The World of Ancient Archery

Usksider mentioned that I might like to blog some of the campaigns of my favourite pharaoh Tuthmosis III.

What is so remarkable for me about this particular pharaoh is that he was never defeated in any battle!

In year 24 of his reign, (which is how the ancient Egyptians calculated time) the famous battle of Megiddo took place. The Annals of Tuthmosis III describes how the treasures of Megiddo were moved to Egypt after the defeat of the city and we are told that in year 25 of his reign the pharaoh built a botanical garden in Karnak temple to commemorate this campaign. Another of his famous battles was the Battle of Kadesh in year 29-32 of his reign.

Here is a picture of the Annals of Tuthmosis III at Karnak:

Tuthmosis was remarkable in many ways. He was the first pharaoh to use sea-power to carry out his attacks and also to cross the Euphrates. His dedicated troops even carried boats across land in order to carry out these military campaigns.

To stop rebellions he had a rather different approach to simply attacking and killing the male population and taking the women and children as slaves. Instead Tuthmosis took male members of certain families hostage and taught them Egyptian culture and language in order to increase their loyalty to him. This meant that the rulers of the city states of Syria and Palestine became servants to Egypt.

Tuthmosis III was the first Egyptian pharaoh to take his army as far as he did, thus spreading Egyptian culture.

Also for the first time in Egyptian history, bows are listed among captured items. In the Annals of Tuthmosis we are told that in year 35, bows were taken as booty and these are believed to have come from Syria. In Northern Syria during one of his campaigns, he organised an elephant hunt in which he killed 120 elephants using the bow and arrow!

Tuthmosis III was definitely an archer pharaoh!

In my earlier post 'The poor defeating the rich' Tylluan and Usksider have raised an interesting question. The wealthy men of society became hoplite soldiers fighting from horseback with either sword or lance. They believed that hand-to-hand fighting was the only method of warfare that was moral and dignified.

It would seem to be true that as Tylluan and Usksider pointed out, the wealthy hoplites disapproved of the poor classes for wounding and killing them with a bow and arrow, a weapon that did not allow the hoplites to fight the enemy hand-to-hand.

A passage in Herodotus mentions that the Spartan Kallikrates was shot in the side by an arrow at the battle of Plataea and died complaining that he had not struck a blow or done a deed to match his eagerness.

The added detail that Kallikrates was ‘sitting in his rank’ at the time suggests the Spartans sat on the ground to avoid the arrow-storm, presumably crouching under their shields. This may account for the reason why the Greeks always had an ambivalent attiude towards the bow, even though it was such an effective weapon.