The World of Ancient Archery

So far I’ve only dealt with archery in ancient Greece, a nation that were reluctant to use the bow. However, the ancient Egyptians were the complete opposite.

During the Old Kingdom (2575-2150BC) the Egyptians used a bow known as the ‘self bow’. It was between 1-2 meters in length and strung with twisted gut. It was made entirely of acacia wood which meant it was not flexible enough to shoot more than 200 metres effectively. This may not sound much, but if you ever stand in a field and measure it, you will see it is quite a distance!

When the Hyksos successfully invaded Egypt just before the New Kingdom (1580-1070BC), they brought with them the composite bow, which eventually lead to the transformation of ancient Egyptian warfare. This type of bow consists of layers of wood and sinew, which gives greater tension and compression, allowing greater power and accurate range for the archer.

The Egyptians realised that they had to change their weaponry and tactics in order to fight and expel their enemies. Many composite bows are made of Oryx horn and wood and they have been found in the tombs of the Pharaohs. However some of these are not of Egyptian manufacture, suggesting that they did not have the materials available to make them on a large scale. Instead they were probably imported from Syria and Asia Minor.

This may be the one of the earliest examples of arms dealing!

The effectiveness of arrows as a weapon should not be underestimated. They enabled archers to kill without ever being engaged by the enemy. This became a source of conflict in itself.

Aristotle noted that in civil wars the lower classes ‘often’ defeated the rich because ‘being light armed they could easily compete with the cavalry and hoplites’, i.e. soldiers from the wealthier classes.

Maybe this was why the ancient Greeks were reluctant to use the bow as it gave the poorer classes more control and power over the outcome of a battle.

It must have been an embarrassment to the wealthy classes! No matter how much money they spent on weapons and horses, a poor man with a piece of wood could wipe them out in battle.

In my last post, Munzly has raised an interesting query which I hope to answer.

The reason for the yew tree producing so few bows is because each bow requires a layer of heartwood. When you take a cross-section of a yew tree branch there is sapwood, which is elastic and good in tension and heartwood, which is great for compression, this is what gives the bow its strength.

Bow makers would cut the yew wood so the sapwood formed the back of the bow (outside) and the heartwood formed the belly (inside). So when the bow was pulled the heartwood would resist compression and the sapwood would help the bow spring back quickly from being bent.

The reason why Britain had the longbow during the medieval period (and not a short bow) is that bowmakers only had access to one type of material that was the best at stretching - yew wood.

In the East they used sinew (material made from animal bone) which allowed them to make short bows backed with thin sections of wood or bone wth sinew pasted onto it. By making the longbow they could store more energy than a short one without it snapping.

Believe me no-one wants to be shooting a bow to have it break and splinter on them!!

This is a picture of the ancient yew at Much Marcle, Herefordshire.

Many scholars regard the bow as a poor man’s weapon. In Greece, a bow and quiverful of arrows could cost 2/3 weeks wages but it was still half the price of a shield and spear!

Since Homer’s day bows made from yew have been regarded as the best, however only 5 bows can be made from one mature yew tree and it was claimed that one bow could take up to 10 years to make!

During the 3rd century BC a competition was held where a bow and quiver worth 15 drachmas was offered as first prize. This was at a time when a soldier’s wage was only 4 obols a day, and there were 6 obols in 1 drachma! So this represented approximately 3 weeks’ wages. Definitely a prize worth having!

A bow must have been quite prestigious to be offered as a prize. Although scholars (and some ancient writers) seem to look down on the bow, it took a lot of skill and training to become an effective archer.

In Antiquity, the yew was not used for medicinal purposes because it was so toxic. However there was one exception to this – it was used for healing snake bites.

The Ancient Greeks believed that if you had one poison in your system already (snake bite) you had nothing in your body to fight it. By introducing an additional poison (yew) they believed that the two poisons would fight each other and eventually wipe each other out.

I don’t believe there could have been any volunteers to try this out! Herakles dealt with snakes differently. He was said to have strangled two of them when he was a baby. Here is pottery fragment of this scene:

There were other ways to make use of yew poison. Pliny the Elder reported that in Spain, which had been conquered by the Romans in the second century BC, souvenir flasks carved from yew wood were sold to Roman tourists. Many of these died after drinking from them…

In reply to my last post, Munzly pointed out that the Yew is extremely poisonous. The Ancient Greeks recognised this, and both poison and arrows were deeply intertwined in the ancient Greek language itself. The word for poison is toxicon, derived from toxon, meaning ‘arrow’. The Greek toxikon pharmakon means “arrow poison”. Clearly the yew provided a deadly poison used to coat arrow heads.

This knowledge was passed on to the Romans eventually. In Latin the word for poison was toxica which derived from taxus meaning ‘yew’. Artemis (the Greek equivalent of the Roman Diana) was honoured in a shrine situated in a yew grove probably because she dipped her arrows in yew to make them poisonous.

In the ancient world Scythian mercenaries were famous archers who, according to Pliny the Elder, smeared their arrows in yew sap to make them poisonous.

Here is a picture of a Scythian archer :

Usksider asked me an interesting question the other day. Why are there so many yew trees in cemeteries? It’s not just in Britain either – they’re popular throughout Europe.

In ancient Greece and Rome, the yew was dedicated to Hecate, goddess of the Underworld and Magic. The torches of the Eumenides (goddesses of Vengeance) were also made of Yew.

But the main reason for yews being so closely associated with death is its toxicity and dark colour. It is also an evergreen, and these are usually all associated with death, and perhaps because it can be so long lived (some yews can grow for over 1,000 years) it has also come to represent immortality.

In my last blog I mentioned Eurytos, who reneged on his promise to award his daughter in marriage to the winner of an archery contest.

We meet Eurytos again, briefly, in Homer's famous poem, the Odyssey, where Odysseus says:

"great Eurytos died suddenly nor came to an age
in his own mansions, since Apollo in anger against
him killed him, because he had challenged Apollo
in archery."

Clearly Eurytos was not a man to learn from his experiences.

Odysseus was himself regarded as a great archer, at least, in the Odyssey. His most famous exhibition of skill was sending an arrow through twelve axes. In Homer's other poem, the Illiad (about the Battle of Troy), Odysseus' archery is never mentioned.

This may be because we learn in the Odyssey that Odysseus had left his great bow at home, only retrieving it when after many years, he returns to his homeland, Ithaka, his wife Penelope, and his son. By this time his wife Penelope is besieged by suitors wanting to get their hands on her husband's money.

Penelope holds an archery contest, saying that whoever manages to string her husband's bow will win her hand in marriage. Odysseus strings the bow and kills the suitors before being reunited with his wife, son and faithful dog. (Interestingly, it was the dog who recognised him first!)

In both Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey Herakles (sometimes called Hercules) features as a famous archer. He also appears in art and on pottery. By the 7th century BC he has become fairly easy to spot, and a black figure vase painting from early Archaic Athens (c.620BC) by the Nettos Painter depicts Herakles with a quiver on his back and drawing his bow to shoot the eagle that had been devouring Prometheus' liver.

According to Apollodoros, Herakles learned archery from Eurytos, King of Oichalia. The King promised to give his daughter in marriage to the winner of a bow contest between himself and his sons. This suggests that archery was held in high esteem as not only the King was a skilled archer but his sons were also.

Although Herakles won the contest the King did not keep his word. In Sophocles’ Trachiniai, Eurytos tells Herakles he is inferior to his sons at archery, ‘You have inescapable arrows in your hands but my sons excel you in the test of archery.’ Obviously Herakles must have been a good archer otherwise he would not have won the contest. So what was Eurytos really objecting to?

In later vase paintings the bow contest is depicted and Herakles is shown slaying Eurytos and his sons with the bow.

In one of the Twelve Labours set for Herakles he was told to rid the country of the Stymphalian birds. It is not clear how he achieved this but some sources say he shot them with his bow and arrows.

According to legend, Herakles gave his bow to Philoktetes, who then helped the Greeks defeat the Trojans at Troy. The Trojan prince Paris (who caused the war by running off with Menelaus' wife, Helen) was also an archer. He used archery to bring down the great Achilles, yet Paris is rarely represented as an archer in Greek art.

Nowadays, we mostly see the yew tree in cemeteries although they’re becoming more popular in garden centres this year. However, the yew used to be grown extensively all over Europe, because it was used for a variety of purposes including bows, carving, and basketwork.

Julius Caesar and Pliny both mention the toxicity of the plant. Caesar said that the British king, Catuvolcus, committed suicide by drinking the sap of the Yew tree and Pliny claimed that even sleeping or resting under the tree could be fatal, although the yew became harmless once a copper nail had been driven into it!

Artemis, like her Roman counterpart Diana was a huntress. She taught archery and other hunting arts to Atalanta, the daughter of Schoineos (meaning ‘rush-man’). Atalanta is sometimes called the Rush Maiden, perhaps because arrow shafts were made from the sharp-rush and the reed.

The name Atalanta means balance; this suggests the balancing of arrow to bow and bow to archer in order to combine the paradoxical characteristics of straightness (the arrow) and flexibility (the bow).

According to the Roman poet, Ovid, in his Legend of the Kalydonian Boar Hunt, Atalanta was the first to hit the boar with a shot from her bow, although many Greek heroes were taking part with their spears. This could show that her bow and arrow was superior to the men’s spears. Another story about Atalanta concerns how she raced Hippomenes in a marriage contest; Ovid describes how ‘she flew past him as if feet were wings and her speed was like a Scythian arrow’s flight through air.’

I want to use this blog to discuss how archery was used in ancient warfare and also archery in mythology.

Nowadays we think of war using modern weapons and it’s difficult to imagine fighting with bows and arrows. But actually the ancient civilisations (and my main interests are Egypt, Greece and Rome) were very advanced. They gave their archers an advantage by using poisoned arrows and fire arrows.

In ancient Greece the bow was an attribute of Apollo, Artemis, Atalanta and Herakles. Yet in spite of this, hunting scenes in Greek art illustrate the fact that the Greeks tended not to use bows and arrows all that much.

The name Artemis Toxia means ‘Artemis of the Bow’. Artemis was the Greek version of the Roman goddess Diana the huntress. She and her twin brother Apollo are both commonly represented as archers. This tradition can be traced back as far as the epic poetry of Homer where hymns celebrate the hunting bow of Artemis and musical bow (lyre) of Apollo.