ce was a vassa l state or a province o n the fro nt ier. As indicated a bove, th e H itti te kings (who rar ely hir ed hapiru) seem to have assembl ed th e co nsid era ble infantry need ed for a major campa ign by requirin g every su bject distri ct to send to the G reat King a certa in number of tro op s. If o ne were to believe Rarnesses th e Great's acco u nt of th e Bartle of Kadesh, the ki ngs of Ha rt i d epended very mu ch up o n mer cenar ies. Accor di ng to Rarn esses, Mu watall is st rippe d h is treas ury ba re in or der to hire manpower fo r the showdo wn at Kad esh . Alt ho ugh Rarnes ses provid es us wit h a grea t list of plac es th at sup plied troop s to M uw atallis, it is not clea r which of th ese were Hittite vassa ls a nd which were simply areas from which volunteers or mer cen ari es may have come. At a ny ra te, few of M uwa rallrs's th irt y-seven thou sand infant ryme n were co nscripts fro m Hatt i: Ra rnesses refers to bo th grou ps of M uwarall is's infa nt ry men as " tb r wa rrior s," a wo rd th a t may mean "cha mpio ns" o r " valia nt me n" bur that more objectively seems to Jr co lor illustration set:' Yad in, A r' o( W~rfiJr{,~ vol. 1. 11 6- 17 . Of J sco re of st ud ies on t he lrapiru th e:rno sr recenr is hy NJJJ VNa 'a m an, " H ap iru and H eb rews: The Tran sfe r of 3 Soci a l Term ro t he Lite ra ry Sce ne, " ]N l S 45 (1986 ): 271-88 ; see also H , C az elles, "The H ebr ews," in D. Wi sem J n, ed .. People> 0{ O ld -Testame nt Times (O xfor d, 1973 ), 1- 28, ' " M 3ry G r3y, "The Ij j boru·Hebr ew Prob lern in t he Lighr of rhe So urce ,..,131er;31Avarl.ible a t Preven t," Heb reur Unio n College Annual 29 (1 958 ): LJ7fi'. '>I W. H eick. Die Bt. 'ziehtmga t Agvpten» :.u vorderasien im J. urrd 2. [abrt.nc end P. Chr. (W iesb.IUl"l1, 1961 1. 5 21- .1 1, pro po sed rh at th e rcrrns marva un u J nJ 'pr u - sto od resp ec nve lv to r chan orr y .mJ mt~ nt r y r roft's (,i o n ~k G

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distinguish seasoned veterans from conscript troops. 52 Egyptian kings also depended on frontier vassals for auxiliary troops. The Amorite ne'arim who fought for Ramesses 11 in 1275 B.C. may have been furnished by his vassals in the Levant. In the thirteenth century, however, many kings preferred to secure the services of valiant barbarians on a permanent basis. In return for a plot of land, and for some other compensation, the warrior would be available for annual campaigns and might perform guard or sentinel duty at other times of the year. The advantages of having such men 111 one's service were, for a Near Eastern king, considerable. For natives of Egypt and other kingdoms of the Near East life was normally pacific, and consequently they were not such keen hand-to-hand warriors as were men from less settled lands. In the royal reliefs, the native Egyptians engaged in hand-to-hand warfare fight in squads of four, the four standing shoulder to shoulder and so presenting a solid wall of oblong shields. The barbarian skirmisher, on the other hand, fights on his own; with no comrade to right or left, he depends on his own round shield. Mobility rather than solidarity was essential. For offense, the native Egyptian skirmishers wielded either thrusting spears or long metal staves, with which they beat their opponent to the ground. Such weapons were suitable for the compact squad, since a man was not likely to injure his fellows if his weapon was parried or misdirected. The barbarian was a far more efficient skirmisher: ferocious in his horned or feathered helmet, he used his long sword to threaten opponents in a wide perimeter. Although the Egyptian pharaohs procured many of their professionals from Nubia and Libya, some of the best (and perhaps the most picturesque) skirmishers evidently came from Sardinia. Both in Egypt and at Ugarit a term sometimes applied to foreign professionals skilled at handto-hand combat is shardana.t> As I have argued in chapter 4, the word originally must have meant "a man from Sardinia." That phrase, however, although entirely meaningful when spoken by a Sardinian native living in Egypt, would have meant little or nothing to a native Egyptian, who had never seen a sea, an island, or a map. The proper noun therefore may sometimes have been used as a common noun denoting a man's function in society and his physical type. In Egyptian inscriptions the phonetic rendering of the word shardana is occasionally illustrated by a determinative: a warrior wearing a horned helmet (between the horns is a small disk) and usually carrying a small round shield and either a sword or a spenr.v' As Heick concluded, whenever we see warriors in horned helmets depicted in S2 On the thr warriors see Heick; Bcsiehungen, 531-32; Heick translures the term ,1.') "Garde" or "Held." q Dietrich and Lorera, "Die Schardana in den "lexren VOIl Ugant," 39-42; (;, A. Lehmann, ,"lykclltsdJe Welt, 33-34. )4 Heick. "Die Seevoiker," 9.

153

Egyptian reliefs we may reasonably "sic als Sardin identifizicrcn.t"> However, we must also suppose that for a thirteenth-century Egyptian scribe the word shardana had a semantic field quite different from that of our word Sardinian. So far as the provenance of such warriors was concerned, the Egyptian scribe perhaps knew only that they came from a barbarous place "in the midst of the sea." The first Sardinians attested in Egypt were raiders who ravaged the Delta in 1279 and were defeated and captured by Ramesses the Great. They had come "in their warships from the midst of the sea, and none were able to stand before them."56 Once impressed into Ramesses' service, the Sardinians evidently served him very well. They were an important and conspicuous part of the army he took to Kadesh in 1275 B.C.: in the Abydos reliefs (see plates 3, 4, and 5), some Sardinian runners-warriors wearing horned helmets and carrying dirks or short swords-are slaying the fallen Hittite chariot crewmen and cutting off their hands, while others serve as personal bodyguards for Ramesses. By the end of the thirteenth century, as the Papyrus Anastasi suggests, a great many Sardinians (there are 520 in Hori's imaginary force) were employed by the pharaoh. As noted above, in the Medinet Habu reliefs we see warriors in horned helmets doing yeoman service for Rarnesses III against the Philistines, and the accompanying inscription divides the pharaoh's army into "the infantry, the chariotry, the troops, the Sherden, and the Nubians." 57 At the same time, some warriors in horned helmets had been recruited by the Philistine side. At least some of these, too, were shardana in the narrower rather than the generic sense, since one of the Medinet Hahu reliefs identifies as a shardana a captured chief who wears a horned helmer.V At.er the eventful battles of his early years, Ramesses III still employed many shardana and other barbarians (especially from Libya), since in the Papyrus Harris the dead king addresses "the princes, and leaders of the land, the infantry and chariorry, the Sher-

Heick, "Die Seevolker," 9. From the Tanis stele, as translated by Gardiner, Egypt, 259. 57 Edgerton and Wilson, Historical Records of Ramses III, plate 29. S8 Sandars, Sea Peoples, figs. 68 and 79. There is no reason, however, to suppose that all warriors in horned helmets came from Sardinian stock. Sand.irs pointed out (ibid., 106-7) that the homed helmet has an ancient pedigree in the Near East, going back to Naram-Sin of Akkad. Perhaps it would be safest ro think of me horned helmer as appealing to a variety at European, Mediterranean, and Near Eastern warriors: 3 professional warrior who wished to look and feel formidable could hardly do better man strapping on his head the horns at a bull. Most if not all Sardinian warriors serving in the eastern Mediterranean may have worn the horned helmet. But Sicilians may also have worn it, since in the Medinet Habu relief of the naval battle in 1179 B.C. the enemy wear horned helmets, and the accompanying inscription identifies Shekelesh hut not Shard.ina among the enemy. We need not identify 3S Sardinians the soldiers on the Mycenaean "'Warrior Vase," simply bee.ruse they wear horned helmets, nor the sirml.irly accoutred Ingot God at Cyprus. 55 56

154

F O O TSO LD I E R S

A MILI TARY EXPLA :-:AT IO :,/

155

Uga rit.s-' and in so me se nse th ey und ou btedly were fore ign er s. Yer o ne of the few sbardana menti on ed by nam e is " Arna r-Add u, so n of M urbaa l. " T he names of fat he r a nd son arc bo th Semiric . Ano t he r shan /ana seems ro have in herited fields at Uga rit.s-' the normal pr act ice being th at th e shardana recei ved land fro m th e king in return for m ilitar y ser vice, It thu s appea rs that at Ugarit some of the shardana may have been fairly well ass im ilate d int o th e genera l pop ulation. At Ugarit some shardana served as m drglm -guards a nd as tn nm; th e latt er te rm, ,is noted a bove, evidently means " ha nd- to -ha n d wa rrio rs. "".. ~ . T he king ~:>f H arti seem s to have recru ited muc h of his sta nding army- J ~~" I th e UKU.US a nd t he sha rik utoa-s- ircnn men living near o r beyond th e ~/ fron tier a nd especia lly alon g th e Pont ic ran ge in th e north. H er e lived th e kbar bar ou s Kaskans, a so urce of danger as well as manpow er. After subjug atin g some of th e Kaskan lands, Hattu silis III b rou ght back wa rriors to serve w ith his UKU.U.s.65 T he ki ng of Ugari t ma y a lso have ke pt a t roop of Kaskan s, Liveran i at a ny rare suggested th at w hat seems to be a reference , in a Ugaritic tex t, to the " capo dei K3Ska" ca n best be ex plained o n th e ass umpt io n th at " si tr atta d i un gruppo di so lda t i mercc na ri, ' w, Fo r th e Aegea n wo rld, th ere is lirtle evide nce o n o u r topic. Wh :lt the re is, however, sugge sts th at pri or to the C atast rophe th e Myc enaea n pa laces might have dep end ed alm o st ent irely on "for eign " professionals for thei r infant ry forces. T he "Captain of the Blacks " fresco at Knoss o s m ay have po rtrayed an Aegea n cap tain leading a co mpany of black tr oops (o ne thin ks of th e N ub ia ns w ho fou ght for the Egyptia n pha rao hs). T he " Barrie Scen e " fresco fro m Pylos (see plate 2) show s thr ee pa lace wa rrio rs who are surely pro fessio na l bu t w ho seem to fight in th e same style-an d wi th the sa me weapons-as th eir " wi ld" oppo ne nts. TIle six groups of men na med in th e o-ka tabl ets from Pylos a rc likely to be six et hnic design at ion s.v? Alth ou gh non e of th e design ation s sugges ts a proven an ce from outside th e Aegean, there is so me reas o n to see th ese men-if th ey ar e indeed so ldiers, as th ey are usuall y t ho ugh t to be-as " foreign " professionals, Dr iessen ha s ar gued that at Knossos the design ation lccsenuu/ ija is an cestr al to th e cla ssical G reek xenoi, a wo rd t ha t literall y mean s " stra nge rs" but mu st ofte n be tr an slat ed as " m ercena ries." Since three o r poss ibly four of th e Pylo s o-ha gro up s show up in the Knoss os a rchi ve, Drie ssen co ncl udes th at th e G ree k rule rs of Knos so s brough t in "fo reigne rs" o r mer cen ari es to

k..

P LA T E

5. Sbardana bodyguards 01 Rarnesses1I, ;1t Kadesh. Abydos relief

den , th e num ero us a rche rs, a nd a ll th e citizens of t he land of Egypt." Further o n in th e papyru s he boa sts th at he had " Sh crden and Kehe k w itho ut nu mber" in his service and th at con di tio ns in his king do m were so peaceful th at "the Sherden and th e Kehek in their villages . . . lie at n ight full len gth w itho ut any dread. " .19 And in th e reign of Ramesses V (114945 ) th e Wil bour Pa pyru s identi fies sha rdana as p rop rietors of lan d gra nted to them by the king .60 In th e Levant, Sardi nians appa rently serve d as mer cen aries a lread y in th e Ama rna perio d . In co rrespo nde nce den ouncin g Rib-Add i of Byblo s, shardana arc mention ed three tim es, a nd th ey a re q uite clearl y so ldiers." ! In the Uga rit t ablet s th ere are severa l references to shardana, although by ca . 120 0 B. G. the ter m may here too have den ot ed functi o n rather th a n provenance. H elrzer regards the shardana as " for eigners in th e royal se rvice of ' " Breasted , AP., vol. 4, nos. 39 7, 402, and (;IS rransl.ired in Ga rdi ner, Egypt. 293) 4 10. Ga rd in er, Egypt. 2.96- '17 . . .. I He lck, "Secvo lker." S. co ncludes " dass sit' So lda re n sind , O b sic im Dienst d e'S Rib add i srchen odc r zu eine r j ~y p t io;;~h en Einh eir geboreu. ist n ichr erkennbar." h I)

Internal O rganiza tion , i27. oJ On bo th rhese individu a ls see H el rzer, lnternul O rganization, 126. M Dietrich and Lo retz , "Scha rdana ," 41 . h i Beal , Org aniza tion, 121- 13 ,235. an d 2..1 7 ; see al..o E. La ro che , " Lerrr c d 'u n prefer au rOJ hirrire," Ret-ue bittitr et asian iqu e 0 7 (l9()O): S I- St> . nh Live ra ni , Stor ia di Ugant , 154 . ,.- Driessen . ...\ 1ilitary A Spt-'CfS, " ~ q . 62 .... Helrze r,

156

A MI I.I T A R Y E XP L A !'l A T ION

maintain the kingdo m's secu riry.r" Th e place-n am es th at can he got out of (o r read into ) the terms sugges t that the xcnoi C H ill' fro m backw a rd are as of the Aegean." Since the foreigners sho w up o n tabl ets registering land ullotmenr s, it may be " tha t sma ll gro up' of for eigners were admitted to the Pylian kin gdom and were allotted sma ll fiefs of land for cultivatio n. In return, they had to contribute ,1 certa in a mo un t of flax and ren der milit ar y serv ice in the Pylian a rmy. " ~,, At Knossos th ere is no dir ect evid enc e for th is pract ice, hut Driessen thinks it likely th at th ere too the palace b ro ugh t in for eigners "who rendered milit ar y serv ice in return for fiefs of land." So far as o ur limited evide nce goes, th en , we may supp ose th at M ycen aean infantrymen were normally p rofessionals an d came fro m the less pacific part s of the Aegea n. Elsewhere I have argued th at in th e Lat e Hell ad ic period the lower classes in the palace sta tes of Boeot ia, the Pelo pon ncse and Crete still spo ke the pre-Greek lan guage th at had been current throu ghout the a rea in Ea rly and Middl e Hellad ic tim es: mo st s ubjects of the palaces, that is, would at best have had o nly a limit ed acquaintance with th e Greek language spo ken by th e lords of th e palaces and their chariot eer s. I would therefore her e sugges t that whe n the Pylian kin g, for exampl e, hired professional infant ryme n, he hired North-Greek speakers from the mountains beyond Boeotia. It is likely th at the mount aineers were more warlik e th an the Messenian natives, wh ose relation ship to the palace seem s to have anti cipated that of the helots to th eir Dor ian masters in the Iron Age. Such indi cation s as we have of numbers sugges t th at the typical foreign contingent was com posed of several hundred (a nd not severa l thousand ) men. In the Papyru s Ana sta si army, the lar gest forei gn cont ingent we are to imagine is tha t of the Qeheq , a Libyan tri be, wh o would accou nt for six teen hundred of the five thou sand-man force. When Uga ritic texts make reference to sbardana, the references ar e not to hundreds but to gro ups of four a nd five, a nd Helt zer calculates their total as abo ut sixry.?' The Linear B tabl ets are unu sually informati ve on th is point. T he o-ka tabl et s from Pyla s - show th at two h undr ed okara men for med the lar gest conti nge nt, the sma llest being a gro up of seventy urup iiaio. t ? T he Pylo s pa lace did not , however, have ;I II two hundred okara se rving tog ethe r but bro ke them up ,,' Ibid.• 50- Sli. t.'" Driessen. ibi d ., 50, sugg ests that the JUJJsn wer e tro ops w ho ca rne fro m Iaso s, that the Un fpiic.J;fl were tTOOpS from Oly mp ia. 3nJ rhar J.II the troop 'i "were origina lly non -M csscni .m ~ lin n. 5 Driessen passes on the su gges no n rha r two of the o ther conti ngent... ma y hovc (o rne from Cc rcyra .rnd Skyros ). I wo uld suggest o nly rhar Urupijdjo is more likely to poin r to Mr . O lympus t han to Pclo porm esian O lymp ia; rhe la tt er na me seems to be derived from rhe fo rmer, JnJ there i"i no reaso n to suppo se rhar ir is muc h o lder than the sa nctu a rv. -o Ihid . '

"'

H d rzer.I,ltem~1 O rg~nh~l ion.

72

Le jeu ne, " Crvrlis.mo n, " J4- -HJ.

106-

7

and 126.

HlOTSOI. D I ERS

157

into sma ller gro ups a nd pos ted them in severa l locati on s. In th e Knossos a rch ive, ta blet B164 refers to a t least 368 men , a ppa rently all of them "foreigner s. "7 ' When M er yre of Libya -s-a bo ur to .u rack Egypt in 1208 B.C.supp lemente d his Libyan force by recru itin g warriors from " all the northern lands, " he was foll owing a tr aditi onal pra ctice. Wh .lt W;I S not tr adi tio nal is th at the runner s who m he secu red were not cast in ,1 suppo rting ro le to cha riotry, since Mcryre ha d no cha rio try of ;lny significance. Instead, the sk irmishe rs we re them selves assigned the ta sk of destroying the Egyptian cha rio t a rmy. T ha t ha tt ie belon gs to the Catastro phe and we shall rerum to it in ou r fina l chap ter, but Mer yrc's scheme and the Catas tro phe ca n o nly be und er sto od aga inst the background of wh at infa ntry for ces were availabl e to th e Lat e Bron ze Age kin gd om s. To sum ma rize: Insofar ;IS ou r evide nce illumin at es such thin gs, it ap pears that pr ior to the Ca tas tro p he an easte rn Medit err an ean king might send infantrymen into the mountainous hint erland to punish barbarian s who had misbeh aved . Such co mba t was probably a melee rath er than a conflict' of d ose-order format ion s. When two civilized kingdo ms went to war, the hand -to -hand fight ing was subo rd inated to and integrated with the chariot battl e. In cha riot warfare there was no engageme nt of mass formation s of infantry, and wh at hand-to-hand fighti ng was required was the responsibility of professiona l chariot runners, o r skirmis he rs. In the thirteenth centu ry th ese men were rarely native s of th e kingd om s in which they fought and tend ed to come from barbarian lands such iIS Nubia, Libya, and Sardinia o r from the more backward parts of G reece and the Levant. Their se rvice as skirm ishers was und oubtedl y hazardou s a nd de manding and mu st have req uired a great deal mor e sta mina, skill, recklessness, and perh ap s ferocity th an co uld be found in the typical resid ent of Uga rit, Messeni a, o r Memphis.

IN FA NTR Y FO RCES I N TH E CATASTROP H E

Durin g the Catastro phe, so me rul ers tr yin g to d efend th eir cities and palaces app ar entl y mad e significa nt cha nges in their armed fo rces. As we shall see in detail in chap ter 14, th e agg resso rs were runn ers a nd skirmishers, and they th erefore had to be co nta ined a nd co untered by infant rymen . For the first tim e in four centu ries, at least a fcw ba ttles in th e plain s and in defen se of th e palaces them selves seem to have been primaril y infantry clash es.

158

A MILITAR Y EXPLA NATION

'7

In 1208 B.C. Merneptah seems to have relied greatly on his cha riotry to def eat the Libyans, but he a lso celebrated !iIS hand-to -hand warrior s a nd"a "rn iliria " (m l lfy t ) of Egypri an s.?" Wh en Rarn esscs III fights aga inst th e Phili stin es in 1179 not o nly a rc his hor ses like falc ons but his in fantry a re " like bull s read y on th e field of battle." And to counter the Libyan in fant ry in 1176 Ramesses leads forth not on ly his chariot ry but a lso " the migh ry . men [w ho m he had ] tr ain ed [to ] fight." 75 In bo th batt les Ram esses him self ~ v-!iAS was of cou rse a peerle ss a rcher in his royal cha riot , as New King dom ph ar aoh s had always been . But he is also, sur p risingly, a footso ld ier wh o "f?..,'1' c ", ,z ltfO>1 tigh ts hand-to-hand. O ne relief sho ws Ramesses d ism ounted from his J , /' cha riot a nd overp owerin g th e ene my, a nd th e accompanying text lauds his c. 'O~ pr ow ess "o n his two feet."76 ~,..t-Se.f. 7 In th e land battle aga ins t th e Phil ist ines, Rarne sscs' foo tso ld iers a re '/ , co ns picuo us, some of th em in tr ad ition al Egypti an headdress a nd othe rs wearing th e shardana helmet (sec plat e 6 ). The latter, as they a lways had , tend to fight on th eir own, as indi vidu al s, each slrardan a auxi lia ry taking o n o ne o r more of th e enemy with his swo rd or thrusting spea r. Th e Egy ptians, on the othe r hand , fight in th eir tradition al squa ds . Th e a rtis t sho ws th em in gro ups of four, a ll four m en mo vin g and striking in co nce rt . Although the divine Ram esses and other ch ariot warriors a re sho wn on th e right-hand side of the La nd Battle Relief, each of the five regist er s of th e relief is primarily a depicti on of th e valor of Ramcsses ' hand -t o-h and warriors. Egypt probably ow ed its surv ival to Ramesses' recruitment o r tr aining of thousands of foot soldier s wh o could take the offensive aga inst the raiders. Although his barb ari an profession als could fight in gue rrilla fash ion , the Egyptian s need ed to be placed in or ganized units, eac h man being thus suppo rted and assisted by h is co m ra des in a close-ord er form at ion . In the sea battl e (see plat e 7) th e main burden fell o n nat ive Egyp tia n in fantrymen. In o rde r to ca tc h hi s o ppo nents before they landed, Ram esses assem bled a grea t many bo ats and mann ed them with Egypti an arc he rs (so me of the se, of co urse, co uld have bee n chariot ar ch ers) an d hand-tohand warrior s. The latter we re Egyp tia ns, a rmed with th e usual sh ields an d sta ves, an d wer e respo ns ible for dealin g w ith th ose of th e enemy wh o tri ed to bo ard the Egyptian boat s. In Rarnesses' vaunt , hi s boat s were filled from bow to ste rn with warrior s: "The milit ia (m ll f }'!) , con sisting of every pi cked man of Egypt, were like lion s roarin g up on the mounta in top s." ? H ow he I

e..v:
T4, (' !

y

er'

".k"J

Ro.mVVl-!iue. 0.J-ro.~ ejj ?

7 .. ' i

Breasted . A R. vol. 3. no . 578 . Ed ~erroll .md Wil, ,,n . i iisn mcal Recurd s

0"Rumscs III. plates 3 1 and 80-83 (pp. 77 -

7 S ~.

' . Edgerton Jnd WIlson , ibrd.. plate 6S ; d . Breasted . A R. vol. 4 , no. \Il6 . ':'- Edger to n and \Vil..o n. Hi storic.tl Recor d» n( Ram ses 1/1 , plate 46. pp. 54- 5'5. ln a nore nn [heir rransl.iriou of Iw ,l yt ,Js " rtuliri.i" rhc a uthn rs observe [hat "l11n fyt -eern s ro be In cu nrr J ' [ Cil tbv:"

.:

=

f OOT S , l L D I E R S

161

recru ited these " picked men of Egypt " we can no t kn ow, but it is impo rtant to nore th e unu su al cffort to augme nt the p rofession a l infant ry. In G reece tOO, it ap pea rs, th e co mmun ities th at ca rne th ro ugh the ea rly horrors of the Ca tast ro phe began in the IIIC pe riod to crea te forces of loorso ldiers. Since we have no w ritt en document s from th e pe rio d , we m ust he re dep end entirely o n picto rial evidence. Professional skirm ishers, first of a ll, seem to have en joyed an unwonted status in IIIC comm u nities. Individual war riors, relati vely well a rmor ed , ap pea r on k ra rers of LH lll C dat e at T iryns and on pots at Na uplia and Letkandi . Lirta uer and C rouwel have pointed o ut that these warr ior s, ca rried in cha riots , a re foorso ld ie rs, appa ren tly en route to a barrle.> As suggested in cha p ter 10 , the Hom eric descr iptio n of cha rio ts as battle tax is may be a reminiscence of thi s twe lfthcen tu ry develo pme nt. Po ssibly in Ill C G reece the hor ses a nd vehicles th at su rvived fro m the pre-Catastrophe cha riot fo rces bec am e nothing mor e tha n pr estige vehicles fo r the p rofession al wa rriors w ho unt il the n had been runners in the cha rio t co rps. Th e cha riot o n these lIIC vases, at a ny rate, suggests that its passenger is a to orsoldier of un usu al status, and we may sup pose that he was an ind ividual ski rmishe r, capa ble of ho lding his own in a man -to -man encou nter with a ny ba rb a ria n ra ider. But in addition to the indi vidu al sk irmishers, who ma y have been rega rded as the promuchoi o r " cham pio ns" of their comm un ities, the IIIC towns may also have fielded for ces of non p rofessio nal foo tso ldiers. In o rder to sta nd their gro und in han d-to-hand com bat against the barbar ian raid ers, these men wo uld necessar ily have been p ut into a clo se-o rder co mpa ny. Lines of foot so ld ie rs app ea r o n the Wa rrio r Vase a nd the Wa rrio r Stele fro m Mycenae, both of which date either to the lll C pe riod o r to the very end o f lIIB.79 O n the krarcr, the " fro nt " pan el (see plate 8) shows six bea rded so ld iers wea ring horned helmets, a sleeved co rslet th at reaches to the wa ist, a fringed leath er skirt, and greaves (whether these are to be understo od as bein g made of b ron ze o r of lea ther cannot be determined). Each of th e so ld iers ca rries a six-foot spe:l r and a round shield. Th e five so ld iers o f the rear pan el bran dish sho rter spea rs a nd wear " hedgehog" helmets but ot he rw ise resembl e their co un terpa rts o n th e front. O n the W3rrio r Stele there a re again five infant ryme n, almos t identical to th ose o n the reverse of the vase, b ra nd ish ing spe3 rs. In both repr esent ations the infa ntrymen a re in clo se o rd er, ma rching with spea rs o n their shoulde rs, o r ::"k Lirrau er. " Military Use, " 145- 46; Lit ruuer arid C ro u wel, "Chari o ts in Late Bro nze Age G reece," 189 - 90 ; for the representation s sec Vermeule .ind Kar.igeo rghis, M ycenae an Picto rial Vase Painting , nos. Xl. Ia - b. X1.1 6. Xl. iX, XI.2X. :-'i T he rep resenr ancns a ft' USU.1l1y dared ro the ~~l r1y IIIC per iod. Verrneule and Karageo rgh rs. rbid., 130- 34. with plates X I.42 .1110 X I.-H , .1 s~i ~' 1 th em to thei r " tran sitional" period . N' r an argument rhar rhe rcprcscnrarions dar t' to rhe end of the IIIII peri od see john )~"J un~a. "T he EnJ of M ycen.ie.m An ." II I Thomas. Fnrschungcn, ,-, ]- 7:".

162

A M I LI T A R Y EX P L AN A TI 0 N

F OOTSOLIJ I E RS

163

present th e sce nes on the Warrior Vase and Warrior Stele as examples of "rypical " M ycena ean pra ct ices of the Lat e Bron ze Age. Similarly. the Medinet Habu reliefs of Ramesses Ill's battle aga inst the Philistines and the Libyans sho uld surely not be used as a guide to Egypti an milit ar y pr act ices in th e reign s of his Eighteenth- and Ninereenrh-Dynasry predecessors. These represent ati on s were made a fter th e Catastro phe had run much if not most of its har rowing course, a nd th ey must not be to rn from th at chro no logica l co ntex t. The Myce nae vase and stele, whether d at ed to th e end of IIIB o r to HIC, were at any rat e made severa l decad es a fte r Troy VI and Th eb es had been de stroyed , a nd a fte r M ycen ae and Tir yns we re fort ified and th e Isthmus wa ll was begun. T he Medinet H a bu reliefs show w hat th e Egyptia n army look ed like in 1179 B.C., by whic h tim e palaces and cities had been destroyed a ll through G reece, Anarolia, Cy p rus, and th e Levant , and Egypt see med ab out to becom e the next vict im. The represen tations therefore do not show us the militar y cha racter of the eastern kingdo ms at their ze nith but instead reveal how so me kingdoms that had thu s far survived th e Ca tas tro p he were resp onding to their dire situation. Professional skirmishers were never more valu ed and perhaps provided mu ch of th e def ense against their predatory kin smen . ln add ition , forma tions of native infant rymen-e-sc difficult to find in o ur pre-Catastrophe document ati on-were now being armed and tr ain ed , as the few centers still flourishin g so ug ht to escape the fate th at had by th at time overtaken so much of the eas te rn Me diterranean world . P I.ATE

8 . :'Warrior Vase" from Mycenae, Side A

abo ut to throw th eir spears in a " ce remo nia l vo lley" (the stele is certai nly and th e vase is probabl y funera ry). It is perh ap s po ssible that th e a rt ist - inte nde d o ne of the groups to represent fo reigne rs, since the horned hel met s are an exot ic element, wh ereas th e " hedge hog" helmet appea rs o n - man y LH [IIC sherds. But it is mor e likely th at bot h gro ups are intended to - represent nati ve troops: the wa rrio rs in horned helm et s pa ss in fro nt of a wom an wh o is either biddin g the m farewell o r mourning, and eithe r a farewell o r a funer al sugges ts that th ese a re men fro m the locality in wh ich th e vase was cherished . Th e scenes sugges t that the a rtist an d his patron s were familiar with inf antry fo rma tions and more particul arl y with formations of spe armen , all th e so ldiers bein g uniforml y accoutred and armed a nd all havin g a n assigned positi on within the relati vely dense form ation . These Mycen aean inf antrymen were not about to do battl e with chario ts: the y had been o rga nized and eq uipped- with a hand-to-h and weapo n, a shie ld, a nd bod y a rmo r- in o rder to confront infantrymen in close combat. Alth ou gh it has often been co mmitted, it is a methodological sin to

of es~bh

je~;.5Q. ?

I

Chapter Twelve IN FANT RY AND HORSE T ROOPS IN T HE EA RLY IRON AGE

T

H E LAST two cha pters have a rgued th at , fro m th e late sevent eenth to the la te thirt eenth ce ntury, fo r th e eas tern M ed ite rranean king do ms wa rfar e was a contest be tween o ppos ing cha riot fo rces, a nd th e o n ly o ffensive infa nt rymen w ho parti cip at ed in batt le we re the " ru n ners " - the skirmis hers w ho ran amo ng the cha riots. Th e p resent cha pter will review wh at we know ab o ut wa rfa re in th e ea rly Iro n Age . Alt hou gh th er e is dist ressing ly little in form at ion fo r th e centu ries follow ing th e C a tast ro p he, wha t th ere is suggests th at a ll ove r the easte rn Med iterr a nean the princ ipa l ro le in batt le wa s no w borne by offens ive infa nt rym en . T h us cha rio t warfa re, w hich in th e Late Bro nze Age had d isting u ish ed cities a nd kingdo ms fro m the ba rba rou s hint erl ands (where horses and a cha rio t wer e a lux ur y that few, if any, co u ld affo rd ), did not su rvive in to th e Iro n Age, a nd even the wealthie st kin gs had now to de pe nd prima rily up on foot so ldi er s, It is gene ra lly recogni zed th at th e chario t wa s less im po rta nt in th e Iro n Age th an in th e Late Bron ze Age. By the reign of Ti glath -Pileser III (74527) th e light , tw o -horse chariot ra rely a p pea red o n the batt lefield, I since by th at ti me the tasks hith ert o assigned to cha riots were no rmall y ca rri ed o ut by ca va lry. As a result, the N eo- Assyria n cha rio t beca me a n eno r mo us a nd cu mbe rso me veh icle, ca rry ing a va riety o f passen gers a nd dr awn by th ree o r fo u r ho rses. Suc h vehicles h ad littl e in co mmo n wi th the war ch a riot of th e Bronze Age a nd seem to have served as prest ige co nveya nc es fo r th e king a nd lesser dign itari es. " In cla ssical tim es (if we except the d rea df ul Out ineffec tive "scyt hed " cha riot s of the Per sian s) th e cha rio t was associ ated a lmos t ent irely wi th status, pa ra des, a nd recreat io n, We may thu s sav that in th e Iron Age cavalry " replaced " cha rio rry as an effective militar; a r m. Pri or to the Catastro phe the re wer e, so fa r as o u r evidence ind ica tes, no t roops of cava lry o r ca mcl ry. Th e Egyp riun relie fs, however , do include occasio na l ind ividu al s o n ho rseback. a nd so me of th ese figures a re depi ct ed as ca rr ying a bow and q uiver. Wito out sadd le or stirrups rid ing a ho rse was Litra ue r a nd C rou we l, WhedcJ ve hicles, 130- 31 . 2 In rd i~ (s from rhl' lasr ccnru rv or Asvyri.m hisror)· these huge' chariots are frequently sr.m di ng \ f1I1~ se rvi ng J.:lo lofty .md wen p rote cted rb ut hJ\ i(,.JHy vrarionarv] pla rfo rrnv i rom w hu..h J ( ('W p nv ileged ar(hC'r'i co uld shoo t their bo wv. Sec l.irt auc r a nd Crou wel, ibid .. 13 132. I

x

F A N T R Y A 1': 0 11 0 R S f

T

I(

o0

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difficult eno ugh , and the Bro nze Age rider was not yet a ble to co nt ro l his mo unt and shoot a bow at the sa me tim e, Perhap s, th erefo re, the bow car ried by a Bron ze Age rider was meant for self-defense , a nd th e few men o n horseback were sco uts o r me ssen ger s rather th an moun ted a rche rs.> Th e ea rliest represent ation s of archers shooting fro m the backs of gallo ping hor ses a re ninth -century Assyrian reliefs. T hese reliefs show the cavalry a rchers o pe rati ng in pai rs: o ne cava lryma n holds the re ins of both his o wn and his pa rtner's hor se, a llow ing the pa rtn er to usc his han ds for the bow and bows tri ng. T he ea rly cava lry team s thu s par all el exac tly the chario tee r and cha rio t a rcher.:' T he cava lry ar che r was u nd oub tedl y less accura te than his cou nterpart o n a cha riot (bo u ncing o n a horse 's back was less co nducive to a go o d sho t th an sta ndi ng-knees bent-on th e leat he rstra p pl at form of a cha riot ). But in o the r respects the cava lry team s wer e sur ely supe rio r. T hey were ab le, first of a ll, to o perate in terra in too ro ugh fo r wheeled veh icles. An d th eir cha nces fo r flight, w hen things went wro ng, were mu ch bett e r: wh en a cha riot horse was in ju red, bo th crew men were in imm ed iate dan ger, but if a cava lryma n's hor se was killed o r in jur ed the cava lry ma n co u ld imm ediately leap o n th e back of his pa rt ner's horse a nd so ride Out of ha rm 's wa y. Yet a not he r advan tag e o f cava lry over cha rio try was eco no m ic, since the cost of purch asing and maint a in ing a vehicle was co nsiderab le. T he C h ro nicler claims (2 Chro nicles 1.1 7 ) th at in th e tenth centur y th e cha riot itself cos t twice as mu ch as the team th at pulled it. H ow ea rly in the Iro n Age kin gs began to use cavalries in place of or a lo ngside cha rio rries ca nno t be determined , since the re is so littl e docu men ta ry a nd picto rial evidence for th e perio d 1150-900 B. C. By the mid dle of the ninth cent ur y cavalries w-.re o bvio usly well esta b lishe d, since at th e Battl e of Q arqar Shalrnaneser III faced man y men o n ho rseback (a nd so me o n the back s o f ca mels) a nd since he hi mself cla imed to have 2,002 chariots and 5,54 2 cava lrymen.> For ea rlier cen turi es a ll we have ar e Hebrew tr ad ition s, and a ltho ug h they a rc hard ly tru stw orth y it must be no ted th at th ey rout inely assoc ia te cava lries w ith th e kings of th e pe riod. So lo mo n was sa id to have ma in ta ined twel ve tho usand parashim; David was bel ieved to have defeat ed eno rmo us ho rse troop s co nsisting of both cha riots and cavalryme n ; and Sau l was repo rted to have been slain o n Mr . G ilboa by Philistine parashim . M ore rel ia ble Heb rew trad itio ns in fact imp ly that the substitutio n of .1

&3 1. O rg.J1t i~:tinn . 94 : Stephanie Da lley, "Foreign Ch.m o rry and CJ\-"J1 f!' in the Armies

of Tigl .irh -Pdese r III and Sargon II." lraq 47 {I 'JRS j: .17- H . l.irtau cr ;JnJC ro uwel. \t'heelcJ Vehicles. 1.15: "The ch.a rior complement - warrior and of its ream. the men 's respect ive functio ns rem ai ning the same. " \ ,\\. Hit. "111< Ca m pa ign' 01 Shalm.mescr III a g.lln, . Aram and Israel," IE] 25 (1'175): ..I

d r iver- i ~ ... imply rr unsferr ed to the back

27.

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cava lry teams for cha riots began in the Ca tastro phe itself. Poetic referen ces in Ge nesis and Exodus to "the horse and his rider" am on g Israel 's enemies indi cat e that at least a few king s began to put some of their archers o n hor seback as ea rly as the twelfth century, In the "Son g of the Sea ~ the poet ex u lts th at not o nly " Pha rao h's chari ot s a nd his host " but also " the hor se a nd his rider ~ have been thrown int o the sea (Exo d us 15 .1 and 2 1). In the " Blessing of Ja cob " the patriarch pr omises (Genesis 49.17-18 ) th at the trib e of Dan " sh all be a serpent in the wa y, :I viper b y the pa th, that bites th e horse's heel s so that his rider falls backward." > It ap pea rs, th en , that the use of cavalry began in the twelfth century, that by the tenth century some kings emp loyed thousands of cava lry men, a nd that the ninth -centu ry Assyrian kin gs had at least as man y horses in their cava lry as in their cha rio rry, Th e final o bso lescence o f cha riorry cam e with th e disco ver y, in the eighth century, o f new techniques for reining a ridden horse. The new meth od. apparent in the reliefs of Ti glarh-Pileser III, a llowed cava lry men to o pera te ind ependentl y rather th an in pairs, each rider now co nt ro lling his ow n mount." With every rider a n a rcher, the " firepow er " o n the backs of a hundred cavalry horses was doubl e the firepower dr awn by a hundred cha riot hor ses. Thus by ca . 750 B. C. the replacem ent of chariots by cava lry was more or less complete. But horse tro ops of a ny kind, wh ether chariotry or cavalry, were of mu ch less importance in the Iron Age than had been their pred ecessors in the Lat e Bro nze Age. Wh ereas before the Catastro phe warfar e was the swirl of cha rio t squa d ro ns, with drivers charg ing, wheelin g, a nd then charging agai n while the ar cher s sent vo lleys o f a rrows aga inst the o nco mi ng en em y cha riots, in the Iron Age the focu s of the acti on was com bat betw een o p pos ing infantries. Here a hor se troop's initi al mission was to deal with th e o p po nent 's hor se tro op . but the ultimate mission was to assist in destroy ing the enemy in fantry, by en cir clin g, flan kin g, o r di viding it. Assyri an reliefs show that cavalr ymen were also used for pursuin g and disp at ch ing individual fugiti ves aft er the enem y in fantry-had been routed, and for this ass ign ment th e lan ce ra the r than th e bow was the appro priate weap on . Fro m the twelfth centu ry to the end of antiquity hor se troops did not esta blish the battle but played a supporting role. On occasion, as at Issus o r f, It is so me times said th at th e lines refe r to cha rio rr y, the assump tion being rhat c aval ry was still unk now n when th e poems were written. See, fur exam ple. Co rrwa ld, Tribes ol Yah weh . 540: "The hor se .md i t~ rider which Da n attack s . .. refers al most cer tainly to horse -drawn ( harlots . . . . It is now well docum ent ed that cavalry units wen: o nly int rod uced effect ivel y into the: Nea r East by rhe Assynans in the eighth -ninth centu ries." Th a t cavalry was inrroduced int o th e Ne ur E.ht hj" AssyriJn s in the' ninth cen tu ry is not documented at all ;.we kn ow

o nly that in t he mid dl e of the: ninth century the: Ass y ria ns had a n en ormous cava lry. "7 Lirra ue r an d Crou w t:t. V/ ht'e/t!d vehicles, US;..: f. Dalle-y. " Foreign Cha r iorrv," 37 -J H, who refer s to J. Spruyne , "LJ co ndu ire du ch eval chez Parche r assyrien," Plaisirs Equestres

129 tI 'lS J) : 66- 71.

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167

Ad ria no ple, that supportin g role might be decisive, and we even hear o f armies (the Parthians at Ca rrhae) th at co ns isted a lmos t ent irely of cava lry. But the normal ex pec ta tio n of Cha ldaea ns. Persia ns, Ca rthaginia ns, G reek s, a nd Rom an s was th at a battle was in essence a clash of in fantrie s. Thus cha rio rry, a nd th en caval ry, made imp ortant contributi on s in Iron Age warfare, but wh at we see in the Iron Age sho uld not be ca lled " chariot warfare." Th e cent ra lity of an offens ive infantry is clea r when our documentation resumes in th e ninth century, with the inscriptions and reliefs of Ashurnasirp al Il and Shalmaneser III. Although Shnlmanesers horse tr oops were impressive, they were evide nt ly seco nda ry to his infantry, whi ch in a major campaign numbered more than 100 ,00 0 men . Another inscr ipt ion of th e earl y ninth cent u ry describ es an Assyri an a rmy of 1,3S1 cha riots and 50 ,000 foorsoldiers." Th ese eno rmo us infantries were of co urse levied from the gene ral population in Assyria , wh ere the traditi on of militia serv ice seems to have been still flour ishing in th e ninth century." Altho u gh neith er reliefs nor inscription s a nd liter a ry acco unts give us a clear picture of a ninth- century battle, wh at ca n be pieced to gether indi cates that in the armi es o f Assyria, Israel, a nd Judah an adva ncing infant ry formed the cent er of a battle line, a nd hor se troops o pe rated o n the wings "fo r pincer movement s a nd efforts to overw helm and turn the enemy fla nk ." 10 In the ninth centu ry, in other words, infantry units no longer serve d merely to escort chariotries on th e mar ch and. in battl e, to provide a haven for chariot s in trouble but were now at the cente r of the offensive actio n. The Assyrian in fantr y included co mpa nies of a rchers (pro tected by defensive armor and armed with co m pos ite bow s) a nd of spea rme n, a nd a ll carried a stra ight swo rd as a seco nda ry weapon. But if we have reason abl e documentation for ninth- centu ry war fare , th e three centuries from th e Ca tastro phe to Ashurnasirpal 's reign a re a dark age. Nevertheless, we h ave just en ou gh evide nce to conclude that in this peri od roo , in the immedi at e a ftermath of the Ca tastro phe , inf antries alread y pla yed the primary offensive role . Egypt, whi ch tells us so mu ch about Lat e Bro nze Age warfare, has alm ost nothing to offer for the early Iron Age. But although we have no adverti sem ents of victori es by the later Rarn essid s a nd the weak kin gs o f the Twenty-First Dynasty, pap yri from the !l Elnt, " Ca mpa ig ns of S ha lrnanese r," 27 ; Luck en bill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Bab ylo nia, vo l, I , no . 65H; Stillman and Tallis, Antr ics, J 1. ., W.lltha Manitius, "Das stehende Hecr der A!'t~y r(" r kon i ge u nd seine Or gan isation, " ZA 24 ( 19 10}: 104-5, emphasized thar the militia w a s th e: nor mal fo rce fur ninth -cen tu ry As·

sy n a n kings an d th at 3. sta ndin g. profess ional a r rnv was not introduced u n til the eight h cen tu ry. 10 Stillm:tn an d T;,1 l1i" A n nies. ~O ; see als o the ir ex...ellen t presentatio n o n Ass~ run m ilitar y o rgani za tion. p p_ !6-J I.

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reign o f Ramesses IX ( 113 7-11 2 0 ) refer to grea t numb er s of barb ar ian ses pecia lly Libya ns and M eshwesh - wh o we re c rea ting dis tur ba nce s a t Theb es.J! Since Libya ns and Meshwcs h in Egyp t were traditionall y offe nsive infa ntrymen, pe rh ap s we a re just ified in ass um ing th at th e t ro u b lema ker s a t Th eb es were a lso pr o fession al in fan rry me n. w hom the ph ar aoh h ad se n led in Uppe r Egy p t as a m ilitar y rese rve. Ult imately a Lib ya n, o r mo re precisely a "c hief o f th e Me shwe sh, ~ seized roya l power a nd in au gu rat ed th e Twenty-Second Dy nasty (ca . 940 B.C. ). Assy ria was the one Late Bronze Age ki ngdom in w hich a n offen sive infa n t ry was im po rta nt, a nd so it is no t su rp rising to find here a reli an ce on infan try in th e ea rly Iron Age. T he o nly we ll-d ocumen ted re ign in th e twelft h a nd eleventh ce nt ur ies is that o f Tiglarh-Pileser I ( 1 115 - 10 77). W he n thi s kin g march ed north into th e Elazig region o f eastern Anarolia he d efeat ed 20 ,000 M us h kia n tribes men on "Mo un t Kashi ari , a difficult reg io n, " Il a nd for th at battle he mu st have ha d a formidable infantry, Still furth er no rth , he sup press ed th e Ka s kans w ho ha d taken ove r the cities o f Hart i, a nd he ca p tu red 4 ,00 0 o f their m en a nd 120 cha r iots. 13 To th e eas t, Tig lath-P ileser had to con fro lit th e C uria ns, a tr a d itional sco urge from th e Zagros: T he sons of the [mo u n ra ins r ] devised warfare in their hearts. T hey prepared fur battle, they sharp ened their weapons. Th e enemies iniriured their war. All the highland(ers) were assembled clan by clan. . .. ihe Guriun seethed. .i flam« with terri fying splendo r. All the armies of the mo u nr ui ns, the Confederation of the Habhu lands ca me to e.u h other's a id in strength. H Since Tiglarh-Pileser ca rr ied the b attl e into th e mountaineer s' homeland, we m us t agai n im agin e him rel yin g prim aril y upon Io orsoldiers. Anato lian warfare a fte r th e fa ll o f th e H itt ite k ingd om is quite unkno wn . Virt ua lly a ll th at we ha ve a re th e Ass yri a n insc ri pt ions cited a bove, w h ich indicate th at at the end of the twelfth ce n t ur y the M ushkians a nd Kas k ans, a t least , had very few cha riots a nd a great m an y me n o n fo ot. This is of co u rse w ha t o ne wo uld ex pec t from ba rbar ous tr ibes me n, a nd in Ana ro lia a fte r th e Catas tro phe there ev ide ntl y W3S no G rea t Kingdom (the k in gs o f Ca rchcmish, as a lready noted , usurped th e title "G rea t King of Harri" after th e fa ll of H attusas)-and perh a ps no k ingd o m s a t a ll. " Ga rd mer, Egypt, 299 . Lucken bill, A,, ( io lt Records of A s.~yri.:1 ,lid HJh )'lo1l1.:1, vol. 1, no . 221. 1 1 lbid., no . 22t1 . 1-1 Victor Hur owirz .md Joan \X'('~tt'nhf} I :I , "'I.KA h 3 : A He ro ic Poe m in Celebration of Tigl .ith -Prlcser 1'.> Mus ru-Qumanu Camp aign, " }ou nlJI ({ CUI1r.:ifn rm Studies 4 2 ( t 9YOj: 5 . 11

IN FA N TRY AND Ii 0 R SE T ROO P S

169

For D ark Age G reece we ha ve the ill corpore weapo ns found in Proto geomet ric a nd Geo me t ric g raves, a few figured vases de p icting co mba t, and o f co u rse the p rob lema tica l battl e descripti on s prov id ed by H o rner. All three typ es of evid ence would s ugges t that th e Da rk Age G ree ks commonl y fought o n foo t (a rro w hea d s, fo r ex ample, h ardl y appca r at :111 in Dark Age grave s). But th at fai rly o bvio us ge ne ra liza tion was for a lon g tim e obscu red by th e a ut ho rity of Ar istotle . Acco rdi n g to Aristotle, Among the Greeks, g.lVernment from the beginning (after th e end of kingship; depended on tho se who did the fighting in war. The earli est of the polities was based on the hipp cis, since in war rhe decisive and overwhelming force was that of the hippeis: for without organized formations a hopli re force is useless, and amo ng the a ncients there was no experience in tactical matt ers. It W .1S for that reason that the real strength was in the hippeis.' > C lassicis ts u nd er s to o d Ar istotl e to mean th at until th e perfection of the hoplite p hala nx (us ua lly th ou ght to ha ve be en a tta ine d in th e ea rly seve nt h ce nt ury ) t he typica l G ree k battle featured th e clash of a few noble caval rymen. Since it wa s a lso understood th at G ree ks d id not ordi na r ily use the bow, it w as imagined th at these earl y "knigh ts" fo ug ht with thrusting spears. T h is picture, of armored and spea r-th rus ting k nights dominating the barrleficld in ea rly G reece, was until th e 1970s widely ac ce p ted . 16 But it does not stand u p u nd er careful scrutiny, P.A.L. G ree n ha lgh showed that although th e Geometr ic "knights" may have ow ned horses, they did not fight fro m horseb ac k ; atte nd ed by a sq uire , th e bippeus would ride to the battlefield a nd th er e d ismou nt to figh t as an infa ntry ma n. 17 \Vith th e mo unted lan cer s o ut of th e way, we ca n no w begin to see w ha t wa r fa re in Da rk Age G reece m ay have lo o ked like. Recent a na lyses of H omer's battle d escri pti on s sug ges t th at d ur ing th e Da rk Age the typical battle bet ween G ree k pol eis featured ma ssed infantries th at we re drawn up in a line , o r phalanx , of spea rm en (a mass, o r a co m pan y seve ra l phalanges dee p, W3S call ed a stix). Duel ing nobles a re essential fo r th e po et's story, but in rea lity th e promachoi were mu ch less impor ta nt th an the ano nymous multitu de in wh o se front ran k they sto o d . I " T he evidenc e fro m graves " Ar istotle. Po litics 129 7b ; cf. 1289b, 1306 a. See. fo r exa mple, V. Ehrenbe rg. Th e C rc, k Sta te (O x fo rd. 196 01: 2 1: "Single combat whi ch-almost exclu sivd y- ruled (he tac tics of the .l g.t". . . .. urvived in the name of the 'knighrs.' the h ippeis ." cr. A. Alfiild" "Die Hcrrsch.rtr de r Reit erei in G nec henlund und Rom rmch de m Stu rz de r Kijni ge,· G estalt lind C cschic h tc : F..-, t;chr i/ t K. Sch e{old (Berne. 196 7 ): 13- 47; J. Bu ry and R. Mei ggs. A History ofC reecc, 4t h ed. (Londo n. 1975 ) 94. ,7 Greenhalgh, Early Gree k War(aTt' , 40 - h l. I N For th e o rgan ire d, massed infantries o f Ho meric warfa re see J. Laracz, K.unp {piJr:inese. KJmp/~J.Jrslelhm..~ un si K.Jmp(w irklidJkcit in dcr 1Ii.J5. bci Kulluto s und 1) 'TtJ i0 5 (Mun ich. 1977}; .md H ans van \~ces, " Leaders of Men? i\ l llirary Or garuzati on in the lli,rd," CQ 36 10

170

A Mill TAR Y E X P LA NAT ION

suggests that a very small proportion of the adult males in a Dark Age community were able to afford both a sword and a spear, and defensive armor is conspicuously lacking.!" In the Ionian poleis a relatively well armed basileus might therefore have had a sword, a spear, and a leather shield, and perhaps wore a helmet, corslet, and greaves all made of leather. The men under his command would have had no more than spears and shields. The Dori.ms were perhaps better armed: whether or not their name was derived from the dOrtl,20 these were "spearmen" par excellence and In the Geometric period formed a privileged military caste in Crete, Laconia, the Argolid, and other places where a non-Dorian population was protected and exploited by a Dorian elite. Among the Dorians there was no tradition of either chariotry or cavalry, nor even of wealthy hippeis riding to the battlefield. Greek infantries in the Dark Age were hardly impressive by later standards, but the important point here is that an infantry was a community's principal-and, in most cases, its only-defense. We have seen that the noble cavalrymen, described from Aristotle's time to our own as the bulwark of the nascent polis, are imaginary. Nor was chariorry revived after the Catastrophe. Although a few wealthy individuals must have continued to use chariots for pleasure or prestige in the Dark Age, chariots were no longer used on the battlefield. This is indicated not only by Homer's ignorance of the subject bur also by the complete lack of archaeological evidence for chariots in Greece berween the twelfth century B.C., when they were represented on LH mc pots, and the eighth century, when the chariot reappears both on Geometric pottery and in bronze and terracotta figu-

(1986): 2H5-303, for criticism see Singor, "Nine against Troy," 17-62. On the role of the busilcis as pramachov see Van Wees. "Kings in Combat: Rattles and Heroes in the /liad," CQ 38 (1988): 1-24. 1'1 Snodgrass, Arms and Anllour, 38. 10 Classical Greeks derived the name of the Dorians from an eponymous Doros, son of Hellen. Moderns have often supposed that the Donans got their name from tiny Doris, but the borrowing seems to have been reversed: the Spartans created Doris Metropolis as a counterweight to Atheru.m influence in the late fifth century. On Doris see now D. Reusser. "Les Donens de la Metropole, I," BCH J 13 (1989): 199-239. The derivation of "'''''ltC,,; from bOQll was accepted by Meyer in the second edition of Ceschichte des Altertums, vol. 2, 57071: "Die Dorer. .. sind ein knegensche Stamm, dessert Name als 'Lanzenk.impfer' zu bezcichncn scheint." Hermann Bengtson, Grieclnschc Gesrhichte; 4th ed. (Munich, 1969): 52, stared Without further ado that Dorieis is indeed a "Ku rzform " of dorimachoi. P. Ramat, "Sul nome dei Don," l'urnla .lcl Passato 16 (] 961): 62-65, argued that doru was indeed the base of the name, but the dum Ram at had in mind was J tree ruther than a spear (the tree being something of a totem for the "Dorrans "). Singer. "Nine against Troy," 30, has most recently given the etvrnolonv lukewarm endorsement.

IN FAN TRY AND H 0 R SET ROO P S

171

rincs.>' Thus the infantry militias of Dark Age Greece offer a sharp contrast

to the chariot-based armies attested for the Late Helladic kingdoms. Finally, we must look at the Levant and the dubious evidence that the Old Testament provides on post-Catastrophe warfare. For the first century and a half after the Catastrophe the various tribes of Israel and Judah were scarcely urbanized and had no centralized state. But late in the eleventh century the tribes of Israel appointed Saul as their king, with a residence at Cibeah. and soon thereafter the men of Judah made D;wid kingat Hebron. The fusion of these two kingdoms by David resulted in a highly centralized and remarkably wealthy regime, and the rr.ippings of monarchy soon appeared. Along with splendid buildings (palace and temple) in Jerusalem came a magnificent display of horses and chariots. Solomon was known for his horses, and is reputed to have maintained four thousand chariot teams and twelve thousand cavalrymen (parashim).22 If these fabulous figures are 21 See Crouwel, Chariots, 143-44; Snodgrass, Farlv Greel: Ar11lour ami Weapons, pp. 160-63; Greenhalgh, Early Greek Warfare, 38. The scenes of chariot combat on eighrh-cenrury Geometric kruters in Attica are not reflections of J<.luJI chariot warfare. As Snodgrass and Greenh;ll~h argue, the eighth-cenrurv artist was inspired by SJ~J, by reports of chariots in use in the Ncar East. and by surviving Mvcenaenn representations of chariots. L! 2 Chronicles 9.25. At 1 Kings 4.26 Solomon is SJiJ to have had not tour thousand bur fony thousand 'l1no<'d horses and chariots, and twelve thousand par.tshnn, in this case the Chronicler's figure is more likely to be "correct" (which is to S,lythat the textual tradition of 2 Chronicles 9.2.5is sounder than the textual rradinon of 1 Kings 4.26). The meaning of 'urwor has been well explained by G. I. Davies. "'Urulf5t in I Kings 5:6 (Evv. 4 :26) and the Assyrian Horse Lists," [ournsl o(Semitic Studies 34 (1989): 25-38. Davies calls attention to Assvrian parallels suggesting thar "urwot does not me-in "stalls." ot "stables," JS most tr.mslators huve thought, but "reams." Whether Solomon in truth h'IJ four thousand teams of chariot horses and twelve thousand paras him is another question; if the figures are not grossly ex.lggerateJ, they might account for the resentment rhar Solomon's subjects harbored against him and his grandeur. A less persuasive part of Davies's argument does away with Solomon's cavalry, leaving only the chariots. Davies concluded that the original meaning of 1 Kings 4.26 was as follows: "Solomon hJJ 4000 teams of horses for his chariotrv, namely 12,000 horses." The figure of four thousand, instead of forty thousand, is justified by the Septuagint reading and by the par.rllel accounr at 2 Chronicles 9.25. But that the Chronicler intenJeJp,fr,Tshim JS ""horses" or "chariot horses v-c-saying, in effect, that the four thousand teams consisted of twelve thousand horses, three to each team-is most unlikely. According to Davies's argument the Chronicler, using so unfamiliar J term as "urwot , accommodated his re-aders by spelling out for them what this obscure term meant (Jt p. 36n.35, Davies suggests that the conjunction be understood as In "explic.mve W(IW" JnJ be translated not .15 "JnJ" but as .. namely"). But if a writer wanted to cl.mfv for his readers that these four thousand 'urwot of horses were-in plain Hebrew-s-twelve thousand horses, he would surely have used the word S14Si111. The very worst way to clarify the exotic term 'urwor woulJ be to write rh.ir Solomon hJJ "four thousand 'utwor of hor ses and twelve thousand p.vr.ishim." The l.irrer word must here mean "cavalrvruen," as It does in other passages and ,IS the' Septuagint translators assumed it does here.

172

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close to the mar k, So lomo n acquired the great est horse trOOP that the an cient world had ever see n. But So lomo n never went to war, and so it is difficult to say how the se hor semen might have been deployed in :1 battle. Certainly there was no enem y in sight ag ainst wh om such a ga rga ntu a n horse troop might have been used. David, unlike his son , had been a warrior and in the early tenth century had esta blished a kingdom that was perhaps the most pow erful in the wo rld . Renowned as a " slayer o f myriad s,- David won his victo ries with foo tso ld iers.A' We ar e told th at when he ca ptured a thou sand ch ari ot s fro m H ad ad ezer of Zoba h he "h oughed" a ll but a hundred of th e cha rio t tearn s.>' The tr aditi ons ab out him quite co nsisten tly present him as ma king no use of cha riots in battle and as fightin g under the aegis of th e infantryman's god, the Lord of Hosts. David's infantry consisted of both pro fessional " mighry men " and a levied mil itia .25 T he former group was relatively sma ll (six hundred Gitrites, the sa me number of judahires, and the mysteri ou s " Pelcth ire and Kereth ite guards" ) a nd co nstituted his regular arm y. David's militi a was sa id by the C hronicler to have numbered 288 ,00 0 men, but its actual stre ng th is usuall y es timated a t onl y a half or a third o f that figure. 26111 e "mighty men " were evid entl y well armed , whereas the militi amen ma y ha ve had spears and shields but nothing else. The farther ba ck one goes in the history of the Isr aelite monarchy, the greater the role that one finds for the militiamen of the inf antrv, Saul seems to have had no regular arm y of profe ssion als, an d no hor se tro ops, Trad ition s ab out his great victo ry over th e Ammonites, as well as abo ut his defeat at the han ds of the Ph ilistines , speak onl y of infantrym en (the Philistines, o n the o ther hand, surely had horse tro op s, since Saul was hunted down o n Mr . Gilb o a by Philistine ch ariot s and parashim i: Finall y, before th e creatio n of the Israelite monarchy the-people of Israel, as o f J ud ah , Yadi n, AI1 of War{.ue. vel. 2. 285; Stillman an d.Ta llis, Armies, 3 7. 2 Samu el 8 .3 -4 (d. I C hronicles 18.3 -4). H T his has been well tr eated by A. van Selms, "The Arm ed Forces of Israel unde r Sau l and D avid. ' in Studie s on the Book , of Sam uel: Paper, Read at the 3rd Meeting of Die O. T. Werk g,'meen, kap in Suid · Afrika ( 1960): 55 - 66 . , . Yadin, Art of War{.lTe, vol . 2, 279-82, argue d that the figur es from the C hro nicle r (J Chronicles 2 7 . 1- r5 ) in th is instance wert'de rived from an accurate Source. The mili tia figures for th e ea rly mon archy in Israel were scaled down dr astically by G eo rge Men d enh all , "The Cen su s Lists of Num bers 1 and 26: ]BL 77 (1968) : 52-66. Whe reas Num bers 1.32. for ex am ple, says tha t th e uu rnber of those." men in Ephraim wh o were "a ble to go fo rth to w ar" was 40,500, Mend enhall red uced the figure to J mere 500 men, o rganized in 40 un its . But M en d enh al l's a rgument re-s ts o n JnJlugics fro m M ar i: like mo st o the r ...ch ola rs, o f cou rse, M end en hall JiJ not reckon With the revo lutio nary changes in the Jrt of wa r t hat o ccurred between the seventeenth centu ry .InJ the ten th. In fact, the co ncept of.l militia W J .c, unk no w n in seve nteen th-century M ari. 2.l

!4

I N F A N TR Y AND H ORSE TR OOP S

militia .17

173

de pended for sec ur ity ent irely o n a It is true th at by the lat e elevent h cent ury thi s sty le of fighting was no lon ger very effective: th e league of Philistine cities, with a small er but well-armed and regular force, sou nd ly defeated the tribal militias rallied by th e priests o f Yah weh and added insult to injury by seizing th e Ar k of the Covenant. But in the twelfth centu ry the trib esmen were evidently quite formid able . Sheer number s were esse nt ia l to thi s early Israelite ren own : "The fort y th ou sand of Israel " (J udge s 5 .8 ) was prob abl y an optimistic figure, but it sugges ts th at a general mobilizati on of the tri bes living in Isr ael could a nd did furn ish tens of th o usands of warri or s. Alth ou gh untra ined a nd hardl y well a rmed , trib esmen so numerou s- especiall y when stirred to fu ror by o racles from the Lord of H osts-must have been a force with which neith er th e coastal cities of Canaan nor th e later Ram essid s in Egypt cared to do battl e. An index of how dr astically warfare had chan ged in th e Catastro phe is that thereafter the militiam en of Israel , witho ut an y horse troops at a ll, were able to maintain co mplete ind ependence from the last Rarn essids and the Twenty-F irst Dyna sty kings of Egypt. Prior to the Catas t ro phe, the land of Israel had for a lmos t fou r hundred years cha fed under Egyptia n hegem ony, a co nditio n so unthin kable in post- Catastrophe circum stances th at tradition seems eventually to ha ve tran sformed it into fou r hundred year s of Israelite " bo nd a ge" in th e land of Egypt. 17

Yad in, Art of Warfare. vol, 2, 28 4.

CH .\~C;ES I N ARM OR A~D WEAPO~S

Chapter Thirteen CH ANGES IN ARM OR AND WEAPON S AT THE END OF THE BRONZE AGE

I

N A FEW DECAD ES before and after 120 0 B.C. the eastern Mediterranean world underwent a transform ation in the too ls of war. Aegean a rchaeologists, as noted in cha pter 9, have lon g been aware th at new typ es of weap on s and arm or came int o use at the end of the LH IIIB period, and so me arch aeologists have recently emphasized th e range and co mprehen siveness of the innovation s. As Jeremy Rutter pointed out at the Brown Conf erence , the rap idit y with wh ich " virtu ally all forms of offensi ve and defensive weaponry" change ca. 12 00 sta nds in sharp cont rast to "the conserv atism of developments in milit ar y gear durin g the palatial peri od ."1 But the findin gs of arch aeologists have not yet been translated int o history. Although there has been so me suspicion th at the inn ovati ons apparent from the material record mu st reflect the ad vent of a new sty le of warfare, historians have barely begun to explor e what this new style and its significance might have been.! In particular, it has not yet been proposed th at the new types of arm or and weap onry reflect a historic shift from chariot warfare to infant ry warfare . Th at the new ar ms and armor belon ged to foot soldi ers has of course been clear all along, but the significance of this fact has been o bscured by the assumption that infantri es had pla yed th e prim ar y role in warfare all thr ou gh the Late Bron ze Age. Ha ving seen, in chapters 10-12, th at before the Catastrophe chariot warfare was the norm for the eastern Mediterranean kingdo ms and that offensive infan trie s ca me to the fore in th e early Iron Age, we are now in a position to appreciate the historical significance of th e military inn ovation s that ar chaeologists have documented for the decade s of the Catastro phe.

175

and for him th e fact th at it was difficult to run in such a rob e W.1S nor a serious liabili ty. App arentl y so me infantrymen in the Late Bronze Age wore a simpli fied , mu ch less expensive version of th e charioteer's corslet : the Luxor relief of the Battl e of Kadesh porrrays aline ot Hittite au xiliar ies in full stride, and mo st of them wear wide -skirred and ankle-len gth "robes.".' Possibly the rob es were made of leath er rather than of linen, but o bvio usly they were nor covered with metal scales. Alternatively, so me l.are Bron ze Age skir mishers went into battle wearing o nly a helmet and a kilt. A parallel here would be th e primitive tribesmen of a century o r two ago, who were as na ked in battle as in everyday life. Th e sha rda na in service to the phar aoh s are sho wn with no defensive a rmo r other than a helmet , and the sa me is tru e for the Pylian warri or s in the " Batt le Scene" fresco (they wear boar's tusk helmets, and kilts ). There is no documentary or pict orial eviden ce at all for " heavily armored" infantrymen in the Late Bron ze Age. T ha t foot soldi ers in Mycenaean Gre ece wore bronze armo r is somet imes asserted on the basis of an ill co rpo re find: a plate-bronze corslet found in 1960 , in a cha mber tomb at Dendra." Th e Dendra Co rslet, which dates from late in the fifteenth centu ry B.C ., has been identifi ed by several scho lars as an infantry~an 's corslet a nd as an example of the kind of a rmor that M ycenaean infantrymen would generally have worn in th e LH II and LH lilA period ." Such an interpretation, however, cannot be co rrect. Th e Dendra Co rslet encase s the bod y from the neck alm ost to the knees, and the girdle of bron ze around the thigh s must have prevented the wearer not o nly from ru.nmng but from even walk ing at a normal pace. It must therefore have been worn b ~ a man wh o in battle would be requir ed to step only occa siona lly, and then in halfstrides, and such condition s point necessaril y to a char iot crewman. It is also relevant that th e Dendra Co rslet bear s som e resemblance to one of the co rslets that a Linear B ideogram records as bein g distributed to chari ot crews." In the Catastrophe, on the other hand, we have pictorial evidence for infant rymen's cors lets. Th e Medinet H abu relief of the sea battle in 1179 shows that not onl y the Philistine and Shekelesb aggressor s but also the Egyptian defenders were protected with waist-length co rslets and leath er ski rts. Th e co rslets were appa rent ly strengthened With strips of metal sewn

ARM OR

It was, first of all, during the Catastrophe that the infantryman's corslet made its appearance. Prior to ca. 1200 , corslets were design ed for the chariot crew. Th e mail-covered, leather sariam, a robe reaching to the calf o r even th e ankle , provid ed reason abl e protection for a man in a chariot, I Rutt er, " Cultural Novelt ies," 67 . , f or the suggestions of ~fu h ly and San de rs see p. \In .

1 Wreszmski, Atlas, vol. 2, plate 87; cf. Sanda rs. Sed Peoples, fig. 13. • for descript ion see Carling, " Panzer." 96-98. On the tomb see Paul Amom, The Cuirass Tomb and O ther Finds at Dendra (Gorebo rg, 1977). .5 Hard ing, A,1 ycetruea1f5 and Europe, 151 and 174 (sec p. 175 for reco nstru ct ion ~rawi ng~ b)" K. Mcb.trron , of Dend ra warr ior as an infan try ma n, wit h swo rd and spea r), Crouwel, Chariots, 127 . • Bouzck, Aegeal1. 11)8 .

176

A M I LI T A R Y EX r LA~A T ION

th e leath er,' In the Aegean , roo, co rslets fo r infantrymen Jp pea r o nly at th e end of th e Ill B or beginning of th e lll C period , Th e M ycen aean in fan trymen depi cted on th e Wa rrior Vase and Warrio r Stele wear corslets , In place of metal st rips, these corslets see m to have co pper o r bronz e sca les." And like th eir Philistine and Egypt ia n co nt empo raries, the M ycen aean warrior s wea r leath er sk irrs th at reach to midthigh. But it is not ju st at M ycen ae, and not only at th e tra nsitio n fro m lll B to lIlC t11Jt th e infa nt ryman 's co rslet ap pears in post-Catastrophe Gre ece. Figur ed IllC sh erd s fro m severa l othe r sites show footso ld iers (altho ugh so me rid ing in cha riots) wearing hedgehog helmet s, waist-length co rslets, and leather skirts ." Ever y read er of Hom er knows th at the Achaea ns w ho sacked T roy were " well greaved, ~ a nd specia lists a re q uite awa re tha t metal grea ves came suddenly into vogu e ca. 1200. 10 Again, however, we must emph asize the o bvio us: t he wa rriors who used th e new armor were in fant rymen . Th is inno vati o n was mostl y limired to the Greek wo rld , perh aps beca use all throu gh the Lite Bron ze Age men in G reece pro tect ed t heir lower legs with leath er " spa ts ~ when at wo rk (so, for example, o ld I.aert es wea rs k nem ides as he digs arou nd his fru it trees at O dyssey 24.22 8-29 ) or at war (in th e Pyla s "Bartle Scene" fresco [see plate 2], t he Pylian wa rrior s a re na ked a bove rhe waist but wea r leath er spa ts). And Late H elladic sm iths had occas ionally mad e metal gre aves: ca. 1400, th e Dend ra wa rrio r w hose co rslet we have just discussed wore bro nze greaves. I I Wit h his plat e cor slet prote cti ng him from co llar to knee, an d w ith greaves protecting at least th e fro nts of his lower legs, the cha riot c rew ma n buried at Den dra wa s a rmo red as completely, altho ugh not as co mfor ta bly, as a Nuzi cha rioteer wh ose sariam reached fro m co lla r to midcalf. Thus metal greaves may in M ycen aean G reece have been worn now a nd then by cha rior crewrne n wh o for som e rea son preferred plate arm or to scale arm o r. But it is u nlikely that infa ntry men befo re ca . 1200 wo re metal greaves. Thereaft er it is q uite a different sto ry. In Cy pru s, two bur ials dating ft om ca. 12 00 have pro duced bronze greaves. An oth er pair has bee n fou nd in a cha m ber to mb at Kallirhea in Ach aea, datin g from the ea rly twel fth cento

7 For d iSCUSSIOn and co lor illustr anon see Yachn, Ar' o( W.Jr(.1rc, vo l. 2.25 1 and .140- 4 1; fo r J. d et ailed discussion of these co rslets see l.or imer . Hom er an d the .\1on>J m en!s , 199 - 20 0 ;

cr. Carling, " Pan zer."

lIB. • C al ling, ibid .. IUS; Snod grass. A rms and Arm o l/r, .11. o C alling, ibid .. 105 . 10 N . K. Sa nda rs, "Nort h a nd So uth at th e End of the Mycenaean Age: Aspects of an O ld Probl em, " Ox (n rd [ou ma l 0{ A rchaeology 2 ( 1983): 43- 68: Ha rd ing. M yren """" s and Euro pe, J 78- 8U. t t O n the grea ves see Carling, -Ikin\ \:hienen, " in Buchho lz and Wiesn er. Kr iegsu -csen , vol. I. 15.1.

C H A N G E S I N A R " lO R A S

u

W E A I' 0 N S

177

rury (the sa me tomb yielded a Na ue Type II sword ). I ! Finally, yer another pair, fo und in 1960 o n the so uthern slo pe of the Athe nian ac ro po lis, seem also to dat e fro m the twe lfth century B.C. U All these twelfth-century Greek and Cyp riote g reaves were evident ly locally made and were pe rhaps extempo rized by local bro nzesmiths. Although Go liath wa s said to have wo rn bro nze greaves, they were never popula r in th e Nea r East. No r do th ey seem to have been worn in temp erate Euro pe befo re th ey a ppea r in Greece. Har ding not es that th e ear liest greaves thus far found in Italy belon g to the tenth century, whi le those from centr al Euro pe a nd th e Balkans " appear to sta rr at the sa me tim e as the late M ycenaean exa mp les." H After th e middl e of the twelft h century, greaves disappea r fro m th e a r~vls chaeologica l record in G reece and do not reap pea r unt il the end of th e cI:~ eight h cent ury. Carling assumes that in the Da rk Age lea th er leggi ngs came I-;/j 0 ~ r back into use. 15 Vario us scho lars have note d th at H omer k new little about " ". greaves, ot her tha n the fact that the Achaean s had them, and his vagueness Cfil'1lmay ind icate t hat in his time bro nze greaves were o nly a mem o ry. It th us seems that the use of metal greaves in the ea rly twelfth cen tury was a shortlived experiment , restri cted mostl y to Gr eece and Cyprus. Th e obsolescence of the bro nze g reave aft er ca. 1150 ca n most easily be ex plained as a result of the general poverty, and especia lly the sca rcity of bronze , that Sno dg rass has documented in The Darl: Age at Greece. Th is wo uld be all the more und erstandable if, in an age wh en bronze wa s very dea r, the bro nze greave was regard ed as not very "cost- effect ive." Th e bro nze greaves from the ea rly rwelfrh century a rc not impressive pieces. Th e Kallirhea specimens were simply ha mmered our of shee t bro nze, an d Carling noted that the smith mad e (1(' effort to mod el the greaves to th e musculatu re of the leg. And all these ea rly greaves a re relat ively th in: th ose fro m Enko mi a re two millim eters thi ck, but modern ex periment s have sho wn th at even a thickness of t hree millimeters can be ent irely cut t hrou gh by a slashing swo rd. 16 Perha ps th e most imp ortant item of defensive a rmo r th at co mes into use at the end of the th irteenth centu ry is th e round shield , with its conica l sur face runn ing back from th e bos s to th e rirn.t ? Hel d w ith a center-grip,

61"

rz lbid., 15 2- 5 3; for

.1

full descri ptio n of the Kallithea to m b an d its co ntents see N .

Yalnuris. " Mvk eni sche Bro nzeschurzwatfeu. " l\ IDAI 75 ( 1 l.) hO ~: 4 2 - 6 7 . I.l 'The find was originally assigned to rhe Geometric period but has been redared by Penelo pe M o un tjoy, "The Bron ze (jreu vev from Athens: A Case for a LH IIIC Dare,"

O puscula A tbeniensia 15 ( 1984): 135- 41> . 14 Hard ing, A'fyct·t1de.. tn s and Europe, 17'J . " Carling. " Beinschienen," ISS. 1( . lhid.. 156 - 57. ,- O n shields see Heide Borchhardr, " Fruhe gnc chischc Schi ldfo rmc n. " ill Buch holz an d Wiesner, Kriegsu vs en , vul. 1. I- 56 .

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A .\11 LI T A RYE X

r

LA N A T I 0 :-.I

thi s symmetrica l shield (" bala nced all-a round" is a commo n Hom eric epithe t for the aspis) mad e up for irs relatively sma ll size by a supe rio r design. Unt il rhe int rod uctio n of the round shield, toor soldiers of the east ern Mediterran ean kingd om s ca rried lar ge shields of various shapes. T he M ycen aean s in the LH 1a nd II pe riods (a nd possib ly also in LH ili A and B, although evide nce is lacki ng) favored the hu ge " figure eight" sh ield, which enveloped th e wa rrio r o n thr ee sides from neck ro a nk les, wh ile providing so me freedom of movement for the a rms at the ind entation s. An alterna tive for th e M ycen aean s, in use also in Egypt, was the slightly smaller " halfcylinder" shield, with sides arc hing back . Although such a shield protected a ma n fro m neck ro shins, rhe ab sence of a rm inde ntati on s must have severely restr icted his wield ing of a n offensive weap on . T he Hirrire shield seems to have been rectangular and relati vely flat but had scalloped sides or "cu ro uts" fo r th e a rms. T he sta nda rd Egyptian shield was ob long with a ro unded top, thu s offering so me pro tectio n for the neck. III All the se Late Bronze Age shie lds, if held fronta lly and at the pro per height, wou ld have covered most of a foo tso ld ier's bod y, far more in fact than did a round shield. T he Hom eric sa kos- the great shield- was evide nt ly used with a long lan ce (the encboss, both ite ms ind icati ng an intentio n to keep o ne's dist ance in disp at chin g a n oppo nent. Th e size a nd design of these pr e('0-" .sL:~IJ Ca tas tro phe shields a re qu ite understand able if they were intend ed for defen se primarily ag ain st missiles, a nd onl y occa sionall y again st hand-to. ;5 ~ r hand weapons. . Th e round shield, o n the o the r hand, was certainly meant for a hand -to . ~. I 01, hand fighter. For him, ag ility a nd ~obi~ity counted for much, and he :; C~ . l l sacnfi ced th e secu rJ~ of a fu~l-bod y shield Ir1 o rde r to be fast o n.his.feet and , ~ e.. I" r""" ...s. ro have free use of hIS offensive a rm. Th e round shields vaned 111 size from less th an rwo ro mor e th an thr ee feet in d iameter, but even the larg est did not cover a man below midthi gh. But beca use it was per fectly balanced, th e rou nd s hield was un usuall y maneuverable. Th at q ua lity, toge the r with its un ifor mly slo ping surfaces, gave th e warr ior good protectio n at the Spo t that he need ed ir. With o ne except ion , there are no round shields attested an yw here in the easte rn Mediterranea n kingdoms before th e lat e th irteenth cenrury.l? Th e . exceptio n-fro m ca. 1270-ap pea rs in a Luxor relief of the sto rming of Depu r, a H itt ite st rongho ld in the Levant, by t roo ps of Ramesses rhe G reat. Round shields a re carried by severa I of Rarnesscs' skirmishe rs in horned

J

-I ' i

Y-

f'

C H A N G E S I ~ A RM 0 RAN 0

I'" lbid ., 30 : "1m gescmt en ag.iischcn Bereich w it" im Vortlt:rt. 'n Orient ist der runde Schild erst mit d em Ende des 1J. j ah rhund ert s cindeung nach zu v..-eisen, nach de rn [eweiligen Ze ~ti) ru ngs hu rt l O nt . der eben mit der Seevo lke rbewegung in Z usa mrnen h. mg geb rachr word en kann. "

r o :-.I S

179

helm ets, and the likelih ood is fairly strong rhar the Egyp tia n a rt ist int ended these figures to represent Sa rdi nia n auxilia ries.!" T hus th ere is reason to believe th at the ro und shield was introdu ced to the eastern Medit err an ean bv bar bar ian skirmishers fro m th e west. Its ult imate pr oven an ce is un known . Alth o ugh roun d shields were co mmon in temper ate Euro pe afte r 1000, H ard ing found rhar o nly o ne has bee n assigned (by at least some scho lars) a dare ea rlier than the twelfth century.I! Alth ough Sard inia n runners were using th e round shield o n Nea r East ern battlefields in th e ea rly rhirree nth cent ury, it eviden tly remained a specialty of the ba rba rian sk irmis he r for a nother sixty or seventy years. From late in the thirt eenth ce nt ury o r earl y in the twelfth come seve ral represent ation s of the ro und shield, found at Megiddo : o ne o n a sherd a nd two more o n ivory pla qu es.s-'Th e possibilit y that ca. 120 0 the round shield was becom ing fami lia r in the so ut hern Levant is strengthe ned by the fact rha r all the agg resso rs wh o attacked Rarnesses II I in 1179 had round shields. In the M ediner Ha bu reliefs (see plates 6 and 7) it is ca rried not only by th e western M edit erranean warri ors in horned helm ets-both the shardana fighting for Rarn esses a nd the Shek elesh fightin g against him but also by th e Philistin es a nd Tiekker. Ram esses' Egyptian infa nt ryme n, however, ca rry th e tradition al Egyptia n shield (o blo ng, with rounded to p). In the Aegean the round shie ld - the as pis - scems to have co me into use rather s uddenly soo n after 120 0 a nd th en qui ckly become standa rd. The ea rliest evidence for it in Gre ece may be the Tiryn s Shield-Bearers Krater, dating to the tran siti on from LH IIIB to 1I1 C.!J O n the Warri or Vase (see plate 8) a nd Warrior Stele th e spea rmen of all thr ee lines ca rry shields th at are round excep t for a sca llop o n the bo trorn.>' These shields , ca rried by men in close-order form ation s, a re not iceabl y larger than those ca rried by th e skirmishe rs. The ro und shield also a ppea rs o n LH IIIC sherd s fro m Tiryns and Nau plia, o n a vase fro m M ycenae, on two mir ror -handl es fro m Cyprus, a nd in the ha nds of the " Ingot God" from Enko rni.s> T he innovatio n of the infan tryman's cors let, greaves, a nd the round shield in the armies of the eas te rn Medit err an ean reflect s th e imp ort an ce th at was sudde nly attac hed, during the Catastrophe, ro hand -to -hand figh ring. Th e ro un d shie ld had long been favored by Sard inia n skirmishers bur was now in gene ral dema nd . T he infa nt ryman's co rslet was perh aps lll lbiJ ., 28. H ar din g, A'fyccnJeatJ s and Europe 17 7. The single earl y spec imen W;J S fou nd in west Boh emia . " ):'din, An of \fIu'f" rc, vo l. 2. 24 2, da res them to ca. 12t1lJ. Cf. Bor chh ar dt. "Schrld fcrmen," 30. ~ I Verm eu le and K.JrJgt.-orghi:o., M yt:t'n JeilH I'ictona! \ J st' HJmti"b, J OX -'-J J IIJ p la te X . I. l ' rbi.L, p late X1.42. ,. lh rd ., p lates XI.I, and l b, and XI.2X: Borchhardt , "Sch ild fo rm en, " 2'1 and 3 1. 11

IX On t hese La te Bronze A g~ type s see Bor chhardr, ·Sch ildfo rrnen, - 6- 17 a nd H -27. and th e fold o ut fullowin~ p. 56 .

WE A

180

CHANGES IN ARMOR AND WEAPONS

A ~II LIT A RYE X P LAN A T I o N

improvised by the defenders of the eastern kingdoms, in order to steel themselves for a type of combat that was unfamiliar and unnerving. The use of gre:lves may have begun :lmong either the sackers or the defenders of the Aegean palaces (Homer associates gre:lves with the marauders at Troy, while the in corpore evidence shows them in use by defenders of the mc communities). Altogether, the armored infantryman W:lS in large part a creation of the Catastrophe.

JAVELINS, SPEARS, AND LANCES

In weapons, as in armor, there were major innovations at the end of the Bronze Age. Although the advent of a new type of sword is perhaps the most conspicuous and dramatic of these innovations, there seems to have been another that was equally important but has hardly been noticed. I refer to the proliferation of a small, long-range weapon that we may call a javelin, although it could also be called a large dart. This was not the javelin familiar from modem track-and-field events but a much smaller missile. The weapon that seems to have played an important role in the Catastrophe W3S perhaps only half or a third the size of to day's sporting javelin, which is almost nine feet long and weighs almost two pounds (eight hundred grams). A closer parallel to the Bronze Age weapon would be the Roman iaculum, which Polybius (6.22) describes as two cubits long and thick as a finger. The Medinet Habu relief shows that in 1179 the typical Philistine or Tjekker warrior carried two spearlike weapons, slightly over a meter in length and with diameters small enough that two could be rightly grasped in the palm of the hand. In discussing the relief, Yadin reasonably concluded that these weapons were javelins.>: He did not, however, see their presence as remarkable, and in most subsequent discussions of the arms of "the Sea Peoples" the javelin has not appeared ar all. 27 Even highly specialized studies have overlooked the popularity of the javelin in the late second millennium. De Maigret's classification of Near Eastern spears recognized two types of javelin but noted no increase in their use toward the end of the Bronze Age. On the Aegean side, Lorimer made no mention of javelins, and in Avila's Lanzenspitzcn there is no category for javelins (as a result, in this otherwise very useful typological study javelin heads must be sought among either the spearheads or the arrowheads). In discussing the importance of javelins in thirteenth- and twelfth-century warfare, then, we cannot simply summarize expert opinion but shall have to look at the primary evidence in some derail. '" Yadin, Art o(War(are, vol. 2, 251-52. r r Neither Sanders's Sea Peoples nor Strobel's Sceuollcersturrn (both of which aggressors' weaponry at some length) mentions the javelin.

JiSLU'sS

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It is generally recognized that in the Late Bronze Age [avelins were used by hunters.v" One fresco at Tiryns shows a young man who is presumed to be a hunter shouldering two javelins grasped in the left hand; another shows two hunters, each with a pair of javelins in the right hand.!" A third fresco, at Pylos, shows a hunter about to throw a javelin ar :l running stag.") Since the Homeric word aiganee apparently means, etymologically, something like "glnt spe:lr, n that we3pon m3Y originally have been used for hunting wild g03tS. 1 1 The javelin 3S:l hunter's we:lpon W3S common in antiquity and among primitive tribes down to our own time.'! Strabo (4.4.3) described the Cauls' skill in hunting birds with javelins, declaring that the Gallic hunters were able to throw their javelins farther (and apparently with no less 3CCUr:lCY) than they could shoot an arrow, In classical times the javelin was of little importance on the battlefield: whether hop lites threw javelins ar each other before closing is debated, but it is agreed that in either case the "real" fighting did not begin until the thrusting spears were brought into play. In Rome, the uelites threw their iacula, but it W:lS the legionary's pilum (a much heavier missile) and sword that determined the outcome of the battle. In primitive societies, on the other hand, the hunter's javelin was also the primary weapon when a tribe was involved in a guerrilla with its neighbors. In Herodotus's catalog (7.71-79) of Xerxes' army the javelin is the main weapon of the Libyan, Paphlagonian, Thracian, Mysian, and Marian contingents, and in still another group of auxiliaries each man carried two "wolf-destroying" spears. Thucydidcs (3.97-98) gives us a vivid picture of the Aetolian javelineers, whom the Athenians suspected of eating raw meat, picking off "the best men of Athens" when Demosthenes led 3 force of hoplires into the Aetolian mountains. In Arrians history of Alexander's campaign, some of the most memorable chapters feature the heroics of the thousand Agrianes, javelin men from the mountains of Paconia. But these exploits of the javelineer were exceptions to the rule that in classical antiquity javelins were of limited military v3Iue. 3 .1 Toward the end of the second millennium, however, this humble weapon seems to have enjoyed a brief prominence. For the "hunting" of chariot horses the javelin must have been ideal: although it would seldom have See Olaf Heckmann. "Lauze und Speer," in Buchholz, Kriegswesen, vol. 1, 289-90. Hackmann, "Lauze und Speer," fibS, 74:1and h. The frescoes belong to the earlier and later Tiryns palace respectively. .10 lang, Palace ot Nestor, plare 12 (no. 16 H 43). ~I Hockrn.mn.r'Lmze und Speer," 315 . .12 E. Norman Gardiner, "Throwing the javelin." ]HS 27 (1907): 257, noted that the thonged javelin "is essentially the weapon of less highly civilized peoples. It IS a weapon of the chase, :1 weapon of the Lammon people, but it plays hrrle parr in the heavily equipped citizen armies of Greece and Rome." n On the lightly .irmed [avelineers of classical Greece see SnoJgr3sc;, Arm.' ,m d Armour, 67 and n-so. 21\ 24

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killed the horse that it hit, the javelin would surely have brought it to a stop, thus immobilizing the other horse, the vehicle, and the crew. Composite bows were appropriate for the chariot warrior, but for a runner a far preferable long-range weapon would have been the javelin. Javelins are thrown on the run, whereas an infantry bowman would have to shoot from either a crouching position or a flat-footed stance (in either case offering chariot archers a stationary target). In addition, the javelincer could carry a small shield, whereas the archer had to use both hands to work his bow. That javelins were in fact used against chariots in the Late Bronze Age is clear from Rarncsses the Great's account of his valor at Kadesh: in the "poetic" inscription Ramcsses boasts that the Hittites were unable either to shoot their bows or to hurl their javelins at him as he charged against them in his chariot. 34 The Agrianes mentioned above show the efficiency of javelineers against a chariot force. When he learned that Darius had a hundred scythed chariots in the middle of his line atGaugamela, Alexander responded by placing his Agrianes (as well as Balakros's javelineers) as a screen for his heavy infantry. The mountain men were deadly marksmen, and not one Persian chariot got through the screen.V An argument can be made, despite the fact that the evidence is exiguous, that something similar must have happened time and again during the Catastrophe, and that the javelin played a key role in bringing the era of chariot warfare to an end. A horde of javelineers swarming through a chariot host would have destroyed it: at forty or fifty meters a team of horses would even at the gallop have made a far easier target for a javclincer than he-small, running, and protected by his shield-would have made for the chariot archer. From the centuries before the Catastrophe there are occasional illustrations of what seem to be javelins carried by warriors, although these are somewhat larger than those carried by the Philistines in 1179. A few of the Shoshu tribesmen whom Seti I defeated early in the thirteenth century may have brought javelins to the contest with the Egyptian chariots, since in a relief (see plate 9) one tribesman is depicted grasping two thin spears of moderate length in his right hand.w The same was true when Seti's son, Rarncsses the Great, campaigned against the tribesrnen.J" In the Aegean, javelins seem to be carried by the captain (but not by his men, who evidently carry thrusting spears) in the "Captain of the Blacks" fresco: lying across his shoulder are two long and thin lines, which may represent the

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slender shafts of javelins.t" If the fresco depicts a squad of skirmishers on their way to a battle, perhaps the captain intended to engage the enemy at long range while his Nubian troops closed in hand-to-hand combat with their thrusting spears. Finally, a few short javelins are portrayed in thirteenth-century warfare: these are tassel-stabilized darts, hardly a meter in length, carried on Egyptian chariots (see plate 1). Bonnet observed that this "Wurfpfeil" first appears on Nineteenth-Dynasty chariots, the crews apparently keeping several of these missiles available for use at a range too close for a bow.!" In the twelfth century military javelins are portrayed in greater numbers. There is, first of all, no doubt that the javelin was the weapon that the Philistines and Tjekker brought to Djahi in 1179. The Medinet Habu relief portrays many of the enemy holding two small (three- or four-foot) "spears" but never using one for a thrust. Since the fighting is hand-tohand, the javelins appear to be a useless encumbrance. But it was not only the enemies of Egypt who used javelins in the twelfth century. Another relief shows them in the hands of Rarncsses III's own barbarian skirmishers.v' evidently for use against enemy infantrymen (this king is not known to have fought against a chariot army). In Greece too we can see the importance of the short javelin as a military weapon in the twelfth century. An LH mc sherd from Tiryns shows a warrior armed with javelins."! Since the warrior is riding in a chariot, we may identify him as a skirmisher on his way to the battle zone rather than as an infantryman who fought in a closeorder company. Another LH mc skirmisher is represented on a krater sherd recently found in the Unterburg at Tiryns: the warrior in this scene rides on a chariot and carries two javelins in addition to his round shie'd.f-' Yet another mc sherd, this one from Lefkandi, seems to show (the scene is too poorly drawn for us to be certain) an armored warrior holding two javclins.f' It thus appears that by the early twelfth century javelineers were to be found in the kings' armies as well as among their barbarian opponents. The kingdoms' employment of javelin men probably began before See, for example, Hockmunn. "Lanze und Speer," 288-90. Snodgrass, Early Greek 11S~ suggested that the rwo lines (almost as long as the captain himself) may be outlines of a single spe ar ; but the captain's body is visible between the lines, and if the lines do outline a single spear. it is massive, with :1 diameter almost as great as the captain's arm. The black man who follows rhe captain seems to carry a single spear of normal diameter (see Evans, Palace of Minos, vol. 2, 2, plate xiii). W Bonnet, Waffen, 105-6. For this~ thirteenth-century innovation see also 'radin, Art of Warfare, voL I. 88, and his illustration at pp. 240-41" ..J )) See Sandars, Sca Peoples, fig. 14, 41 Vermeule and Karageorghis, MYL"eu.leJn Pictorial VasL' Painting, no. XL UL 41 Ibid.. no. XL28. 4' Vcrmeule and Karageorghu, in ibid.. no. Xl.61 (p. 136), suggest that the sherd portrays "a sharp-fared soldier in a crested helmet with rwo light ravelin-, and an oval shield." 18

Annour and Weapons,

CHANGES IN ARMOR AND WEAPONS

185

the Catastrophe, with runners using javelins to assist in bringing down enemy chariot teams, but the twelfth-century javelineers of Tiryns and Lefkandi presumably threw most often at a human target. There is a bit of literary evidence that late in the second millennium the javelin was used against tootsoldiers. In the Iliad there are occasional references to akontes, and when Pandaros shoots Menelaus with the bow Menelaus's life is saved by the waistband that he wore as "a barrier against akontes" (Iliad 4.137). A more surprising source is the story of David and Goliath. Yadin presented an ingenious argument that the story was originally about an Israelite who killed a famous Philistine warrior whose weapon was a javelin.v' Weall know that Goliath carried a spear "like unto a weaver's beam," but that does not help much in a world even less familiar with looms than with spears. Yadin explored the term 0''"'1\ 'UI.J and found that it has nothing to do with size: it was, instead, a shaft of very slender proportions. What was distinctive about it, however, were the loops that it carried. Yadin concluded that the original Hebrew story described a Philistine warrior who carried a spear equipped with a throwingthong (the ankyle ofthe classical Greeks, and the amentum of the Romans). With a thong spiraled around the shaft, a warrior could rifle a javelin as he threw it, thus adding to its accuracy and its range. Although the story of Goliath and his spear "like unto a weaver's beam" was eventually attached to King David, it was also told of Benaiah of Kabzeel (1 Chronicles 11.2223) and Elhanan of Bethlehem (2 Samuel 21.19) and may well have originated in a real event."; It would appear that the use of the thonged javelin was exceptional in Canaan late in the second millennium and was perhaps limited to a few warriors in Philistia. In Greece the thonged javelin may have been especially distinctive of the north and of Thessaly in particular. 46 How much in corpore evidence we have for the javelin in the second millennium is difficult to say. Many bronze weapon-heads from the period have been found, but in the absence of the shafts one cannot be certain whether the heads were attached to spears, javelins, or arrows. Because the military use of a short, dartlike javelin has scarcely been recognized, however, I believe it likely that many javelin heads ftom the late second millennium have been erroneously identified as arrowheads. De Maigrer's classification does assign one type of socketed " lancehead" to a javelin, and on this type there should be no argument. Tipo B 7 ("giavellotti a lama rriangolare acuta ") is large enough-most specimens Yadin, "Goliath's Javelin and the O'~"K "ruzi," I'EQ ( 1955), 58-69. On the conflarions and contradictions in the story as told in the Masoretic text see Emanuel Tov. "The David and Goliath Saga," Bible Review (1986): 34-41. 46 Euripides' reference tBaccbae, 1205) to "Thessalian ankylomata.... indicates that his audience associated the rhonged [avelin with Thescaly and assumed its use there in the heroic penod. 44

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are about 10 or 12 centimeters long-that it can hardly have come from an arrow; but since the sockets of this type are barely wider than .0Im, neither could it have been attached to a thrusting spear. The forty -three specimens ofTipo B 7 heads are almosr without exception from the Levant (especially Megiddo) and date from the Middle and the Late Bronze Age.4 7 Thus it appears that socketed javelins, with thin (and, on e would suppose, short) shafts, were in use in the Levant all through the second millennium. In the Aegean we also find a number of socketed weapon-heads, most dating from late in the LH 1II period, which are reasonably identified as javelin heads. Many of these, it is worth pointing out, were found in northwest Greece, just beyond the frontier of the Mycenaean world.:" Because the "Epirote " specimens have faceted, solid-ring sockets, rather than the split-ring sockets characteristic of Mycenaean spearheads, Avila proposes that they are the southernmost extension of types that originated in the Balkans."? We may note that socketed javelin heads have also been found in Italy in contexts dating to the rhird quarter of the second millenniurn.c? Despite opinion to the contrary, it is also very likely that a somewhat ! II r smaller head, this one tanged rather than socketed, came from a javelin. .!JUfU".i ~ Heads of this type (see figure 2) have an elliptical blade and vary in length from ca. 7 to 13 centimet~.llJincluding both tang and blade). They were in .:II. C'" JD..II. use all through the Late Bronze Age>! but enjoyed their greatest vogue during the twelfth and eleventh centuries B.C. Although found primarily in the Near East, they were also used in Greece. These heads were certainly used in hunting, but there is no doubt that they were also used in battle: one of them was found embedded in the dorsal vertebrae of a man buried at Ugarit.V Most often they have been identified as arrowheads, despite the fact that even the shortest is approximately twice the size of the average military arrowhead.>! In part, I suspect, they have been identified as arrow-

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De Maigrer, Lance. 154-67. In Avila's Lanzenspitzen, nos. 143-60 are all "aus Epeiros," and all measure between I0 and 20 em. in length. including blade and sacker. The dateable specimens come from the LH IIIB or IIIC period. 0. Snodgrass's Types Band C (F.arly Greek Armollr and Weapolls, 119-20). 44 Avila, ibid., 67; Snodgrass, Early Greek Annour and U/eapons1 119, calls his Type B (found especially in Epirus and Kephallenia) "a well-known Danubian type." 5U J. M. Coles and A. F. Harding, The Bronze Age ill Europe (New York, 1979): 179-80. Coles and Harding date these javelin heads from Cascina Ranza, ncar Milan, to the "earlier Bronze Age" (shortly before 1300). SI More than thirty were recovered from the fourteenth-century shipwreck off Ulu Burun; see Cemal Pulak, "The Bronze Age Shipwreck at Ulu Burun, Turkey: 1985 Campaign," A]A 92 (1 n8): 23-24. 51 The skeleton was found in Grave 75 at Ras Shamra, with pottery from late LH lilA or early LH IIlB. See Avila, Lanzenstntzen, I 12-13. H Since we have no catalog of Near Eastern arrowheads, I base my generalization on Avila's findings for rhe Aegean. Most of the Late Bronze Age arrowheads in his Lanzen- und 47

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CHANGES IN ARMOR AND WEAPONS

187

heads simply because typologists have no classification for a small, dartlike javelin. On the Near Eastern side, de Maigret arbitrarily established 3 length of 11 centimeters 3S the minimum for the head of a giauellotto; de Maigret duly recognized as javelins the eleven elliprical ranged heads thar met this qualification, but he excluded the scores that fell below 11 centimeters, leaving them to be dealt with by an eventual rypologist of Near Eastern arrowheads. \4 More than a dozen heads of the same rype have been found in Greece, but these Greek specimens have been classified by Avila 3S Pteilspitzen.v: Although these heads would have met de Maigret's length requirement (they average 11 centimeters in length), Avila assumed that "spearheads" must be socketed and that a ranged head could only have come from an arrow. That assumption, which is certainly untenable for the Near East, is probably invalid for Greece too, since a Tiryns fresco seems to portray javelins whose heads are tanged rather than socketed.w What makes the matter especially pertinent for us is that weapons with such a head were clearly instrumental in the Catastrophe. In the destruction level of the central city at Ugarit thirteen such weapon-heads were found, not in a hoard but scattered in the debris. '7 They must therefore Pfeilspit;:.en have no shaft attachment: the v-base of the blade was simply pressed into the end of the shaft. Looking at all of these Klasse I speCImens Inos. 163 to 687G), I find that the vast majority are less than 3 cm. long. For example, of the 318 arrowheads from twelfth-century Pvlos. the longest is 2.58 em . and the median 1.?4 em. All ranged he-rds (nos. 688 through 773) Avila classifies as Klasse 2 arrowheads. These are considerably larger, the median being approximately 4.5 ern. But if my contention is correct that heads over 7 cm. ca.ne from javelins, the typical ranged arrowhead would measure a bit less than 4 em. Thesole arrowhead found in Troy Vila. barbed and ranged, measured 3.9 em. (a similar specimen from Troy VI measured 3.8 cm.): see Blegen er al, Troy. vot. 3: Settlements VIla. VIlb. and Vlll (Princeton, 1958): fig. 219. Supporting evidence may be available from a much later date: Mordechai Gichon and Michaela Vitale, "Arrow-Heads from Horvat 'Eqed," IE] 41 (1991): 242-57, report that at this Hellenistic-Roman site forty-three ranged military arrowheads are well enough preserved to be measured....The median length is 3.6 cm., and none of these ranged heads measures over 6.1 cm. S4 In reference to his Tiro A 7 ii, de Maigrer, Lance, 90, notes that these javelin heads had morphological parallels to Levanrine arrowheads of the l.are Bronze Age. The eleven heads in this group come from Hazor (no. I, undated); Ugarit (nos. 2-4, fourteenth and thirteenth centuries); Alalakh (no. 5, thirteenth or twelfth centuries]; Tarsus (no. 6, 700-520 B.C.); Boghazkdy (no. 7, fourteenth or thirteenth centuries); and Assur (nos. 8-1 I, Old or Middle Assyrian). Although no. 2 measuresJn em. in lengrh, the others range between I I and 18 em. ss Compare de Maigret's Tipo A 7 ii Javelin heads (at Lance, 89-91, with fig. 20) and Avila's Klassc 2f arrowheads tl.aneenspitzen, 112-13, with plate 28). Sf"> Heckmann. "Lanze und Speer," 290: "die Spitzen offenba r mirrles cines Schaftdorns in den vorn knaufamg vcrdickren Holzschafr gesreckr sind." 57 Mane-jose Chavane, "Instruments de bronze," in M, Yon er al., Ras Shnrnra-:-: Of/garit Ill. Le Centre de la ville: 38<-44< Cnntragncs (1978-1984).357. Chav.me, I am happy to note, does not rule out javelins ("'tteire po.rucs de HecheS ou de raveline").

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W E A I' 0 i'i S

189

h ave been used by eit he r the agg ressors or the d efen der s in th e city 's last ho ur s. The three head s from Ugarit th us far pu blished a re 7 . S.5 .m d 8 .7 centimete rs in len gth .; x If on e o bjects to iden tify ing these an d othe r elliptica l, ran ged head s of th e lat e second millen nium as co mi ng from small javelin s, one's only alternative is to argu e tha t at th is time ar chers for on e reason or a no ther develop ed a preferenc e for eno rmo us arrow s. But va riou s co nsideratio ns ident ify these elliptica l, ran ged heads ;I S co rning from javelins, Ma ny of th e specimens tha t h ave bee n fo und , first of a ll, are insc ribed . T his prac tice, whic h Fronk Cross has ca lled "J fad of the II th cent ury," >" was espe cia lly co mmo n in the so uthern Leva nt bu t is a lso a ttes ted for Me sopotamia.':" A hoa rd of tonged heads ca me to light at EI Khadr, nea r Beth lehe m, in 19 53 , and five (measur ing between 9.2 and 10.5 em. ) ar e inscri bed I!~ ' bdlbt; whi ch C ross prudentl y tran slated as "dar t of ' Abd-L abi'r. " 61 Th e H eb rew I!~ is no rma lly a n arrow, but because th ese hea ds see med too lar ge for a n a rrow, C ross supposed tha t th e word (a uld a lso have bee n used for a sm a ll missile that was hurled rat her th a n shot. Since 1953 , a nother eigh te en head s hove been found beari ng w ha t seem to be th e na mes of th eir ow ner s; still ot he rs, fro m Me sopo ta mia. a re in scr ibed with royal nam es. It is less likely tha t a n ar che r wo uld inscr ibe a ll thirt y or forty of hi s a rrow hea ds th an that a javelinee r m ight inscribe h is few javelin hea ds. N ot only the size bu t also th e shape of th e hea ds su ggest s javelins ra th er than a rrows. A mi litary a rrowh ead was nor mally barb ed, so tha t the victim co uld not retract it w itho ut tear ing his flesh; but the se heads a re elliptical, designed for easy retr act ion. The po ssibi liry tha t an a rc he r could or wou ld wish to retri eve a spent a rro w is unlikel y, bu t a wa rrio r wi th on ly two or th ree javelins wo uld pe rha ps have retrieved eac h of the m seve ral tim es during a skirmish. ~B M . Yo n, Pier re Lomba rd, and M a rgo Rerrisio. "L' o rga nis.rrion de l' h abira t: les rnaiso ns A, B er E. " in Yon, l.e centre de fa uille, 46-4 8, with figs. 27 an d 2 X (o b jects no s. 80 /2 70 , 80 /99 , JnJ 80 /7 0). Ch.i van e, " Lcs instr um e nts de bro nze ," 357. announces rhar pu blica tio n of the thi rteen head s, along with o ther bro nze pieces, is forthcoming. 5 '" C ross, "On Darin g Pho eni cian ln scripri o ns in Sard inia and [he rvt ed ircrran ca n. " AlA 94 (1990): .l40. eo See. ruos r recen tly; Benjamin Sass. " Insc ribed Babylon i.m Arrow heads of [he 'fum of the Seco nd Millennium an d Their l'h ocm cia n Co u n rerp.irt v." Uf' 2 1 ( 19S9): l4 9- 5'; ; .ind j .·M. de Tarr ag on . .. La po inte de tlcche inscrit c des Pe res BLInc.::;Je j er us.ilcm ," Rt'V. Bib, YH ( l 99 1) : 244 - 51. T hese " a rrowhead s ,. are undoubredl y fro m sho rt jJ,vd ills (ehe je rusa lem specime n mea sures 8.1 crn.). "' J. T. Mi lik and Frank C ro ss, " Inscrib ed jav elin -H eads from th e Perio d of th e j udg es: A Rece nt Discovery in Palestine ," RASOR 134 ( 19 H ;: 5- 15. Two mo re hea ds from the sa me hoa rd , d.it ed paleogr ap hically co ': <1. 1100. have since ...ur faced: see C ross. " Newl y found lnscripriou -, ill O ld Ca na.n u rc and Earl v Pho en ici.ur Snipes, " HASOR 238 i 1 t.J ~ () ) : 4 - 7. Unfo rtu na tely, bet we en 195 4 .m d 19HO e ro" dowu gr .rded the EI Kh adr he ads Iroin javelin he.id-, [0 .rrrow he.ids.

190

l{(}4.20r jO"..,~{,'11 S

~s4~.pl·s

C H A N C E.S 1N A R .\ \ 0 R AN 0 W P. A P 0 N S

A M I L I T A RYE X l' LA :-; A T I O N

Fina lly, there is th e evide nce from a vo tive jar fou nd in St ra tu m XI (la te eleventh cent ury ) at Ha zer. T he ja r co nt ained (see figure 2e) not o nly ran ged bronze heads very simila r to th o se from El Khadr, but also shaft bu tts (the di am eter s of these butts are 1.6 cm. and 2 cm. ).b! Since it is virt ua lly certain tha t the shaft butts and weap on head s ca me from the sa me wea po ns, the H azer weap on s mu st be ident ified as javelins and not as a rrows. Ne ithe r of th e two Hazer head s exceeds 10 centi mete rs in length. b .l To sa y that all ran ged head s less than 11 ce nti meters lon g are arrowheads is th erefo re to ignore the o nly sure evide nce we have fo r the size of ra nged javelin head s at the end of the second millenn ium. And these sm a ll javelins were used in G reece as well as in the Near East . Since th e Aegean head s th at Avila classified as Klasse 2 Pfeilspitzen a re mo rph ol ogicall y ide ntica l to (a nd , ind eed, sligh tly larger than ) th e five inscribed El Khadr head s, we mu st su ppo se th at these too a re javelin he ad s.v' The o ne securely dated specimen comes from a LH IIIB cha mbe r tom b near Thebes.e> Th at a single such head would be inte rred with a warrior aga in ind icates that we are d eal ing here with a javelin rath er th an an a rrow. The re is lit tle doubt that toward the end of the Lat e Bron ze Age sho rt javelins of a Levanti nc ty pe were used as military weap on s in G reece.se Bo th th e pictorial and the in corpo re evidence show s tha t Lat e Bronze Age javel ins had slender sha fts an d small heads, and undo ubted ly th ese javelins would have inflicted mu ch less tr auma than six- or seven-foot spea rs. But as missiles fo r wo u nding cha riot ho rses o r lightly armo red men, these h um ble weap on s were pe rhap s as importa nt as any in the arsena l of the barba ria n ra iders. In the co nven tio na l view th at 1 ate Bronze Age wa rfare was cha racterized by den se formati on s of heavy infant ry, the uti lity and th e impo rtance of the barbar ian s' javelins would be difficult to see. But

or

., C i. Y. Yadin; Y. Ahar o ui et a I., Hazor: An Accoltnt of t he TI",d and Fourth Season s £ u aI'lltion,. 195 7- 1958 {j erusa lem, 196 1): plate COl, nos . 6. 7. 10. an d II fo r d rawing; for a phorograph 1 ro app ro ximately 1: I sca le) see pl.ire CC CX LVII. Fur illust rarion oi th e H azor votive deposit see Yadin, W,Jr!Jre, vo l. 2, 352, a nd not e his com ment the re: " Th e Facr tha r the butts were fo und in the vessel stre ngt he n.. the theo ry tha r the:head s were to r javelins and not for a rrows. " ., Th e bla de of no, 10 is bent ; if stra igh tened, the length o f the p iece would revert iro m its c urrent g.5 em. to 10 em. Th e or her head (no. I I ) i ~ bro ke n ; irs prese rved len gth (7 .5 cm .) can be assu med to represent at leasr three-fou rrhs of o rigin a l. "'.. I refe r to the fo ur he.ids in A"IIJ's KI.\Sse 2f (no s. 76 6- 69) : wh ich a vera ge I I em . in

me

len gth . O f th e fourreen speci mens Avila ca ralog s as Pf('ll,pil~en ; 70 A- 770 M and des cribe> as "nich r nd hc r bcsrimm ba re Pferlspirzen der G runJ to rm :!.." at leasr ten wou ld be reasonab lv ide nti fied .IS javelin heads on the h:his o t borh size ,JnJ fo rm . . ,... Avila, Lanzrn spuz en, no . 7 6 7 (p. 112). ...,. Ihid ., II!, u nequivocally asvigns th i ~ type of head a N ear F....astern origin: " Srielspirzen de r Klasse .!f smd uicht gric(h i'ichen Ursp rungs : rhr Ha uprver h reiru ngsgeb ier liegr irn Vo rdcren O rienr unJ erst reckt sh.:h vo n Anaroli en un d Zypern his zum heut igen Gaza srrei fen . "

19 1

if it is co nceded that pr ior to the Ca tastro phe the easte rn ki ngs depe nd ed for offense o n thei r cha riotries, o ne can imagin e how m uc h th e javelin may have co nt ributed to the ra ider s' success . And o n th is matter, as o n so man y others in a ncient militar y histo ry, imagi natio n is o ur o nly reso urce, since we have no relie f, painting. o r text that pre sents the raid ers thr ow ing javelins at chariot horses. Offensive weap ons other tha n th e javelin have been th e subjects of specialized study, a nd so we may mor e briefly review the ir development at th e end of the Bron ze Age. Not sur p risingly, the spea r ( ~ s pea r ~ here rep resents a wea pon wielded with one ha nd , a nd " lance" repr esent s a weapon so la rge that it was normall y thrust with both ha nd s) in twelfth- cent ur y representa tions is roughly what it had a lways been: a sharpe ned head att ached to a sha ft ap proxima tely as lon g as its wield er is tall. b7 Th e ill corpore evide nce ind icates one cha nge in the ma nufactu re of Aegea n spea rs: the twelfthcentury spea rheads had solid- ring sockets, wherea s earlier sock ets had split rings. Th at d ifference resulted from a cha nge in the tech nology of bronze working: ins tead of forgi ng the spea rheads in sm ith ies, twelfthcent ury bronzewo rke rs cast them in fou ndri es. T he so lid -ring soc ket see ms to have had no military sign ificance , altho ugh the development of fou nd ries does suggest that mass prod uctio n o f b ro nze a rtifac ts was sudde nly im po rt ant in the Aegea n. In th e elevent h an d tenth ce nt u ries, iron spearhead s ap pea red alo ngside bronze, both in th e Near Eas t and in the Aegea n, and th at cha nge too may have resulted in part from the need to produce mor e spearheads th an co uld be had from the limi ted supply of bronze. O n the Warrio r Vase a spea r is th e o nly offensive weap on the wa rrio rs carry and so mus t have been used o nly for ,1 thrust. Hom er ca lled the spea r a n CliXll~ o r a bOQu, and since uiXll'lT~£ was for him a virt ua l syno nym for " wa rrior" we mu st supp ose th at in the Dark Age the Gree ks depend ed pr imar ily up on the ir spears in combat. Before the Catastro phe, the spea r had been less im po rtant. T he word bOQu do es not a ppea r in the Linea r B tablets. Of cou rse the Myc en aean s had spea rs, but the y seem to have had a single word-enchos-for both the la nce a nd th e spea r.r " It is possible that the wo rd &oQu was popularized by North-Gr eek spea kers who ca me so ut h in the Iro n Age (in chap ter 4 it was sugges ted that a ~ (Jl Ql EU C; was, etymo logica lly, a " spearman "). 69 Hom eric wa rrio rs occasi ona lly ca rry two dourata, throw ing o ne and thru sti ng the ot her, but wh ether that practo:' For J d iscuss ion of thirt eenth- JnJ rwelfrh -cenru ry spea rs in G reece see HOl.:krflJnn , "Lanzen unJ Spee re." For ind ividu al ty pe.. vee S ooJ g.r :l.s~ , Earlv G rt'ek Arm nll r and Wt!up'm s. 115- ] 9, and Avila, Lanzcnspit zcn . At pp. I ::! R-::!9 Avtla no res the popu larity of "J ie man -

nesl.mge Lm ze " irom LH II th ro ugh lll'C. hlo;" He ckmann, "Lmzen unJ Speere. " 3 .\4-.\5 . hQ For ;lgenr noun... tennm.rnn g in ..n l;sct' EJ uJrJ Schwyze r. C n ech iscbe Crammaue , \ '( ) 1.

I. (M unich,

1 ~39 l :

-1 76- 77.

192

C H A;o; C E S I ~ A 1\ .\ 1 0 It A N D 11.' E A I' U S ~

A M I L I T A R Y EXPL AS ATION

tice obtained in th e real wo rld we do not kno w.?" In Israel th e spear seems to have been the militiaman's prima ry weapo n du rin g the period of "the Judges." Wh at the ro le of the spea r was in twel fth -centu ry Asvyria is unknow n, but in the ninth cent ury a n Assyr ian infant ryman carrie d either a bow o r a single spear as his prim a ry weap o n. It is und ou btedly safe to say tha t in the early Iron Age hand-to-hand fighting througho ut th e eastern Mediterr anean was a co ntes t of thrustin g spea rs. Th is weapon was appropriate especia lly for infantryme n in close o rde r fo rma tio ns, wh ethe r in Hom eric phalanges and stich es, in Do ric plrylai and phr atri es,"! o r in th e "tens, hundreds, and thou sands" of th e Nea r East. A spea r not o nly had a mu ch greater ran ge tha n a swo rd but was less a pt to injure co mrades immediately to o ne's right and left. In co nt rast to the spear, the lance seems to have become a rar ity aft er the Bronze Age, at least in G reece. T he lance- the encho s of both Hom er a nd the Linear B ta blets- must have been used especially fo r defen se of th e cha riot aga inst runners (as no ted in chapter 10, it is so depicted o n a H itt ite stele)72 and in G reece may have lost its utility when th e cha rio t became a prest ige vehicle. H ow lon g th ese lances were is diffi cul t to say, since the head s (and they are eno rmo us), but not the shafts, have been preserved. At Iliad 6.3 1Hand 8.4 94 , however, th e poet describes Hector's enchos as eleven ells (5 .08 meters) lon g. Philologists have not ed th at in Hom er the enchos is usu ally paired with the great shield, the sak os, and seems to reflect an older usage; th e yo unger pair is th e d oru and the aspi s.i ?

SWO RD S

We co me fina lly to th e swo rd, in wh ich th e cha nges ca. 1200- th rou ghout the easte rn M editerr an ea n- are nothing less tha n revolu tion ary. Both a rchaeologists and typ ologists of weapons have not ed th at it is at th is time that a new type of swo rd , the Na ue Type II, arrived in th e eastern Mediterran ean , and it has also been point ed o ut that th is is the first t rue slashing " 0 O ne would su ppos e rhar a wa rr io r who wish ed to rhr ow a rnissil e a r an o ppo n ent , befo re hav ing (O eng ag e him with .l th ru stin g spe ar, woul J brmg ro the ha tt ie rwo quire di ffer en r weJ. pon ~ . At £.trly C reek Arm ou r and V/a rfJ Tl', 1Jtl-37. Snodg ras s n o el'S th.rr a few graves from (he." Da rk Age yie lded o ne l..lcge a nd o ne ("mJ.J1 . .pcarh ead ••! I1J makes rhl' gO()J :,u~c:~ti ul1 rha r rhe sm alle r head was h om a m issile. "71 S. R. l( )JJ~ "Citizenry Divisio ns in Ancie nt G ree k Poleis : ~1 i lirJ ry Asp ect s or T heir Origi n an J Development " (Ph .D . di sse rt arion, VanJer bilt Unive rsity, I q'lll, p rese nt s an J rgunle O[ rhar pJry/'l ; begau J;S the primary di vision s-s- a nd ph r3t ries .is subdi v·is io ns- t ,f .1 rruliria , and rhar rhe m ilita ry orga ruzario n pr efer red b)' rhc Dor ia ns WJ~ mp art ire, " Canby. - Hirrire An ." I 14 . :"1 Fo r di KU~\ IO n .1OJ h ,h lio gr.lp hy see Hoc klO.WII. "Lan zen u nd Spee re. " J.!.9-3 J .

.~,

.. . -:

193

swo rd th at the area knew. But th e revolut io n in swo rds and swo rdsmanship in the eastern M edi te rranea n actua lly goes deeper than th at. Altho ugh not literally co rrect, there is mu ch to be sai d for Trevo r Watkins's generalization th at the swo rd as such was fo reign to men of the eastern Med iterranean until " the Peopl es of th e Sea " brou ght it forcefully to their atrention .?" Befor e 1200 B.C., wh at swor ds manship th ere was in the eastern kingdo ms was a mo no po ly o f sk irmishers whom th e kings had brou ght ill fro m harb aria . In a useful essay o n ancient swo rdsma nship Col. D. H. Go rdo n provide d a techni cal terminol ogy th at ca n clarify discussion of th e weap ons of th e th irteent h and twelft h ceutu ries.?" Stabbing weapo ns sho rte r than fourteen inches (35 cm.) are knives a nd daggers. A "s wo rd " between fourtee n and twen ty inches lo ng (35 to 50 cm.) is more co rrect ly called a dirk, a "s ho rt swo rd " fa lls between twenty and twent y-eight inches (50 to 70 cm.), and a lo ng swo rd has a length of at least twent y-eight inches. Although in a pinch a dirk o r even a dagger cou ld be used with a slashing (cun ing) mot ion , th ese weap on s wer e of co urse designed prima rily fo r thrustin g. Prop er swo rds co uld be serv icea b le for either function , and the sha pe of the hlade is th e best indication of how o ne was in fact used. Blades th at ta pered conti nuo usly from hilt to tip were genera lly meant to be thrust. Co nt rarily, a blade whose edges ran ro ug hly pa ra llel- and th at was at least an inch (26 em.) wid e- for most of its len gth was und ou btedly designed to keep fro m hendi ng even w hen bro ugh t dow n in a har d slash.?" Thus " a cut-andthrust swo rd is o ne that ca n be used as effectively as its form permi ts both for cutt ing and thrusting. " 7 7' Ca . 1200 B.C. th ere appea red in th e eastern Med iterran ean th e th oro ughly efficient cur-a nd -th r ust swo rd known to specialists as the Na ue Type lI,7s o r the G rill::'zm g en seh wert. Let us take a close loo k at it (see figure s 4a and d) to see w ha t a trul y "goo d sword was, and wh at it could do. ?? Th e Na ue Type II was a lo ng (mo st of them ca . 70 cm. fro m po mmel to tip) bro nze weapo n. The blade's edges were virtu ally para llel fo r much of its length , o r even swelling very sligh tly to a maxim um at ap prox ima tely twent y centimete rs fro m the tip, befo re taper ing to a sharp point (such a blad e is therefor e called " leaf-sha ped" ). Th e blade and hilt were cast as a single piece of metal. Th e hilt wa s a lIat tang, a littl e over half as wide as the :"4

'Wr;ltki n \~ " Be:Jtinni n&- or \'(.f.uf.:I rc~ " 25 .

D. H. Go rdo n, "Swo rds, Rap iers and Hor se-riders." Antiquity 27 (1953 ): 67-7R . IbiJ ., 70 . 7; IbiJ ., 7 1. :"J( 'TIle (b s~ i fi(d ti o n der ives [rom J ulius Naue , D ie l'O m )nJischen Scbu-er te r JU S Kup fer, Bron:e und f.js ~n {M unich, 19(3 ), ; .. Fo r a dera iled rypo log ic.rl sru dv sec Ca rling, " Bro nze C ur-a nd -Th rust Swo rds in theEastern Medir et r.m e.m," I'I'S 22 ( 195 6): 102-25 . 7<

Ch

194

C H .~ :-; , ; E S I '" A R .\I 0 R A:-; D WE A l' 0 :-; S

A ,\ 1 I I I TAR i' F. X P l A NAT I ON

blade, from the edges of which curled four flang es. Hilt-pieces of bon e o r wood were seat ed within the flanges a nd attac hed th rou gh the tan g by rivets. With suc h <1 hilt the wa rrior could be co nfident th at his blad e would not be nd from th e ran g, nor his hilt-p ieces loosen , no ma tter how jarrin g a slas h he st ruck . Th e Na ue Type II co uld be used as <1 th rustin g weap on, since the extremity of the blad e was tap ered and o n both sides two shall ow "bloo d cha nnels" ran the ent ire length of the blad e. But o bvio usly th is swor d was designed pr imaril y for cutt ing (slashing ). In swords whose pri ma ry design was for thrusting, the cente r of gravity was just below the hilt . O n th e Naue Type II the center of grav ity was much farth er down the blad e (this was especi ally so for the leaf-shap ed blade ). In a thru sting sword th at wo uld ha ve been a serious drawback, but it added grea tly to the forc e an d velocity of a slashin g swo rd. With suc h a slashing swo rd a warrior co uld cut off a n opponent 's head , leg or a rm, or cut him in two: so Diorn edes (Iliad 5.144) severs Hy peirori's sho ulde r fro m his neck a nd back. Th e Na ue Type II co uld also, of course, be used with a thru st, a nd a warr ior who had a lrea dy severed an o ppo nent's limb wi th a slash would thereup on pro ceed to run him thr ou gh with a thru st . After its introduction ca. 1200, th e Na ue Type II qui ckly est abli shed itself. By the eleventh cent ury it was virtu ally the o nly sword in use in the Aegean, and excavated specimens sho w th at it was also the sta nd a rd sword in th e Near East in the ea rly Iron Age. T he only imp rovement required in th e half-mill ennium that followed its int rod uct ion was th e subst itu tion of iron for bronze, after ironwo rk ing had bee n develop ed to the degree th at iron co uld provide a sha rper, stronger, and more durabl e blade. By ca. 900 B. C. swo rds were regularl y made of iron , but th e design remained that of th e thirteenth -century bronze Griffzungenschwe rt. v' T he geogra phical a nd temp oral extent of thi s weapon's popula rit y attests to its efficiency. ln the Near East, the Aegean , and Euro pe from lral y and the Balkans to Brita in and Scandin avia, the Na ue Type II remain ed th e sta nda rd swo rd until a t least the sevent h centu ry, Tod ay it is gene rally agreed that the N au e Type II swor d had been in use in cent ral and no rthe rn Europ e well before it appear ed in the eastern M editer ranean. "! ln northeast Ital y too, as Stefan Folt iny pointed out, it is su O n Greece. (or the entire period 1200- 600. see Snodgrass . Fur l)' Gree k Armou r an .i WCu/, OIl S, 10 6 : "It is rem.rrk.rhlc rh.ir the pe riod sh ou ld be so thoroughly dom inated , from

beginn ing to e nd, by o ne typ e." Th e C riffzu ngensch werr W.lS virruall y the:on ly ki nd of swo rd kn own in the Prorogeom erric peri od a nd rema ined sta nd a rd un til the sevent h ce ntury, when hop lirc tact ics nude J. sho rt "wo rd more se rvicea ble. See al so Sno dg ra ss. Arm ,.; •.t n d Armour, 30- .37,5 8, a nd 97 . H I Widely be lieved since the turn of rhe cent ury, hu t J.r~ued exh .1tIsrively ;J nd , for the mos r p.rrr, co nv im:ingly) hy j. D. Co wen, " Einc Ein fi't hrun g in d ie Ces, hit"hre dc r b ro nzenen (; ri rtl u nge n...c hwerre r in Siidde ursch la nd unJ Je Tang rcnzcnd en C cb ieren." Beri cht JeT Rij· m ist h ( Jc'Tm .m i SLh l.'n Komm;'q lnn 36 { 195 5 }: 52- n. Set.' ;.llso (:0 \\'\.'11.... "The Fla nge -Hil rt"J

195

quite well repre sent ed at a n ea rly date . x ~ lr seems to have ori ginated in the area fro m the eastern Alps to th e Ca rpa thia ns : in Austria and Hunga ry specimens belo nging to th e subtype know n as Sprock hoff la have been found dat ing at least as ea rly as 1450.'" Like all northern swo rds, th ese were not forged in sm ithies (fo rging was a n eas tern Mediterranea n a rt ) but cast in foundries, a technique rhar encouraged proliferat ion : with a 1I10ld doing most of his work for him , a founder was able to produce a finished sword in a relatively sho rt time. From the eastern Alps and Ca rpathians use of the Nau e Type II spre ad northward '1I1d westw ard over most of temperate Europ e, and by the fourteenth century swords of this typ e were in use from the Rhon e to Scandin avia (in fact, the Sprock hoff [a is att ested especially in Denm ar kl.v' Quite rem arkabl y, however, nothing compa rable was a t that tim e to be found in G reece and the Nea r East . By the thirteenth centu ry, the Sprockho ff la had evolved into th e fully mature Na ue Type II, the evolut ion agai n ha ving ta ken place ent irely in bar bar ia. For co nt rast, let us now review the ar senal of the easte rn M edit err an ean kingd oms befo re the arri val of th e Na ue Type [I. There were " swo rds" in these kin gdom s during all of the Late Bron ze Age, but acco rd ing to the standa rds of a Rom an legion ar y they wo uld have left much to be dcsircd. t > On e Egypt ian weapo n that in reliefs may at first glance ap pear to be a slashin g sword was in fact a bronze rod and would have been more app ro priate for a Roman lictor th a n for a legion ar y. With one of these weapons Curr ing Swo rd of Bro nze: \XT..1 S Ir First Developed in Cent ra l Euro pe, o r in th e Aegean Area ?" Bericbt fiber den V. lntcrnationalen Kong ress {iir \ b r· lind fr iihgeschifhu (Berlin , 19'6 1}: 107- 14. C arling. who in I ~ 5 6 .irgued in LIV~ ) r of .J n Aegean o rigin, five yea rs late r ag reed wi th Cowe.i th at rhc evide nce po inted to tem pera te Europe: see Ca rling. .. A N ew Bron ze Swo rd fro m C yprus," A 'lf iq uity .J5 ( 1% I ): 1 15 - 22.. For the co nclusions of N a ncy S" nJ"", ex pert on the weapo ns of bo th the easter n M ed it erra nean and temperate Europe, see her S~•.z Peo ples,

9 1- 94. J
196

A MILITARY EXPLANATION

(which Yadin describes as "a long metal scourge or a long baton")S6 a warrior neither cut nor stabbed his opponent but broke his bones and beat him to death. The rod was evidently more than a meter in length and had a diameter of two or three centirneters.F" Although a standard weapon of native Egyptian infantrymen, it apparently found no favor elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. The Egyptian infantryman used the rod with a smiting or clubbing motion, beating his opponent while protecting himself with an oblong shield held in his left hand. The motion required in wielding the rod was therefore somewhat similar to that required with the slashing sword. But whereas the slashing sword could cut an opponent in half, the rod could only knock him to the ground. Before the arrival of the Naue Type II sword, the only slashing weapon used by men of the eastern kingdoms was the "sickle sword" (see figure 3a), found all over the Near East but not in the Aegean.s" This "sword," which bears some resemblance to an American farmer's corn knife, evolved from an axel ike weapon of the Middle Bronze Age whose edge seldom exceeded 25 centimeters in length. In the Late Bronze Age the sickle sword sparred a somewhat longer edge but still provided a slash within a very narrow range. The entire weapon was seldom more than half a meter long, with the handle accounting for almost half of that length. One must imagine it slicing into an opponent's flesh rather than breaking or cleaving his bones. Although it undoubtedly served very well for cutting off an opponent's penis or hand during the collection of trophies, it was evidently too small to cut off his limbs while the battle still raged. Nor did the sickle sword have much else to recommend ·it. Because of its shape it could not be used at all as a thrusting weapon, nor could it be sheathed: a soldier carrying it would never have both hands free. Despite its ubiquity ftom Hartusas to Egypt, it was not an impressive weapon. Thrusting, or stabbing, weapons of the Late Bronze Age come closer to our notion of what an ancient sword "should" have been. In many of the eastern Mediterranean kingdoms a warrior might wear a dagger, dirk, short sword, or occasionally even a long rapier in a scabbard, as a personal weapon or a weapon of last resort. The in corpore finds indicate that daggers, dirks, and a very few shott stabbing swords were the only swordlike weapons in use in thirteenth-century Creecc.s? Sir Arthur Evans thought that the Linear B tablets from Knossos inventoried Naue Type II swords, but that idea has long been abandoned, and Boardman suggests '6 Art of Warfare. vol. 2. 249. According to Wolf. Bewaffnung. 79. the single specimen preserved intact measures 1.26 meters. "' On the sickle sword see Ibid.• 66-68; Maxwell-Hyslop, "Daggers and Swords." 4144; and Yrdin, Art of Warfare. vol. 1.206-7. and. vol. 2.475. '~ Sandars, "LIter Aegean Bronze Swords." !30. 87

CHANGES IN ARMOR AND WEAPONS

b

c

3. Eastern Mediterranean swords of the Late Bronze Age a. Sickle sword from tomb of Tutankhamun b. LH II rapier from Plovdiv, Bulgaria c. Anatolian rapier found near Boghazkoy (ca. 1400 B.C.)

FIGURE

197

1911

th at th e ph usgana (pa-k,1-I1J) we re in fact daggers." In th e Pylo s " Bart le Scene " fresco , w hi le o nc of the p alace's men thru st s his spear into a savage, two ot her Pylian s att ack wit h da ggers o r sho rt dirks . A mu ch lo nger thru stin g weap on (see figur e 3 b) W3Sev ident ly ca rried for se lf-d efense by early Mycen aean cha rioteers. In the sixteenth an d fifteenth ce ntu ries B_C. many rapi ers (so me over 3 met er in length ) were elegantly made, bur th e co st ly hilting W3Sso pr ecari ou s that it is doubtful t hey were meant for serio us fight ing. 4 1 From the LH Ili A a nd IIIB peti od s in corpo re rapiers h ave nor been fo u nd in G reece , bur vases continu e to portray ch ariotee rs car rying such weap om in ta sseled sca bba rds sus pended fro m th e sho ulder. For t he Near East we have less evid ence for th e lo ng rapi er in the Lat e Bro nze Age. 92 A fine specimen, howev er, wa s found in 1991 b y toad wo rk ers near Bo gh azkoy.91 Measur ing 79 centimeters in length, the Bog hazkoy ra pier (sec figure 3c ) has a na rrow bl ad e th at rap ers shar ply from 7. 5 centi meters at the h ilt to 3 ce nti met ers at a quarter's length a nd 2 centi met er s at the midpo int . An Akkad ian inscription pr o clai ms that King Tudh a liyas (Tud ha liyas II, ca . 1400 B. C. ) dedi cat ed " these swor ds " to th e Sto rm God afte r conque ring th e la nd of Assuwa (pro ba bly " Asia, " in western Asia Min or ). Th e dedi cation suggests th at these rapiers roo were cos tly pi eces as well as usefu l weap ons . T he tt ad irio nal weap ons of th e east ern Mediterranean kingdo ms co nt inued in use until the twelfth centu ry. A relief of Ra rnesses ili on the north wa ll at Med inet H abu shows tw enty native Egyptia ns, a ll ha nd-to -hand wa rrio rs, guard ing a line of captives. Each Egyp tian ca rries a spear in his ti ght ha nd and a no the r weapon in his left . O f th e weapon s in the left hand , six ar c d irk s, six a re rod s, and seven ate sickle swo rds ."! Nor on e of th e Egypt ian in fa ntr ymen carries a lo ng swo rd . A few men d id use a long sword in Lare Bronze Age battles in th e easte rn Mediter ran ean, but th ese were shardana sk irmishe rs in th e Egypti an cha tio r cor ps. M any of th e shardana ca rried (often in a scabbar d acro ss the »n

John Boa rd ma n, The Date ol the Knossos Tablet s (O xfo rd , 1% 3 j: 78-X O.

'1'1

Sa ndars, " Later Aegean Bro nze Swo rds." 117; Sand ers ar gues persuas ively (127 - 29 )

that eve n in th e lata fift een th ce n tury, by w hich time the hi Iring pro ble ms had be en ove rco me, the elaborate thru sti ng swo rds fro m the Wa rr it)f GrJ....es J [ Knosso s were essentially status s ym bo ls . • , Und er her Type 4 H, Ma xwell-H yslo p (" O.lggers J nJ Swo rds" 54 -55 ) inc lud ed o n ly rwo enrr ies J arillg from be fore 1200 . bo th [rom As!;) t\.fiI10T. '1.1 I th an k Richa rd BeJ I for call ing to my att entio n th e p relim inary p ub lic atio n by Ahmet Un31et a l., "The Hittite Swor d fro m Bo gJ zk'; y-Hattu , a, n .\fiize (M usell m) 4 ( 199 0- 9 1): 50 -

52 . Th e ...-o m mentarv on the sword mivle.ids on ly in su ring (p. 52 ) rhur "'a... d cur-and-thrust weap on the sword is evide ntly imp ortant as the basic weapo n of the Hittite a rmy." The Bo gha zkov swo rd has roo na rrow .1 h bJe to ha ve served J S J cut-and- thrust weapon ; and there is no "'-I

C H A N G E S 1:-; A R ~t 0 It .\:.J D W E A r

A ~1 1 L I T .\ RYE X P L .\ KA T I (l ~

eY' i J e n ("c:':

for It", USC.' in the H itti tt: J rm y.

Y3. Ji n. A rt of \V,JT!J,t? \"0 1. 2. 252 - 5.3; Sa nJ Jrs, St'lJ j1cople.s. 1:: 7, fig. ~O .

o NS

199

brea st ) a dir k or sho rt thrustin g swo rd . Th e Ahydo s reliefs (see pla te 5 ) sho w wa rrio rs wi th horned helmets, quite certa inly Sa rd inians, serv ing as bod ygu ard s fn r Ram esscs the G reat befor e the Batt le of Kadcsh in 1275, and each of th em ho lds a di rk o r sho rt swo rd in his hand.:" Another relief of Rarucss es th e G reat, however, this on e dep ict ing the sto rming of .i city in Syri a, depi cts shardana br andi shing lo ng swords.?> In the followin g cen tury, so me of Ram esses Ill 's barbar ian skirmishers (see plates 6 a nd 10) a re likewise arm ed wit h the lo ng swor d, so me of them a lmos t a meter in len gth . Th e Egyptian reliefs suggcst th at these lo ng swo rds of th e sk irmish er s were rap iers rather than slashing swor ds. Th e art ists portray an oc casio nal skirmisher running his swo rd throu gh a n oppo nent, but no sk irm isher slashing off an o ppo nent's head or a rm. Although it is poss ib le that the reliefs a rc misleading and that the lo ng swords of th e skirmishers were indeed used for cu tt ing JS well as for th rusting, it is safer to suppose tha t th e sbardana nor m ally used th eir wcapons-i-whcthcr dirks o r lon g swords-wit h a thr ust. Th ere is no ind ep enden t evidence o n Sard inia n lon g swo rds of the seco nd mill enni um, a ltho ugh a series of statu e-menhi ts from Corsica indi cat es tha t the long swo rds then in use o n th e latt er island wer e cur-a nd-thru st swo rds rather tha n rapi ers."? A p reserved lon g sword w ith a conti nuou s tape r was found at Bet Dagin, neat G 3Z3, in 1910, and is now in the British Mu seum. Altho ugh o riginally tho ught to be a great spearhead, it was identified as " a bro ad sword," an d more p articula rly as "a Philisti ne swo rd o f 'Sh ardanu' type " by H. R. H a ll."X Subseque ntly jt has co me to be called simply " the Sha rda na swo rd," and on th e basis of th is association has co nventiona lly been dated to ca . 1200 or th e early tw elfth cenrury, Th at d arin g, however, is a pparently incorrect. A spo kes ma n for the Brit ish Mu seu m not ifies me th at "recent a na lytica l work unde rtaken o n thi s piece ha s demonstr ated that it is in fact to be dar ed to th e thi rd mill enniu m Be. " 99 We th erefor e have no ill corpore spe cimen of the kind of sword tha t Egyptia n att ists portray in th e han ds of Sardi nian skirmisher s in th e th irteent h ce nt ury. Th ere is one representat io n of J native Egyptia n wielding a lon g sword in th e Lat e Bronz e Age, and it dat es to th e eve of th e Ca tastrophe. A relief at Ka rn ak , depi ctin g th e siege of Ashkelon , shows an Egyptia n so ld ier (in Sand a rv, ihid ., fi ~. 66 . IbIJ ., fig. 12. " Trump, Prehisto ry of tl»: Med Iterranea n , 20 1, 2 19, 3nJ fig. 45. " H'III, Ae geun A rchac o loey (Londo n, 19 15 ): 24 7ll .1. M axw ell -H yslop, " Duggcrs JnJ Swo rds," 59. lisrs rhc G.lL:.I sword .I S the first ex.unple of her Type 52. f or a good illusrranon of rhe swo rd sec Y;JJiH. Ar t of \VurfJ rc. \ '0 1. 2, 34 4. O n ;m .llo gy with t he- EgYPoJn reliefs, :-'h , well-Hyvlop J Jte J the Gal> ,,'",,
'J,

200

A ~I I l. I TAR Y EX P L A !'J A T I 0 ~

10 . Bartl e of Rame sses !II agai nst Libyan s. Line drawing of rel ief from M edinet H ab u

PLATE

tradition al Egypti an headdress, he is app arentl y a profession al infant ryma n but not of ba rba ria n extractio n) climbing a lad der, and he is a rmed with a lon g swo rd, bro ad at the base and tap erin g st raight t o the point.J?" Since it flanks th e text of Rarnesses II's pea ce tr eaty with me Hitt ites, th e relief has regularly been assigned to Rarncsses II. Tha t attributi on would suggest that as ea rly as ca. 1270 the use of lon g swo rds had been exte nde d fro m the barb ar ian auxili ari es to professional infantrymen of th e native Egyp tia n population. N ow, however. it appears th at the convent ion al dat e for this relief is too high . As was not ed in chapter 2, Frank Ym ca 's inspection of th e monument revealed th at th e Karnak relief was cut not fo r Rarne sses II but for his so n, Mern eprah , wh ose sto rmi ng of Ash kelon is recor ded o n his famou s " Israel Stele." W I That Mern ept ah did mak e an '"'' Yadin. Art of Warf,}" . vel. I. 228. ")\ See p. 20 .

C HA N G E SIN AR M 0 RAN Il W E A rON 5

20 1

effort to secu re lon g swo rds for his hand-to-h and fighters is a lso indicat ed , we shall see, by th e "Mcrn ept ah swo rd " discovered at Ugarir. A lon g swo rd, evide nt ly o nce ag ain 'I rapier rath er th an a slashing swo rd , was the weapon up on whi ch m an y of the aggressors in the Catastrophe relied in their hand -to-h and fighting. In the Med iner H abu relief (s.:e plat e 6 ) of the land battl e in 1179 most of the Philistin e warr iors are show n with dirk s or sho rr thru stin g swo rds. Th e relief of th e naval ba ttle , however , sho ws the aggre ssor s w ith lon g swo rds. Alth ough in this relief the Philistin e and Shek elesh oppo nent s ar e in utter disarray, m any still ha ve weap on s in their right hands. One has a spea r whil e, acco rd ing to my count , seventeen have lon g swo rds. T hese are hug e weap on s. The blad e, wh ich tapers conrino usly, is conside ra bly wider at th e base th an the hand th at clen ches the hilt . T he hilt a nd blad e togeth er are lon ger than a man's a rm. Similarly, when th e Libyans attack ed Rarnesses III in 1182 and 1176 th ey dep end ed o n th e lon g swo rd. Ano ther Medinet H abu relief (see plat e 10) shows a few Libyan s using the how, while the ma jority a re armed w it h lon g swo rds- longe r in fact than those shown in the rel ief of th e sea ba tt le against the Philistine s. 10 2 As in the last yea rs of the Ca tast rophe, so in its first yea rs the hand-to hand weap on pr eferred by the ag gressor s was evidentl y th e swo rd. Wh en th e Libyans attacked Mer neptah in 1208, that kin g reponed seizing as booty o nly twelve cha riots but 9111 swords.!"! Since th at figure almost matches the number (9724) of peni ses and hands that M ern eptah's men ga thered as tr ophies, we mu st suppose th at for the overwhelm ing majori ty of th e Libyan king 's wa rrior s (whether co ming from Libya o r from one of " the northern land s" ) th e sword was th e prin cip al wea pon. It was apparentl y to trump the raiders' thrustin g swords th at so me men in th e easte rn M edit err an ean began , ca. 1200, to acquire cut -an d-thru st swo rds, a nd ab ove all the superb Na ue Type II. A fair num ber of later iron spec imens of the Nau e Type II have been found in th e Near East,"!' but ver y few in bron ze (it must of course be sa id th at becau se few to mb dep osits from the period have been found, few twelfth -century swo rds of 3ny kind have been found in th e N ear East ). Carling co unt ed five in C yp ru s (to th is relatively high figure from Cyprus mu st be added four more, found at ' 02 I'or d rawing 01 pa rt " I rhe reid see 'radin. Art ofW."jar". vol. 1, 334-35. In rhe relief the artists depi Ll seventee n long swo rds In a boory pile. Jn J others in the hands uf Libyan or M esh wesh wa rriors . Fo r a sketch 0f rhe swo rds in th e pile see l.o rna G . Ha ywa rd. "lot:' O rigin 01Raw Elepha nt Ivory in Late Bronz e Age G reece and the Aegean, " Antiquit y 64 (1990 ): 106, fig. I. l h ' Breasted , AR , vel. J, no. 589. 10 4 Carling. "Br onze Cur-and-Thrust Sword s," Ii i . notes that at Ham a ""J subvranrial numbe r of Naue JI swo rds was found wirh rhe crematio ns of w hich the ma jor ity is of iro n. " No ne of these iro n swo rds is earlie r than ca . 1100.

202

C H A N G E S I N A R MO R A:-':D WE ,~P O!' S

A :-'1 1 l i T A R Y E X P l A ~ ,~ T 10 K

1 3

b

c

d

II !1 \\

It !

203

Enkom i in 1967 ), 105 b ut o n ly eight in th e rest of th e Nea r Easr. !'> Of th ese eight, four ar e und ate d and three d ate fro m th e period 110 0- 900. Th e eighth, a nd ea rliest, is said to have been fo u nd in th e Egyp tia n Delta a nd bear s th e ca rto uche of Seti 1I. l ll7111 e six-yea r reign of thi s pha rao h is d ated 1202- 1196 o n th e low chro no lo gy. From th e Gree k worl d, o n the ot her hand, the number of in corpo re Na ue Type II swo rds is impressive. As Sno dgrass has sho wn, in the Pro to geo metric pe riod th e Na ue Type II was the o n ly ki nd of swo rd u sed in th e Aegean. lOS T he Pro togeome tric a nd Geome tric specimens, how ever, we re of iron . Th e br o nze specime ns are ea rlier and fewer in nu m ber, but th e num ber is nevertheless ext rao rd ina ry when we remember that fro m th e tw o h undred year s pr ior to th e a rriva l of th e Naue Type II virt ua lly no Aegean lon g swo rd s have been fou nd. In his 1968 surv ey Ca rling counted twenty-seven bro nze N aue Type II swo rd s in G reece and th e islands of th e Aegea n (includ ing C rete)."!" Su bseq uen tl y an o ther specime n , very well p reserv ed , was fo u nd in a n LH IlfC Arcad ia n tom b, a nd still a no ther in a n LM IIIC tom b in th e Nort h Ce mete ry at Knosso s.U " To th ese twe nty-nine we may also add the nin e found in Cy pru s, fo r a qu ite rem a rka ble to tal o f thi rty-eigh t fro m wh at can vaguely be ca lled th e " Gr eek wo rld ." Perha ps it is not su rp rising th at sc ho la rs ea rly in th is cent ur y referred to th e Na ue 10 .) J. Laga rce, " Q uaere epees de bro nze p rovena nr d'un e cacherre d'ar rnu rier J. Enk o rniAl.isia (C hypre), " UgJ';t;C,' VI (paris, 196 9): .14 9 - 68 . T he four wer e fou nd , a lo ng w ith th e hea d of a javelin, ill a pit d ep o sit dari ng fro m th e ea rl y twelft h ce ntu ry. In C a rling, "B ro nze C ur-and -Th r ust Swo rds ," no s. 16 through 19 co me from Cyp ru s, 20 th rou gh 26 from the res f of th e N ea r East. Ca rling's lat er su rvey, " LJ,(e Mi noa n V;}S~S and Bronzes 111 O xford. " ARSA 63 ( 196 8) : 101 - (H , inclu des o ne addi tio n fro m Cyp ru s an d a not he r from the Levan t. to.. In Car ling, "B ronz e Cu r-a nd -Th rust Swo rds," nos. 16 - 19 co me from C yp rus, 2.0 - 2.6 from th e rest of the Nea r Ea st. C arlin g's la ter su rvey... Lat e M ino an 'vases ::I nJ Bro nzes in Oxford," A HSA 6} ( 196 8): 10 1- 4, incl udes one addi tio n fro m C yprus a nd a nother from the Levan t. I '" C arlmg, "Bronze Cur-a nd -Th rust Swords," 116 . Cf. Wolf , B
Arm s and Armour, 37; d . Early Greek Armour and Weapofls, 106 . At p. 10 3 of " Late M inoa n Vases," Ca rling ', chart shows fifty b ro nze Naue Type II swo rd s. Of these. ten co me from " north G reece" [lllyria, Epirus, and M acedo nia ), an d fo rry from " rest of Greek wo rld:" However , as his cat ego ries o n p. 10 2 indi cate , the ru b ric "res t of I Hll

Cut-and-thrust swords from the period of the Catastrophe Naue Type II from Aranyos, Hungary " Merncprah Sword" from Ugarir Sword from " 13 maison du Grand-pretre d'Uga rit " Naue Type II from Mycenae

F I GU RE 4 .

a. b. c.

d.

10·

G reek world " includes not o n ly C yp ru s hu t ..Iso Egyp t a nd th e Leva nt. If we exclu de his thirteen Cy p riote a nd Near Easter n specime ns ( il S we ll .I S th e te n from "n o rt h Greece " ), we na rrow his list to 27 specime ns from the Aegea n. Note that to hi s Cypriote speciin ens mu st be ad ded the fo ur fou n d at Enk o m i in I % 7: Jacq ues l.ag arce , " Q uaere epe es, " .34 9 ff, t t ·) On the Arcad ian swo rd see K. De m ak op o ulo u , Arcbaiologika Analekta Athenon ( 1 ~ /i9 ): 22611. ; see a lso H .-G . Buchho lz. "S ch lussbe rne rk unge n," \0 H .· G . Buchh ol z, ed ., AgJi sdft! Bro ni cirit , 501 - ] , .md .ibb . 123. For the Knosvos swo rd sec C.1(li n ~, " Knossc v. 1'i 7R ," AR ( 19 78 - 7'1): 4/i.

204

A MIt I TAR Y EX P LAN A T ION

Type II as the" Mycenaean sword. n But of course the Mycenaeans were relatively late in adopting it, and it is much better attested to the north and the west. Over 100 bronze swords of this type are known from Italy (the majority from the Po Valley), and over 130 from Yugoslavia. I II What is most noteworthy for the present argument is the suddenness with which the Naue Type II established itself in the Aegean. Of the more than thirty bronze swords in the Greek world a few are late, dating from after 1100. All the others "belong exclusively to the late thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C. n 112 Carling's first survey concluded that the earliest swords which come from reliably dateable contexts "can be put with some confidence at c. 1200 B.C." 113 Sanders's conclusion was the same: the appearance of the Naue Type II in the Aegean can be dated "at the end of the thirteenth century (probably very little if at all before 1200)." 114 These dates, calculated on the basis of the middle chronology for the Egyptian kings, can on our low chronology be brought down to the first decades of the twelfth century. They therefore arrive in the Aegean during the darkest years of the Catastrophe. Let US state this baldly and succinctly: for the thirteenth century we have no long swords at all from the Greek world, whereas for the twelfth we have at least thirty of a single type. The archaeological evidence indicates as clearly as one could ask that ca. 1200 warfare in the Greek world changed drastically. The sword, and the ability to use it, had suddenly become immensely important in the Aegean and in Cyprus. That a similar revolution occurred in Egypt and the rest of the Near East is not so clear, since little has there been learned from tombs in this period. We have already noticed, however, the Naue Type II sword with the cartouche of Scti II. And as will be shown below, the French excavations at Ugarit have produced five more long swords-none of them quite Naue Type II, but all designed for both cutting and thrusting-that were made shortly before Ugarir's destruction. These specimens suggest very strongly that between the accession of Merneptah and 1185 the sword had become a weapon of paramount importance in the Near East also. Since most of the Naue Type II swords from the Aegean were found in "Greek n tombs it is likely that "Greeks n had acqu ired them. That the swords were made in Greece is less likely, and at any rate they owed much to non-Greek swordsmiths. Harding has pointed out the striking similarities between the earliest Aegean swords of this type and those from III Cf. Harding, Mycenaeans and Europe, 163; for the Italian swords set': Bianco Peroni, SchwerterlSpdde, nos. 89-189 (nos. 194-271 dare from the firsr millennium). I I I Carling, "Late Minoan Vases," 101. II.; "Bronze Cur-and-Thrusr Swords." 106. 114

"Larer Aegean Bronze Swords," 142.

C H A ~ C E 5 INA R M 0 RAN D WE A P () N 5

205

notthern Italy, and he concluded that "Italy seems to have played an important parr in the production and diffusion of the Greek weapons." 115 Nevertheless, hronzesmiths of the eastern Mediterranean can also be seen at work in the weaponry revolution. The five swords from Ugarit, along with several made in Greece, show that at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the twelfth century eastern smiths suddenly found thcmelvcs obliged to begin producing a weapon with which they were not very familiar. For their models they certainly turned to the Naue Type II, perhaps-as Harding's analysis suggests-especially the specimens brought from northern Italy. The results did not quite match the Naue Type II, but in themselves they are eloquent testimony to the urgency of the demands placed upon the swordsmiths. Exhibit A on this matter is the so-called Merneptah sword (see figure 4b), which Schaeffer found at Ugarit in 1953. The sword and several other bronze objects, along with a clay figurine of a goddess, were found "buried in a corner of the inner court" of a house to the east of the royal palace.U> The sword was "in mint condition, n with its edges unsharpened. Schaeffer speculated that perhaps Merneptah "had ordered from Ugarir swords of this type, marked with his cartouche, to arm the auxiliary troops. n 117 The Merneptah sword was almost certainly meant to serve not only for thrusting but also for slashing. As such, it may be the earliest preserved Near Eastern sword intended for slashing. Measuring 74 centimeters, and with a wide blade (5 em. at the hilt and 4 cm. at midpoint) whose edges are almost parallel for most of its length, the Merneptah sword has been likened to the Naue Type II. Its hilting, however, consisted of a very long and slender tang, so wispy in fact that it is bent vertically and horizor.tally."!" The bending of the tang probably occurred during or soon after the sword's manufacture and may well be the reason why the sword's blades were never sharpened. Although In) good as a weapon, it was a handsome artifact, especially since 115 Harding, Mycenac<.1lls and Europe, 165; for the distribution of rhe Italian specimens see Bianco Peroni, Scbioertert Spade, tables 69 and 70A. 116 Schaeffer, "A Bronze Sword from Ugarit with Carrouche of Minepruh (Ras Shamra, Syria)," Antiquity 29 (1955): 226-29; for essentially the same presentation, with a few additions, see Schaeffer's report in Ugaritica III (Mission de Ras Shamra, vol. 8. Paris, 1956): 169-77. 117 Schaeffer, "A Bronze Sword," 227. 0. 3150 p. 226: "The sword is not of a n Egyptian rype. It is known that these big swords did not form part of the armament of Egyptian soldiers till rhe 13th century when Rarnses II and especially his thirteenth son and successor, Minep rah, began enlisting quire important bands of foreign mercenaries. '" 118 Schaeffer gives the length of the tang as 15 crn.. bur does nor indicate Its width. The width of the blade ar the hilt end is 5 cm., and the phorographs suggest thar the widrh of the tang is less than a centimeter. The extent of the:bending is clear from the photographs and drawings and does not resemble the deliberate bend m "killed" swords ceremonially deposited.

206

C HAN (; E SIN ARM 0 RAN D W E A PO N S

A MILITARY EXPLANATION

it bore a royal Egyptian cartouche, I assume that because it was one of his most treasured possessions the householder buried it in his courtyard along with the idol and the other bronze objects, in expectations of recovering the hoard after the danger had passed. At any rate, the Merneptah sword has aspirations to be a Griffzungenschwert bur has nothing like the Griffzung of the Naue Type II. In the Aegean too we find that early in the twelfth century the first attempts were made to produce a slashing sword. From the very end of the LH IlIB and from the mc period come four of Sandars's Class F and G weapons that were intended as slashing, or cut-and-thrust, swords. These are clumsy specimens and show only that ca. 1200 a few Greek swordsmiths began trying to forge a new kind of weapon. A twelfth-century Class G sword from Perati, in Attica, is reminiscent of a butcher's cleaver: "the blade is unique, being truly leaf-shaped with the greatest width in its lower third. "119Two Class F specimens (one complete, the other fragmentary), found at Mouliana in Crete and dating to the twelfth century, are also slashing swords. A fourth slashing sword, dating from ca. 1200 and coming from Mycenae, is 62 centimeters long bur is also badly designed. Sandars observes that it is "most unwieldy and eccentric, more so than the Perati sword, and may be grouped with it and with the Mouliana F sword as examples of inexpert experimentation." l20 How eastern Mediterranean smiths worked to produce slashing swords during the Catastrophe is most vividly illustrated by a group of four such swords found at Ugarit in 1929 (although not finally published until 1956, by which time, unfortunately, the man who dug them up-Georges Chenet-had died).121 The four are superior to the "Merneptah sword" from the same city, since their tangs are suitably broad and strong (see figure 4c). Because their tangs are not flanged, the Ugarit swords are not true Griffzungenschwerter, bur in other respects they are on a par with the Naue Type II. In length they range from 63 to 73 centimeters. Their tangs are flat but extend through to a pommel spike, and are all more than 2 centimeters wide (that is, two or three times the width of the Merneptah sword). The blades have parallel edges for most of their length, ending in a taper. The four blades vary considerably in width: measured at the midpoint, they are respectively 2.5, 3, 3.3, and 4 centimeters wide. There is no doubt that these are cut-and-thrust swords.I '?

They were never used, however. Cast rather than forged, they are fresh from their molds and are unfinished in that their points and blades were never sharpened, and their tangs are without rivet holes. They are part of a collection of seventy-four bronze objects found underneath "Ia maison du Grand-pretre dUgarit." Specifically, the excavators found the deposit in a hollow directly beneath the spot once occupied by the threshold of an interior doorway (by 1929 the threshold itself had disappeared, perhaps because it was made of wood). 123 The swords are usually dated to the fourteenth century. That was Claude Schaeffer's interpretation, based on the sherds found in the fill into which the pit was dug.J-:' Schaeffer's assumption was that the bronze objects were a foundation deposit, dedicated when the high-priest's house was built. There is, however, a much better possibility: the objects constitute a hoard buried during the final emergency of Ugarit, ca. 1185, in hopes that after the attackers were gone the objects could be retrieved from their hiding place. The fourteenth-century sherds in the surrounding fill can be dismissed as a criterion for dating the deposit, since on any reconstruction the pit must have been dug into a preexisting stratum. The question is, When was the pit dug? Schaeffer proposed that it was dug at the time of the house's construction, for a foundation deposit, but this is unlikely. Although foundation deposits under thresholds are known, they tend to contain a sacrificial victim along with a few vases and figurines (a "lamp and bowl" combination was common in the Late Bronze Age).125 That seventy-four bronze artifacts were buried as a foundation deposit defies belief. In 1929 the ubiquity of hoards at Ugarit was not yet recognized; but in the course of his forty years at the site Schaeffer himself was to find that almost all of the bronze articles discovered there had been squirreled away by the occupants in wall cavities or in hollows under the tloors.i-e A typological argument puts the hoard at least a century later than the date proposed by Schaeffer. Among the seventy-four artifacts is a tripod with pomegranate pendants. Carling noted that the tripod corresponds closely to many such specimens found on Cyprus, all in contexts dateable to the period after 1250. Himself an expert on Cypriote bronzework of the period, Carling concluded that the Ugarit tripod represents an advanced Schaeffer, Ugaritica III, 253. Lagarce , "Quarre epees," 364n.17, reveals that in private conversation Schaeffer eventually conceded that his original dare was J. bit too early, and that the foundation deposit may have been made . . au debut du xiii'' siecie." 125 Some thirty-five of these are characterized by Shlomo Bunirrtovirz and Ornn Zimhoni, "'L3mp and Bowl' Foundation Deposits from the End of the Late Bronze Age-Beginning of the Iron Age in Ererz-Israel," Fret; Israel 21 (1990); J 02. Ill> Schaeffer, "Commenr.nres," 76.3: "rres nombreuses cachetres d'objets precieux etablies par des par ticuiier s dms des murs au sous les planchers de leurs hcbitanons." 11.l 124

Sandars, "Later Aegean Bronze Swords," 139. lbid., 140. III These swords are described by Schaeffer in Ugaritica /II, 256-59. For their initial announcement, see Schaeffer, "Lcs fouilles de Minet-el-Berda er de Ras Sharnra (campagne du prinrernps 1929)," Svria to (1929): 295 and plate LX, fig. 3. IE Cf. Carling, "Bronze Cut-and-Thrust Swords," 121; Snodgrass, Early Greek Armour and Weapons, 207. 119

WI

207

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A ,\ 11L IT A RYE X P LA N A T 10 :-;

stage of the type and could hardly have been made much earlier than th e end of the thirteenth cenru ry.t -'? Finally, the swor ds them selves argue for a date during the Catas tro phe. All four are excellent pieces. From all of the Near East the onl y known swo rd th at marches these is the Na ue Type II, bearing the carrouch e of Seri II a nd so dating no earlier th an 1202 . Eno ugh is now known a bo ut swo rds at Ugarit, and throughout the eastern M edit err ane an , for us to sta te catego rically th at in the fourteenth cent ury swo rds rniths at Ugarit were not yet casting cut- and-thrust swor ds of any kind , mu ch less swor ds so typologically advanced as these. We ma y conclude th at the four Ugarit swor ds, like th e four recentl y found at Enkorni, were hoarded in the earl y twelfth cent ury "d ans I'espoir d'un retou r prochein . n I ! S It was the misdating of the four Uga rit swo rds that for a lon g time o bscured how deficient Late Bron ze Age swo rds in the eastern Mediterr anean were in comparison with those of temp er ate Europe. Until Carling o b jected, scholars intere sted in ancient weapon ry accepted Schaeffer's interpretati on as fact. To Lorim er th e four swo rds demonstrated the pr esence in fourteenth -century Ugarit of M ycenaean immigrants, some of wh om had evidently set up a sword factory. I ! " For V. Gordon Childe , C. F.C. Hawk es, Col. Gordon, and oth ers, the Ugarir swords suggested that cutand-thru st swords were pioneered in th e easte rn Mediterranean and not in temperate Europe. U" Even Snod grass, who found Carling's argument tempting, still presented the four swo rds as evidence for "a parallel and contempor ary evolution " of cut- and -thrust swo rds in the eastern M edit erranean and in cen tral Europe . 13 I O nce the hoard swor ds from Ugarit ::: re co rrectly dat ed, it is plain to see that changes in eastern Mediterra nean swo rds at the end of the Bron ze Age were revolutiona ry rather than evolutionary. The first Na ue Type II specimens (in Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt) appea r almos t simultaneously ca . 1200, and a variety of local experiment s atte mpted to produce a slashing sw ord of similar efficiency. Some of th e experiments resulted in un usabl e swo rds, but by ca. 1185 swo rdsmirhs at Ugarit had all but perfected th eir product. Unfort unately for Ugarit, th e time for producing th ese swor ds, and for tr ainin g men to wield them, ha d run o ut. 117 Carling, " Bro nze Cu t-and -Th ru st Swo rds ," 12 1: "T he Ras Sharura sta nd is rypo log ical ly very advanced in the series an d . in isola rio n, would almos t c.:crr,a inly be dared a goo d deal larer th an 1250." • I!H Laga rce, " Q u.itre epees," 36 7-6 8. 11 .,. Lo rimer. Hom er and the A1mruments . 2 1 an d JJ. 1\ ,) C hild e, "Th e Final Bronz e Age in rhc Ne a r East an d Tempe rate Euro pe," PPS 14 ( J 94 8): 18.,1f.; Ha wkes, " Fro m Bron ze Al(e 10 Iron Age: Middle Euro pe, Italy, and the No rrh and W~t, " ibid.. t 9 Stt.; JmJ Go rdon, " Swo rd s, Rapier s and Ho rse-Rid ers," 72 . I H J:..ul y G reek Arm uur .md \Ve..zpon .s. 20 7.

Chapter Fourteen THE END OF CHARIOT WARFARE IN THE CATAST RO PHE

C

H APT ERS 10-12 present ed an argument th at warf are in the Late Bron ze Age was very different from what it was in the earl y Iron Age (o r, for that matter, in an y other period of antiqui ty). Befor e the Catastro phe, a king might send infantrymen aga inst barbarians in the hills; but co mbat between two kingd oms was chariot warfare, in which the o nly infantrymen wh o pla yed an offensive role were the chariot runners o r skirmishers. In the Iron Age, o n the othe r hand , warfare was syno nymo us with infa nt ry enco unters: if horse troops rook part in the battle, they were ancillary to the foor soldiers, Th e archaeological evidence for armor and weap on s, reviewed in chapter 13, locates the period of transition from chariot to infantry warfare pr ecisely in th e decades of the Catastrophe. This was evidenrly the time when, after cha riot armies had been supreme for more than four hundred year s, infanr rymen once again rook back the field . Although the forms of som e weapon s-bow s, lances, spears, and javelins-are not known to have chan ged much in the late thirteenth and ea rly twelfth centuries, their relative impo rta nce evident ly did. Bows and lan ces, the weapons of the chariot crew, were far more numerous befor e th e Catastrophe than after . Javelins, o n the o ther hand, thrown on the run by skirmishers, seem to have prolifer ated at the end of the Bronze Age, and in the Near East remained imp ortant th rou gh the twelfth and eleventh centu ries. The spear, the weap on par excellence of the d ose-order in fanr rym an. j s well arrested for th e early Iron Age. In Dark Age Greece a single spear normall y accompani ed a dead man to the afterlife . Other items of infantrymen 's eq uipme nt are even more telling. Cor slets and greaves for infantrymen were app ar entl y an inn ovation in the Catastrophe. Round shields had been used by barb ar ian runn ers in the thirteenth centu ry but came into general use earl y in the twelfth. TIle evidence for swor ds is most dr amati c: the materi al record shows that a revolution in swo rdsma nship began in the Aegean , in Egypt, and at Ugarit ca. 1200 B. C. There was suddenly a demand for long slashing swo rds, whether for the Nau e Type 11 swor ds brought from northern Italy o r the Balkans o r for mor e experimenta l specimens produced in the eastern kingd oms them selves. In sho rt, th e archaeological recor d of cha nges in armor and

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weapo n ry pr esent s 3 decisive a rgumen t th at it wa s in th e decades irnm ediate ly befo re a nd afte r 1200 th at th ere bega n th e in fantry dom ina nce that wa s to co nti nue to the end of an tiq ui ty. O n the basis of th e circu msta ntia l evide nce we m 3Y therefore conclude tha t cha riot war fare ende d in th e Catast rophe, th e rai der s and city -sacke rs h aving found a W3Y to d efeat th e grea rcsr cha riot a rm ies o f the time. But of co u rse there is a lso direc t evidence that thi s is w ha r th e Ca tas rrophe wa s ab o ut . T he reliefs at M edi net H ahu sho w clea rly enoug h that th e aggr essu rs against Rarnesses Ill- the Libyan s, the Philis tines and Tickk er, and the northerners wh o joi ned in the arrack-were infant rymen, su ppo rted by a very few cha riots . T hey also sho w that Rarn esses wa s able to w in h is victo ries over th e mar au der s by assembling a grea t num ber of foot so ldie rs, drawn both fro m barb ari a and from Egypt irsel f. T ha t the aggressors wer e infa n tryme n ha s ge nera lly go ne unrem ark ed becau se it ha s been assume d rh ar a ncient land battles had altuays bee n foug ht p rima rily by fo otso ld iers. O nly whe n one reco gni zes th at in the Late Bronze Age th at was not th e case can one ap p reciate the sig nifica nce of w ha t is sho w n in th e Medine r H abu rel iefs. f rom th e reliefs we can a lso infer th at th e Libyan s a nd Philist ines fou ght as skirm ishe rs, perhaps as th ey had tr aditi on all y don e in th eir tr ib al guer· rillas, rath er th un as dis ciplined tr oop s in o rga n ized formations. Th e M ed inet H abu relief sugg ests that th e Phil ist in es and Tiekher swarmed, as indi o vid ua ls o r in sma ll groups, over th e field. Wirh a lon g swo rd as his primar y weap on fo r han d oro -ha nd war far e, th e rai der requ ired a n "ope n ~ space, in w hic h his agi lity a nd fleetn ess co uld be exploited , Bur befor e th e han d -to hand lighring bega n, th e cha riots had to be ove rco me, a nd it was su rely fo r th is p urpose th at th e rai ders brought th eir javelins. Aga in, th e javelins sugges t a swa rming tact ic, th e [avelinccr ru nni ng fo rwa rd and rh en hurl ing his weap on a t a team of cha riot hor ses. At D jah i in 117 9 Ramesses w isel y kept his cha rio ts in the back ground a nd relied o n th e foot soldi er s he re c rui ted . Bur in ot he r battl es th e raid ers mu sr have used javelin s to good effect, dest roying th e ch ar iot a rm ies and end ing th e era of chariot wa rfa re. Th e fact that th e maraud ers were " runners," and therefo re da nge ro us for a cha riotry, ca n be infer red from the reliefs ou t is explicit in the insc rip tion s. The G reat Karnak Inscript ion, afte r enumerating th e va riou s lands fro m whic h Mer yrc's a uxi lia ries h ad co me fo r the arrack in 1208, stares th at th e w retc hed Libya n chief had " taken th e bes t of every wa rrio r and every phrr of his co u ntry," , Th irt y yea rs larer, Rarn esses likewi se referred to both his Libyan a nd his Phil ist ine enem ies as " ru n ners. " Afte r beat ing back th e assault by the Libyan s he boast ed , " I have cas t down th e vio lators of my frontier, pro strat e in th eir p laces, th eir ru nne rs pin io ned a nd sla in in

T H E E:--J O OF C H A R I O T W A RFAR E

my grasp ." And o f the Ph ilistines and their asso cia tes wh o a tta ck ed in 1179 he sa id , " 1have ca rried away th eir ru nners, pini oned in my grasp, to prese nt th em to th y b . " l Alth ou gh th e barbar ian s were able to defea t th e cha riotries of th e easte rn kin gdom s becau se th eir weapon s and tacti cs were su ited ex actl y to th e task, the documents a lso show rhar they owed th eir success to overw he lm ing number s. W hen th e Libya ns a nd thei r northern auxilia ries att acked Mcr nep tah in 12011, heboa sted of ha ving sla in a lmos t ten th ou sand of them. A gene ra tio n la te r, Ra rncsscs claimed to have killed no fewer than 12,235 Libya ns. Even afte r allowing for pharaon ic exaggera tion , o ne wo uld sup pose that o n each occasion th e attacki ng a rmy mu st have co n sisred of at least twent y thousa nd men, a ll of them skirm ishe rs a rmed wi rh eithe r javelins o r lon g sword s, o r bo th. In legend, " the forty thousand of Israel" con fronted th e k ings of Ca naa n a nd at least th at man y Ach aean s descen ded upon Troy. As th e Ca tastrophe spread and mu sh ro omed, a nd as th e lim itat ion s of th e ch a riot armi es were everyw he re reveal ed , barbar ia ns all ove r the Med iterra nean worl d mu st have been attracred by th e p rospecrs of an e3SY victory and rich booty, Sma ll successes bega r great successes, unt il even M ycen ae a nd H artusas fell. Agai nst th ron gs of ra iders no kin gdom (w ith th e po ssibl e exc eption of Assyri a ) co uld have felt secu re. Even th e G rea t Kingdoms had traditionally empl oyed only a few thous and skirmisher s, and in a sma ll k ingdo m, such 3S Pyle s or Ugarit, hand-to -hand fight ers were co unte d in the hundreds. Wh en the scribes of Hattu sas and Ema r speak of th ese d ries being an acked b y "h ordes" we ca n und er st and rhe ir peril o nly wh en we recall th at for defen se the kingd o ms had trad ition all y relied o n a sm a ll number of professiona l milit ar y me n. fin all y, we have a few pieces of litera ry evide nce th at th e Catastro phe result ed fro m th e victo ry of barb ar ian foo tso ldiers over th e cha rio tries of rhe east ern Med irerran e'an kingd om s. In th e Iliad th e Tro jan War is obv io usly not desc ribed as a co n flict between Ach aean infantr y skirm ishers and Trojan cha rioteers, b ur vest iges of such 3 co ntlicr may su rvive in th e tr adi tion " Stori es abou t th e Amazo ns a nd the Ph rygia ns wi th their fast horses, a bo ut Par is slaying Achilles wi th a bow sho t, a nd even a bo ut the captu re of Tro y th ro ugh the ru se of a wooden ho rse (this sto ry, port rayed o n an eighth-century vase from M ykon o s, was evide nt ly cur rent long befo re o ur O dyss ey was co mpos ed ).' may have a risen w hen rhe hor ses and cha riot s of Tro y were still rem em bered . Th e descript io n of Achilles as " fleet-foo ted " is especia lly ap prop riate fo r the arcte of 3 runn er. And the a d jective " ho rse taming," the co nvent io na l epithe t bot h for H ector and for 311 th e Tro jan s, ! Edgert on s ud W il~()n4

Hist o rical Rl-'fO, J S 01" R4m,s ,·s 1/1. pl.1tC''t 2h JnJ 44 . tJ JnJ X.-tQ.:!- .520 acvume th ar the: .nrd iencc kne w th e ~(or ~·. t or rhe vase vee \th oJ. T'0 1•.m U~r . XO. J

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Bre.rvred, AR. vol. 3.

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A MI LI TARY EXPLA :-iAT I O/,;

presum abl y derive s from a real renown of th e Tro jan charioteers a nd chariot warr ior s. A far more expl icit traditi on of infa nt rymen besting cha riot armies was preser ved in Israel. Mu ch had bee n lost and o the r things added by the tenth cent ury, w hen the tradition s were first written d own, but there was nevert heless a persistent recollection th at " the Co nq uest of Ca naa n" had been effecte d by Israelite foorsoldiers agai nst the chariots of the Canaa nite cities. In our text s of Joshua a nd Ju dges, the hill-dwellers of Ma nasseh arc for a time unabl e to take over th e plain s of Beth-S ha n a nd Esd raelon becau se th e Canaa nites have " cha rio ts of iro n "; an d in Ju dah too the hill men are temp orar ily prevent ed by "c ha riots of iro n" fro m seizing the plains. Alth o ugh the expression seems to be th e miscon cept ion of a w rite r in th e Persian peri od ," th e imager y does reflect the tradition th at the conquest of th e most fert ile pla ins in Ca naa n was cos tly beca use of the cha riot a rmies th at gua rded them. Two of th e oldest pieces of Hebr ew poet ry th at have co me down to us com me morate victori es of Yahweh o ver grea t cha riot armies. Th e "So ng of th e Sea" (Exodus 15), attr ibuted vari ou sly to Moses or his siste r M iriam, ' celebrates Yahweh's drownin g of a n Egyptian chario t host : I wi ll sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed glo r ious ly; the ho rse and his rider he h as thr ow n into th e sea .... Pha rao h 's chariots and his host he ca st into the sea; a nd his picked officers ar e sunk in th e yam suph, Th e Hoods cover rhem ; th ey went down into the depth s like a sto ne. Th y right hand, 0 Lord, glo rious in pow er, t hy right hand , 0 Lord , shatters th e enem y. . .. Th ou did sr blow with th y wind, th e sea cove red th em ; rhey sa nk as lead in rhe might y wat e rs.

In the prose account th at event ua lly ga ve the so ng .;] setting, six hundred Egypti an chariots pur sue five million Israelites "fle eing" from Egypt. W he n th e Israelites reach th e Red Sea (yam SUph ),6 Yahweh divides th e waters-allow ing his peopl e to ma rc h th rou gh on dr y land- a nd then ro lls the water back to cover th e purs ui ng Egyptia n chariots. O n th e ot her • Drews, "The ' Chariots of Iron' of jo shua and Judges: j SOT 45 ~ 1 9 89 ) : 15- 23 . , Frank Cross and David Freedm an, "Th e Song of M iriam," jNES 14 (1955): 23 7- 50. " T he yam suph was tran sla ted in the Septuagint as Erythra Thalas sa, and in the Vulgate as M ,lfe Rubrurn, bur the trans ianon seems to have heen deduced from the P writer's routing of "t he Exodu s" throug h the Red Sea. Man y biblical scholars , noting that in several O.T. passag es suph mean s " p.rpyru , reed ." believe rh,ir the name yam 5uph o riginally was ap plied to J .. Reed St.".J " 'Somewhere in the eastern Delta. Difficul ries wi th this view are pointed o ut by B. 1'. Barto, "Th< Reed Sea : Req" ;"SCiJI in Pace, " fBL 102 ( 19 8 3): 27-.35 . Barto's own co nclusio n IS that yam slIph uriginJlly meant "Sea of End /Extinctio n. "

C H A R I O T WARrAR E

2 13

han d, the so ng itself, which must cornrn crno rarea real rather than a rnvth ical event, spea ks repeatedl y of Yah weh th row ing th e hor se and rider ' into the sea, th e hor ses a nd ch ariots sinking into the water like a stone or a lead en weight. Th us th e song seems to exu l t in the ca psizing of ships in a stor m, pe rha ps hor se tr an sp orts making their way towa rd Ca naa n th rou gh coa sta l waters. T he o nly peri od in which " Israel" may have been the objective of chariot ar mies d isp atched fro m Egyp t woul d be th e decades fro m M crnep ruh to Rarncsses IV, afte r whose reign th e Egyp tians seem to have ab a ndo ned their claims to hegemo ny in Ca naa n. Th e second poem is th e "So ng of Deborah" (J udges 5 ), which commem ora tes a great vietory over the cha riots of jabin, king of H aze r. Th e song anno unces itself as a favori te of those w ho ride on taw ny asses , w ho sir o n rich ca rpets a nd you w ho wa lk by th e way. To the so und of mu sic ian s at the wa tering p laces, th ere th ey repeat th e tri umphs of the Lord .

Since the poem itself is celebratory and excla ma tory, the narrative is provided in a pro se prologue (Judges 4) th at includes some details th at are not found in the poem but that are con sistent with it. According to the prologue, j abin, king of Hazor, had for twent y years sorely oppressed the Israelites. The instrument of his oppression was his commander, Sisera, wh o had nine hundred chariots of iron . At last, the men of Zebulon and Na phta li, north of the valley of Esd raelon a nd in the immedi ate hinterland of Hazar, thr ew off the yo ke. Led by Barak, so n of Abi noa rn, and on the strengt h of a n oracle by the prophetess Debor ah , ten thou sand Zeb ulon ires a nd N aphta lites occ upied Mt. Tabor (so me th irt y miles to the so ut hwest of Ha zor ), Whe n Sisera learn ed of this, he ca me with his nine hundred chariots to the Valley of jezreel, a part of Esd rae lon below Mr. Tabo r. Unda unted, Debo ra h prophesied to Bara k th at Yahwe h would th at day (o r possibly th at night , since the so ng suggests a night attack ) give him a great victo ry. " So Bara k came charging down from M t. Tabo r wi th ten th ou sand men at his bac k. T he Lor d put Sisera to ro ut with all his cha riot s an d his a rmy before Barak's o nslaught." ? All Sisera's men perished ; not a man was left alive. Sisera himself fled on foot and so ught shelter in th e tent of Heber th e Kenite. There he was killed as he lay under a ru g, hiding from his purs uers; it was j ael, Heber's wife, who killed him, driving a tent peg th rou gh his templ es. T he prose acco unt is followed by the so ng itself, whi ch hail s as Bara k's warri ors men of lssach ar and severa l o ther no rth ern districts alon gside ,

J " J ~c s

4. 14- 15 iN' " rransla tron).

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th o se fro m Z eb ulo n a nd Na p hta li. All of th ese swe pt dow n, fo llow ing th eir m ar sh al s clan by clan , into th e va lley : Yahweh' s peasant ry (lJllpshu ) a gai ns t " t he migh ty" of Ca naa n: Kings came, they fought; then fought the kings of Cana an, at Taanach by the waters of Megiddo; no plunder of silver did they ta ke. The stars fough t from heaven, the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. The Torrent of Kishon swept him away, the Torrent ba rred his flight; the Torre nt of Kishon; march on in might, my soul! The n hamm ered the hooves of his ho rses, his cha rgers galloped, galloped away," T he po em th e n lauds ja el, w ho "st retc he d o ut her han d fo r th e tent peg, her right hand to hammer rhe wear y," a nd re joi ces a t th e d eath of Sise ra a nd a t th e a nx ie ty of hi s mother, w ho peer s th rou gh th e latt ice lo oking fo r th e cha r io ts th at never re turned . " So peri sh a ll thine e nem ies, 0 Lord! " Joshua 11.1-1 1 pr esents a so u the rn (Ep h ra irnite o r Bcnjarninit c ) version of the same even t." Here th e ba ttl e is fought not a lon g the Kish on but at " t he water s of M er om." It is not just th e tribes north o f Esd r aclon. but a ll o f Isr ael that d efeat s Jab in o f H azar. It is not Bar ak but th e so ut he rn he ro, Jo shu a, wh o is t he victorio us co m ma nde r, a nd Debo ra h is no t m entioned a t a ll. Aft er defea ting jabin's a rmy, Jo shua hamstrings a ll th e horses a nd bu rns the cha riots. H e then pr oceed s to H a zar, massac res a ll th e inh a bita nts, a nd bu ms th e city to th e gro un d . O n thi s point th e oral t radit ion was - ap pa rently co rrec t, si nce 'ra d in's excavatio ns d em onstrated th at H a zar was indeed d est royed ca . 1200. T he few a nd preciou s poem s th at su rvive from th e ea rly Iron Age th erefo re su p port th e co ncl us io n in ferred from the a rc haeological evid en ce a nd from Egyptian reliefs a nd inscr ipti ons : in the Ca tas tro phe, thou san d s of barbarian skirmish er s descend ed up on the plains th at they had hithert o esc hewed , d est ro yed th e chariot a r m ies on which t he d efense of th e pl ai ns d epe nd ed, a nd t he n sacked and burn ed th e cities. "ro m o ur va ntage po int .we Can see th at a ll through th e Late Bro nze Age th e eas te rn Mediterran ean kin gd oms had been vu lne rab le to a co nce rted at tac k by barb ari an nei ghbors. But for m os t of th e perio d this arcanum im perii Was not p er ceived , eit he r by th e ki n gs at risk or by th e barba ria ns th emselves. O n ly to war d th e , Ibid. , 5. 19-22.. O n the rwo accounts set" Cot rwald. Tubes of Yahu-eh , 153-54 .

T HE E S D O F C H A R I O T W ,\RFA RF

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e nd of th e thirteenth ce nt u ry d id th e lat ter begin to se nse th eir o p po rt u ni ty a nd to seize it. We m ay dose by specula ting o n th e cou rse of hi story in th e eastern M ed iterra nean in th e lat e th irt eenth an d ea rly tw el fth cen t u r ies B. C. For fifty or six ty yea rs a fte r t he Batt le of Kade sh ( 1275) th e eas te rn M ed ite rranean see ms to have be e n a relati vely peaceful pla ce, In th e Ae gea n the seve ra l pal aces, ne cessaril y including o ne o n C rete, sup er vised their popu lati o ns with little fear for th e future. Nei ther Kno ssos nor Pvlos was forti fied, t hei r rulers evid entl y tru sting in th e habit of peace th at ba s a p tly been call ed th e pax Mycena ica. In Anato lia a nd th e Leva nt the G rea t Kingdo ms of H a tti a nd Egy pt p rov ided st a bility, eac h G rea t King su p po rti ng and su p po rte d by networks of vassal kin gd om s. Afte r his pe ace tr eaty w it h H artu silis Ill, Rarnesses t he G reat's he gem on y perhap s exte nde d as far as th e mount ain s o f Le ban on . More of a n in novati on was Rarn esses' init iat ive to war d Lib ya: a p pa ren tly he es tab lishe d Egy p tia n stro ng ho ld s a lo ng th e M editerra nean co ast we ll beyo nd EI Alarnein .!" The wes tw ard ex pa nsio n of Egy ptia n a ut ho rity wo u ld have re per cu ssions, a lt ho ug h not in Rarn esses' ow n long reign . Th e C atas tro phe o f th e ea s te rn M editerran ean kingdo ms see ms to have begu n a lo ng the north west fro ntier (see figu re 1). H ere a ce ntu ry a nd a half of peace mu st have ended dramaticall y wh en Boeotian The bes a nd the great city kn own as Tro y VI were captured a nd sac ked . In G ree k legend, the Seven wh o first tried to take Thebes fail ed to do so , and it was th eir sons, th e epigoni, w ho succeeded : w ha t th e gene ra tio n of Tydeu s atte m pte d th e ge nerat ion o f Di omed es ac h ieved . From t he legends we m ay extract t he p ro ba bilit y th at "Acha ea n" wa rrio rs (w ho th ese " Ach aea ns" were I sha ll sugg est pr esentl y) ma d e a n ea rly a nd un successfu l assau lt up on T hebes a nd th a t so me yea rs lat er o the r A chaea ns returned , thi s ti me ta k in g th e city. The sa me ge ne ratio n of warri ors sacked Troy. The LH IHB pott er y fo und at th e tw o sites permits th e co ncl usio n t ha t th e d estru cti on of bo t h Thebes a nd Tr o y VI occ ur red to wa rd th e e nd of t he long rei gn of Rarn esses the G reat. In th e eve nt, th e fate o f the se two k in gd om s wa s a h ar bin ger of wha t coul d an d would happen eve ry w here in th e eas te rn Mediterran ean. Th e C a tas t ro p he burst up on Egypt in 1208, th e fifth year of M crneptah's reign, wh en a Libyan chie ftai n, Meryre, so n of Did, ventured to invade the west e rn De lta. We d o no t kn o w wh at motivat ed Me ryre "s pr esumptuous act. Rarn esses' e nc roac h me nt o n Libya m;lYhave p rovo ked h im , o r perh ap s a drou ght ins pired M eryr e to seize some o f th e irriga te d lan d s o f th e Delt a ,

,I) Gardiner. Egypt , 270. noted rhar st elae of RJ,mt"~ses II have been found west of EI Alam ei n . H ayw ard, " Elep han t Ivo ry. " 105 . reports rha r ".1 fo n ress was built at Za wiya r Urnrn a r Rak h arn, a bout 2.0 km to the west (o f B.n e,\ lvl.m d, nea r .\ 1J r~ a ~1.Hru h i Ju ring the reign of Raru csscs II." O n the p roh .rble rol e of Bare s's Isla nd in R J fil t'V\ CS' frontier po li l.·~· d . D onald White, "The Third Season at :>'1 .1t", Mnrr uh.- AJA ~4 ; 1490); lJO .

21 6

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A .\11L1 T AR Y EXP L A N ATI O N

o r Meryre may simply have calculated that Merneptah was to o weak a kin g to resist a determined aggressor. But whatever h is motivation, it is very likel y that Meryre was enco ura ged in his undertaking by rep orts of what h ad happened in th e Aegean. For we see in the descr ipti on of the battl e an d its results that M er yre did not field mu ch of a chariotry but made up for hi s defi cien cies in th at ar ea b y assembling ten s of th ou san ds of infantrym en . M o st of th ese men ca me from Libya itself, but his recruitment effo rt s ex te nd ed through out " the northern lands ~ as well. T ha t a Lib yan kin g co uld communicat e with much of th e Mediterranean is no longer su rprising, since the recent excavation s o n Bates's Island, ncar Marsa Matruh, h ave produced M ycenaean and Levantine pottery a nd suggest that th e island was som ething of an exch a nge center for the eastern Lib yans. According to th e Gre at Karn ak Inscription , M eryre so ught out runner s from a ll the northern lands, men wh o co uld fight as skirmishers in hand-to h and co mba t. Evide ntly his a ppea l fo r mercenari es fell o n fertile gro u nd in Sa rd inia , Sicily, so ut he rn or west ern Ital y, Lycia, a nd especially northern G reece . All th ese lands were in co nt act with the civilized ki ngd om s of th e eas te rn Med iterran ean but were not th em sel ves civilized. Inst ead , th ey were barbarous places, in whi ch op po rtu nities for the better th ings in life were severely limited . In Parnph ylia , Lycaonia, a nd Lycia, the ru gged tr act of mountains alo ng Anatolia 's so uthe rn coast, th ere seems to have been noth ing resemblin g a city in the Lat e Bronze Age. Whil e Mycenaean pot tery, a nd the per fumed oil contain ed in the pots, was ship ped in gre at qu antities to the cities of the Levant a nd the Cilici an plain, the only ships th at sto pped a lo ng th e Lycian co ast we re th ose th at sa nk. 1 1 It is hardly su rp rising th at as ea rly as the Am arna Age men from th e Lycian mountains tried their h an d at p iracy, raid ing the co m pa ra tively wea lthy coa sts of Cy pru s. The Achaeans wh o joined M eryre's ca mp aig n a rc likel y to have been N orth -Greek spea ke rs. 12 T h e mountain s west and north of Bo eotia wer e 11 See figure 53 in Ha rd ing, M ycen,um ls and Europe, for th e conr ras t betwee n M ycenaean po ttery find s in the Levant a nd in so uthe rn Asia Min or (aside fro m the Cilicia n plain ). 11 Hirrirologist s a re ge ne ra lly conv inced th .rt the pl ace-nam e ...A hhiya " (or, la te r, " Ahhiyawa") 01 th e ta blets refers to th e G reek mainland. See H an s Gii te rbo ck, "The H itt ites a nd th e Aegean Worl d , I : T he Ahhiyawa Proble m Recon sider ed," Al A g7 (1983 ): 13 3- 3 8 ; a nd Trevo r Bryce. ..Ahhiyaw.ins and M ycen aea ns-e- An An atol ia n View point. " O x fo rd j Oljr· nal of Archaeology g (1989 ): 297- 3 10. But since th e "Gree k main land " was no t conceprua lize d until mo dern t imes, th e Hi tt ite te rm m ust h ave den ot ed so meth ing ~I i gh tly d iffere nt. It W J.S, I wou ld sugge st, the na me used in Asia Mi nor fo r the nor th -so ut h land mJ SS rha r Asian sa ilo rs enc ounte red wh en sa iling west fro m t he Da rd anelles . Afte r coa sti ng alo ng Th race fo r tw o da ys, a nd round ing rhe Chalci dicc, o ne reac hes rhc Varda r (Axios) River, wh e re t he co astline turn s ...h Jr p ly a nd decisively sout hwa rd . T his IS perh aps wh en: Abhrya began , JnJ it run to th e tip of rhe Pclopo nnese. In ho ok 2 of the Iliad , the la nd CJ, t of the Axio s IS not Ach.rca : rhe Paioru .ins, who co rne "f rom the w iJ e river Axi os , th e Ax ios, whose w ate r is

217

far more primitive th an the pala ce-Slat es. Wh ere :ls th e Iatr er we re civilized and Mino ani zed (So uth G reek may in tact have di fferenti ated itself from North G reek because of " M ino an" influences). mO SI of th e norrh wa s an illiterate hinterland, in wh ich the dialect of th e G reek-speakers wa s rhe co nserva tive No rth G reek. Troy, lol kos, Th ebes. and O rcho menos were OUlpOSIS o n th e norrh wesrern fro nt ier of the civilized wo rld , a nd beyond the se ce nters there was little di scernible prosperi ty in th e LH IIIB peri od . Th e 1\V 0 d ialccrs-s- So urh Greek and No rth G reek- th us see m to reflecr two rathe r d istinct cultura l zones, and wh en reference is made to "the Ach aean s" we must specify which of th e two zones is meant. As I have protested betimes;" ! the evidence is co nside ra ble th at the particular Ach aean s wh o sack ed Troy ca me from th e north . We may im agine , th en, th at late in th e reign of Ramesses II hordes of the se northern Ach aean footso ldiers had att acked both Troy VI a nd Th eb es and succeede d in takin g a nd sacking bo th places." :' T he Ach aean s attacked Thebe s, according to He siod, 15 " for th e flock s of O ed ipus. ~ Prior to th eir attac ks on th ese kingdo ms, th e northern Achaea ns a re likel y to have served the kingd om s as skirmishe rs, and we ma y im agin e th at it was during that service that th e northerners began to perceive how vulnerable th e roya l cha riotries were. Towa rd th e end of the th irte enth ce ntury the rul ers of the Argolid began building a fortificati on wall at th e Co rint hian isthmus (having alread y enci rcled their palaces with stout wall s), indicating som e alarm about wh at was happening in th e north. It was perhaps among th ese north ern Acha eans that Mcryre o f Libya wa s mo st successful in his so licita tion o f skirmishe rs. In the casualty list s, a fter th e Libyan s th em selves it was the Ek ioesh who lost the mo st men (ove r two th ou sand), Ever since M asp ero tr an smogri fied th em into mi gra tor y nati ons, the Shekelesh , Sbardana, and Tursba w ho joi ned Me ryr e's ente rprise h ave recei ved th e mo st att ent ion fro m schola rs inte rested in th e Ca tastro ph e. N ume rically, however, th ey were not very imp ortant , since Meryre rccruired fro m Sicily, Tyrseni a, a nd Sa rd inia togeth er fewer men th an Achaea fairest 01 J II" (Iliad 2..849- 50), a re the Troj an s' wester nmost allie s, while the Acha ean s all com e fro m beyond the Ax io s. Hi tt ite ta blets refer to a G rea t Kingdo m in Ahh iya, a nd this was prob abl y centered at My cen ae. w ith vassa l kin gdom s as far north as Atti ca <1I1 J Boe o tia, if no t lo lkos. But the mor e pr im itive peop le wh o lived hetwee n th e kin gdo ms Jn J th e Axios were als o" Achaea ns." Th ere is good reaso n to believe th.u these northern Achaea ns were th e:p erp err.iror s of the C a rast ro ph e, whil e the Acha eans of th e kin gdo ms wer e its vict ims. 11 " Argos a nd Argives," Il l ·- 15; CominK"l th,· Greeb . 22l-24; see J bove, pp. 117-1 8. I l As I have a rgu ed at • Argos a nd Argives," 1.l2-.1l, the "Argives " led by the Seven agai nsr Th ebes ca me from the Pelasgic Argo s a nd no r from th e Pelop o nnesc. Iliad 4 .370-99 and 6 .22 3 reca ll th at Thebes was sacke d by ..Ach aea ns" but rhar rhe king dom of M ycen ae d id not par ti cipat e in the ad venture. I<

\l/orks ,md

J)Jy>,

161- 6.1.

2 18

THE E~ D O F C H A R IO T WA RFARE

A MILI TAR Y EX P L A ~ AT I O :-J

supp lied to h im all by itself (it is not impo ssible th at even the Lycia ns out numbered the westerne rs in Meryre's a rmy ). But pro spectors fo r me rce naries would undoubtedl y have found the lands o f the centra l Mediterra ne an a promisin g vein. Sicily was almost ent irely barbarous, b ut for a few Sicil ian s o f the so utheast coast a w ind ow o n th e wider world had been o pened : o n the promonto ry of Thap sos, jutting o ut from the shore a few kilometers north of the Syracusan ba y, tr aders from th e ea ste rn M edite rra nean, a nd perhaps specifica lly from Cypru s, had bu ilt a tow n for th em selves by 1300, a nd the town continued th ro ugh the th irteenth cen tury. H ere wer e spac ious a nd rect ilinea r buildings, a nd th e residents of th e town lived the good life, wi th eas te rn a rt ifacts a nd luxu ry items. 16 O n th e coasts of Ital y, w hic h was eq ually prim itive, M ycenaeans ha d esta blished empo ria at Scogl io del Torino, o n the Gulf of Taranto, and at Luni suI M ignon e, in Et ruria. Fo r th ose "Tyrsenians" wh o lived nea rb y, th ese empo ria must have adv ertised th e possibilities that the lands to the eas t had to offer. The co ntac t between the eastern Mediterranean and Sardinia, an d the east e rne rs' exploitati on o f Sa rdi nian co pper, ha s o nly recentl y been appreciat ed . But it now seems likely that in the thirteenth centu ry mos t Sa rdinians wh o lived wi thin a day's wa lk of the Go lfo di Caglia ri would have seen th e visito rs' ships, if not the visitors them selves, an d would have been well aware of th e di screp ancy betw een their ow n co ndi tio n an d that of th ese peopl e from th e cas t. 17 To be a wa rri o r, th en , was in th ese barb a rou s lands no bad thing. since sk ill as a skir mis he r might transp ort a man to a be tter life in a bett er pl ace. M en fro m so ut hern Sa rd in ia wen t off to Byb los and Uga rit, and event ua lly to Egypt, a nd it is unl ikely th at man y 01 th em ret u rn ed ho me or w ish ed to d o so. In t he eastern kingdoms th ey co uld enj oy th e p leasu res of ur ban life and at th e sa me time be men of sta tus and property, with lands assign ed them b y th eir kin g; in return, th ey were o bliged o nly to gua rd the palace d uring pea cetime and to run in suppo rt o f th e fabled cha rio t force s on th ose I" Ho lloway, frilly and the Aegean. 8 7 : "It required men a nd ideas to rransform a Sicil ian village into an em por ium w ith so me urban co nfiguration, and this appears to have been the wor k of C yp rio te residents in the 14t h and l J rh cen tu ries." See also H oll oway, " Italy a nd th e Cen tra1 M ed irerr anean in the Cri sis Years," in W"d and ]ou ko wsk y, Crisis Yeurs,41 . " In the tw elft h century Cypriotes wer e prob a bl y wo rkin g met a l on the so uthe rn co ast of Sa rd in ia (see D. Ridgway, " Arc haeo log y in Sa rdi n ia an d Sou th Italy, 198 3-88." p. 114 ). But the disco very of LH IIiB ware near C agl ia n now sho ws jhar alre ady in the thi rt ee nt h ce ntury easremers w ert" reside nt there , pe rha ps " casting co pper tor expo rt in the' ingot shape lon g used in th e ea st." See Ho llow ay. " It, ly an d th e Ce nt ra l M ed irerr .mean ," 4 1. Co ntac t wit h the interior is difficult to estima te. For a much later period Ferrucio B JCTCC;l . "The Phoenician and Pun ic C ivilizario n in Sardi n ia, " in M iriam Batm uth. ed.• Studies in S;.lT.llni.m Arcboeology, vol . 1.145 . has shown that from Nor~ a nd other sires o n the C agliari bay "se rrlem enrs bega n to sprea d towar ds the S.HJ ini.m hinterla nd w ith I n average pe nerra no n of ab out rwenrv kilometers trorn the coa..ts." '

219

rare occasi o ns w he n th e cha riots gave hatt ie. It is not surp rising th .it yo ung men in Sa rd inia a nd elsew here aspired to serve as sk ir mishers in the cha riot corps o f a wealthy king. All that o ne needed was co u ra ge , speed , strength , and an initial investm ent in th e necessary eq uipment : a swo rd or spea r, a sh ield, and a n intimidating helmet. When Meryre ad vert ised for sk irmishers in M erneprah's early year s, th ose wh o responded had undoubtedl y lon g hoped to be p rofessi onal warriors, wheth er in Egypt its elf o r in o ne of the o the r kingdoms that tr ad itio na lly hired mercenaries. What was new in 1208 was th e m er cen a ries' en listment in a n a rmy in w hich th ey were not to play se co nd fidd le to a cha riot co rps. As not ed above . M er yre had very few chario ts- a deficiency that a decad e or two ea rlier wou ld have p revented him fro m even conside ring a war with M ern ept ah . But by 120 8 M eryre th ought it possible that wi th a huge for ce of sk irm ishers he co u ld defeat th e lar gest cha riot army in the world. Fo r th e hand -to -hand fighting his men wer e certainl y a rmed with long swo rds , since the Karnak Inscriptio n reco rd s that ove r nine th ou sand o f th ese bronze swo rds were retri eved as booty. For use against the Egyptian cha rio ts Mery re mu st have had men ex pe rt with longra nge weapons of so me so rt , and th ere is goo d reason to th in k that these we re javeli ns rath er than bows. In th e p rim itive lands fro m w hic h his au x iliari es ca me th ere wo uld have been man y men w ho we re sk illed w ith the hu nt ing javel in b ut w ho had never imagined th at th eir ski ll might on e day be in d em and . M eryr e's infa ntry was defeated, and it was an other ge ne ra tio n before an oth er Libya n fo rce attacked th e Delta. But Me ry re 's fai lu re, like th e Achaean s' successes at Troy and Th eb es, see ms to have p ubl icized th e possib ilities of t he new kind of warfare. On the easte rn side of the Delta, there was trouble in Ca naa n at about the sa me tim e that th e Lib yan s attack ed o n the west ern side. H o ri, the author o f the Pap yru s Ana stasi , asks his yo uth ful co rres po nde nt to imagine him self in charge of supplies for an arm y sent to Djahan (o r, possibly, Djahi) " to crush th o se rebel s called N earin ," I ' The ne'arim of Ca naan were han d -to -hand warriors a nd had d istinguished the mselves at the Battle of Kade sh in th e se rvice of Ra m esses th e G rea t. Now, however, at the end of th e Ni netee nt h Dyn asty, th ey have eviden tly becom e a p ro blem, a nd in th e scena rio d raw n by H o ri an army co nsisti ng entirel y of infant rymen, mo st of whom are barbarian sk irmishe rs, is sent OUt to dea l with t hem . In this co nnect io n we mu st note th e recent ly di scovere d evid en ce that Merneptah did in fact campaign in the Levant and that amon g his o ppo nents were warriors from Is rael. The men of Israel will ce rta in ly have fought on foot , The " reb elliou s ne'arim " of the south ern Levant did not yet pose a threat " Trans. Wilson, AN ET, 470.

220

A MIL I TAR Y E X P LAN A T ION

to Egypt itself. There was no king here who organized the tribesmen of Canaan for a campaign on the scale that Meryre managed in Libya. In Hori's imaginary army there are only five thousand men, suggesting that the Levantinc warriors against whom they are sent also number in the low thousands. But although not yet a danger to Egypt, the warriors of Philistia and Israel were certainly capable of defeating the vassal cities that were allied with Egypt. Although Merneptah may have maintained Egypt's traditional hegemony over the southern Levant, it is doubtful that his feeble successors were able to do so. Seri II had trouble enough asserting himself in Egypt, having apparently to deal with a usurpation by Arnenmesse. At Seti's death, the throne devolved first upon his son Siptah-still a childand then upon Twosret, Sen's widow. Neither could have intervened in Canaan, and it was evidently in Twosret's reign that the sacking of the great cities of southern Canaan began. Although we cannot be certain who sacked the cities on the Via MarisAshkelon, Ashdod, Akko, and others-there is no reason to look for the culprits in some distant place when there are obvious suspects close by. Undoubtedly the sackers were "Philistines," but that term ought to stand for the population that had traditionally lived in the hinterland of the penra polis. Armed with the javelins and long swords shown in the Medinet Habu reliefs, the Palestinian tribesmen must have made short work of the chariot armies by which the pentapolis was defended. Further north along the coast, the Tjekker must have closed in on and eventually taken the city of Dor, And the warriors of Dan seem to have made a name for themselves by their success, probably with long swords, against both chariots and cavalry. In the interior, centers such as Deir 'Alia (Succoth), Lachish, and Hazar were most likely sacked by "Israelites," seminomadic tribesmen who for generations had scraped out an existence in the hill country flanking the valleys of the Jordan and its tributaries, and in the desert fringe to the east. Until the Catastrophe, the best that either Philistines or Israelites could hope for was service as ne'arim or hapiru in the employ of a petty king. But now they were in a position to kill the king, loot his palace and his city, and bum them to the ground. Not all the Canaanite cities between the Jordan and the Mediterranean were razed. Shechem was spared by the Israelite tribesmen, the Israelites foreswearing hostilities against the city, and the Shechemites granting to those Israelites who submitted to circumcision the rights of connubium and of participation in the venerable cult on Mt. Gerizim. Gibeon was also spared, having come to terms with the invaders: in return for their lives, the Gibeonites were said to have pledged themselves and their descendants to serve their conquerors as hewers of wood and drawers of water. According to Israelite legend, when the other Canaanite kings took umbrage at the Gibeonires' accommodation and attacked

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the city, Gibeon's Israelite champions came to its rescue and slaughtered the Canaanite force, while the sun stood still over Gibeon and the moon halted in the vale of Aijalon. It must have been a long and terrible day in Canaan. The successes that skirmishers armed with swords and javelins achieved over chariot armies, and the consequent sacking of famous cities, must have generated excitement wherever service as a mercenary footsoldier had once seemed attractive. The motivation for the sacking of a city is not likely to have been anything so rarefied as religious fanaticism, ethnic hatred, or a class struggle. The perpetrators of the Catastrophe had more material objectives: cattle, gold, women, and whatever else caught the eye. The precious objects squirreled away in pits or wall-caches at Ugarit, Mycenae, Kokkinokremos, and other places testify that what the residents of these places feared was an attack by looters. And since at none of the razed cities have archaeologists found "in the open" anything of material value, we mav conclude that what the residents feared would happen did happen. just as the cities of southern Canaan are likely to have been plundered and razed by warriors from the countryside of Philistia and Israel, so it is likely that some cities in other regions were sacked by raiders who came from a hinterland not too far away. In eastern Syria Emar, possibly along with Carchemish, was sacked by "hordes," and in that part of the world in the early twelfth century such nameless hordes must have been Aramaicspeaking tribesmen. In Boeotia, as suggested above, Thebes had been sacked by raiders from its hinterland. On the Anatolian plateau, Hattusas evidently fell to Kaskans from the Pontic mountains: In some areas there was no warlike population of barbarians within striking distance. In western Syria, so far as the tablets from Alalakh and Ugarit indicate, there were only peaceful and unarmed villagers. The danger here was posed by raiders who came from the sea, among whom may have been freebooters from Lycia, the northern Aegean, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and other maritime regions of barbaria. The tablets from Ugarit warn of the peril posed by marauders who came in ships, and the tablets "from the oven" suggest that Ugarit itself fell to raiders who appeared with little warning. A force of several thousand skirmishers, possibly crammed into no more than thirty or forty boats, would have been sufficient to defeat whatever chariot force sallied out against them from the gates of Ugarit. At any rate, Ugarit, along with all the great cities on the Oronres-i-Alalakh, Hamath, Qarna, and Kadesh-was sacked and burned. In the civilized regions of southern Greece there likewise was little to fear from people who lived close by. Within the large palace states administered from Pylos or Knossos there were no warrior populations, the subjects there being pacific and helotized descendants of the pre-Greek inhabitants. Although the palaces in Boeotia may have fallen to raiders from Locris,

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Phocis, and inland Thessaly, who came on foot, more sites in the Aegean are likely to have been attacked by raiders who came by sea, many of them undoubtedly from coastal Thessaly and Achaea Phthiotis. From the citadel of Koukounaries, on Paros, one looks down a steep decline to Naoussa Bav. Fifteen minutes after wading ashore, veteran sackers of cities would have been atop the citadel. The huddled skeletons found there in recent excavations indicate that the population had little warning and no chance to escape. Pylas and Knossos, without walls, were entirely vulnerable, and we may imagine that the inhabitants fled at the first alarm. At Troy, Tiryns and other places some sort of siege may have been conducted, but in the end the citadels were taken. Mycenae is not likely to have been surprised, since the citadel is a two-hour walk from Argos Bay, but against several thousand raiders there would have been no real protection. Even if the attack came in broad daylight, and even if the rulers of Mycenae were able to mobilize several hundred chariots, the swarming javelineers would have been elusive targets and deadly marksmen against the chariot horses. After storming a city or a citadel, killing or enslaving those inhabitants who had not been able to flee, and ransacking the buildings for every bit of precious metal, elegant cloth, and usable artifacts, the raiders would have prepared the place for burning and then set fire to it. Such must have been the fate of dozens of the wealthiest cities and palaces in the eastern Mediterranean. After most of the great palaces had fallen, attempts were made once again upon Egypt. Ramesses III had to face incursions by Libyans, now grown persistent, in 1182 and 1176. These were certainly massive assaults, since Ramesses claims that in the first of these two wars his troops killed 12,535 of the invaders. And by this time the Philistine and Tjekker warriors, even without a king to mastermind and finance the venture, posed a threat to Egypt itself. In his eighth year (1179) Ramesses dealt with this threat on his eastern border. His inscription would have us believe that the enemies whom he defeated in that campaign were a vast coalition, a canspiracy of all lands, that had been responsible for devastating the entire Near East from Hatti to Canaan and from Cyprus to Carchemish. Such claims greatly enhanced his own victory and need not be taken literally: from their letters we know that the rulers of Hattusas, Emar, and Ugarit were themselves uncertain about the identity of the hordes intent on sacking their cities, and it is unlikely that Ramesses had any better information on the subject. What Ramesses undoubtedly did know is that the kind of destruction that the Philistines and Tjekker had wrought in the southern Levant, and the kind of warfare that these tribesmen practiced, had already come to most of the great cities and palaces farther north. The Levantine aggressors in 1179 were armed with javelins and long swords, wore helmets and corslets, and carried round shields. In order co defeat them Rarnesses had to improvise, and his battle plans seem co have

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relegated his chariotry to a subordinate role. Ramesses assembled a considerable number of hand-to-hand fighters, both barbarian skirmishers (shardana) and native Egyptians. The latter stood shoulder-co-shoulder in dose-order formations, carried oblong shields, were armed with the traditional rods or sickle swords, and were hardly :IS effective as their foreign auxiliaries who fought :IS free-lancers. But infantrymen of both kinds, helped out by the archers in the chariot corps, were sufficient co win the battle at Djahi. Whether on that same occasion or soon thereafter, Rarnesscs destroyed a great force of Philistine, Tjekker, and Sicilian skirmishers who were caught on their boats a short distance offshore. The skirmishers had not expected a battle while still in their ships and were virtually annihilated. With remarkable foresight Rarnesses had assembled a fleet and assigned to each ship a detachment of archers (most likely the archers who in other circumstances and other times would have shot from chariots) and hand-co-hand warriors. The Egyptian ships were able to cur off the enemy, who had no usable long-range weapons. The Philistine and Sicilian warriors would have had javelins, but javelins on these crowded ships were of no value at all, since a javelin must be thrown on the run. The Egyptian archers, on the contrary, were able to shoot their bows far more effectively from the deck of a ship than from the platform of a bouncing chariot. Even worse for the aggressors, while the Egyptian archers could leave the rowing co the oarsmen whom Ramesscs had impressed into service, the Philistine and Sicilian warriors had to do their own rowing. Perhaps the Medinet Habu relief does not exaggerate the extent of Ramesses' victory at sea in 1179. Even Rarncsses' victories, however, illustrated how drastically warfare had changed in the three or four decades of the Catastrophe. The Egyptians' salvation owed little to their chariotry. Most important were the hand-to-hand warriors, whether Egyptian or barbarian, that Ramesses had assembled at Djahi. The archers who had been positioned on the decks of Ramesses' ships had also taken their coli, but the "naval battle" may have been something of a fluke, contingent on timing and luck. The future belonged to men who could stand their ground in hand-co-hand combat. Those who survived the Catastrophe resorted to new strategies against the probability that the raiders would return. On Crete the small and lowlying settlements were abandoned for "cities of refuge" in the mountains. The Arcade-Cypriote dialect suggests that many South-Greek speakers from the Peloponnese and central Greece fled in two directions, some to the mountains of Arcadia and others to the island of Cyprus. The flight to Ionia, on the other hand, seems co have occurred several generations after the Catastrophe ended. If towns built in the twelfth century were nor in the mountains, they were on the seacoast. On Cyprus, as well as in Phoenicia and Greece, large

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coastal towns were built and fortified, and the coastal cities of the Via Maris were rebuilt and strengthened (with refugees from Crete probably seeking asylum there). The size of the twelfth-century towns indicates a belief that there was safety in numbers. The coastal location may have been preferred for several reasons. It provided, first of all, the optimum vantage point for spotting hostile ships long before they reached the shore. A city on the coast, even if it housed few hand-to-hand fighters, was also able to take some effective offensive measures against raiders who came by sea. As Rarnesscs' sea victory had shown, one very good way to confront a seaborne horde of hand-to-hand skirmishers was to keep them from reaching land . On board their ships the skirmishers were vulnerable, since they had no bows (the man fortunate enough to own a composite bow would have found it warped and deteriorated after several days in an open boat). It is therefore possible that a few of the coastal towns continued to count on archers, now shooting from coast-guard ships instead of from chariots. It is more likely, however, that coastal locations were chosen for defensive reasons: a city on the coast might be able to withstand a siege, while a city in the interior could be entirely cut off. But no civilized society could defend itself without putting into the field infantrymen equipped for hand-to-hand combat. Against the new peril new weapons were required, and new pieces of armor. In Greece especially we can see that the Catastrophe created the armored footsoldier, protected by a helmet, corslet, greaves, and a round shield. A short thrusting spear was most important as the weapon of men who took their position in closeorder infantry formations. For professional skirmishers, who might confront the enemy in man-to-man combat, a long sword was required against the long swords of the predators. The manufacture of cut-and-thrust swords began in Merneptah's time, as the unusable "Merneptah sword" from Ugarit shows. The Aegean productions found at Mouliana, Mycenae, and Perati are clumsy experiments, but better designs were soon found. Had there been time to hilt them and edge their blades, the four unfinished swords from the high-priest's house in Ugarit would have been formidable weapons. In the mc Aegean, however, what those who could afford it wanted was the terrible Griffzungenschwert that had long been traditional in northeast Italy and the Balkans. The carrouche of Seti II on a specimen found in Egypt shows that there too some of the pharaoh's warriors acquired the very best slashing sword that could be found. Although weapons and armor were important, even more important were men who could use them, and on this matter the Catastrophe introduced profound changes. In the Late Bronze Age kingdoms warfare had been a specialist's concern. Civilian conscripts were apparently used only for defense, and massed offensive infantries were conspicuously absent when Late Bronze Age kingdoms (except, perhaps, for Assyria) went to

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war. After the Catastrophe, political power belonged to those societies in which warfare was every man's concern, the adult males of a community serving as its militia. The Warrior Vase from Mycenae suggests that in the twelfth century at least some men of Mycenae were learning how to march and fight in close-order formations, depending on the thrusting spear and on the new elements of defensive armor. But neither at Mycenae nor in most other civilized communities could a "warrior ethos" have developed in the immediate aftermath of the Catastrophe, and military prowess ten ded to be associated with the less civilized frontier societies. It is likely that the "Dorians" were North-Greek speakers who became proficient as doseorder spearmen. In the Iron Age Levant, communities such as Philistia, Israel, Moab, Ammon, and Aram (in eastern Syria) depended on mass infantries. We need not believe, with the biblical author, that in David's kingdom there were 1,300,000 "able-bodied men, capable of bearing arms." But the militia was apparently counted in six figures, and we can perhaps take the author's word for it that when David wished to curse joab, the best he could think of was "may the house of Joab never be free from running sore or foul disease, or lack a son fit only to ply the distaff." 19 Typically these frontier societies coalesced into "nations," the nation being a coalition cohesive enough and large enough to defend itself against any foreseeable aggression.>" The solidarity of an Iron Age community, whether of a polis or of a nation, stemmed from the recognition that in war the fortunes of the community would depend on every man playing his part. Against mass formations of close-order infantry, the formations being controlled by an efficient chain of command, disorganized hordes of running skirmishers would have been outmatched. The kind of solidarity required in the Iron Age was, with rare exceptions, unnecessary and therefore unknown in the Late Bronze Age, since prior to the Catastrophe a king's subjects were amply protected by the king's chariots and chariot runners. The military revolution that occurred in the Catastrophe was thus a prerequisite for the social and political changes that made the world of the Iron Age so different from that of the Late Bronze Age. 2 Samuel 24.9; 2 Samuel 3.29. On nationalism in the early Iron Age see Liveraru's diSCUSSIon of ""il fartore gennlizio e to Sraro 'nazionale,'" in his Antico Oriente, 654-60. 19

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