Showing posts with label cuirass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cuirass. Show all posts
Monday, May 9, 2016
Linen armor build thread by Todd Feinman
Should've posted this earlier. Todd Feinman is currently working on an Egyptian linen corslet over at the Bronze Age Center. Armors derived from this style may have been worn by Persians (Herodotus I.135) and of course by Egyptians in Achaemenid service; he also proposes that the weaving techniques may be applicable to tube-and-yoke corslets.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Peoples of the empire: The Egyptians, part 2
Nectanebo II secured his throne with the help of the famous Spartan king Agesilaus II, and when Agesilaus died of illness on his way home, the pharaoh paid him the honor of having his body royally embalmed. Nectanebo's reign was characterized by the building and restoration of even more temples. When the Persians tried to invade again in 351, he repelled them via Greek mercenaries under Lamias of Sparta and Diophantes of Athens. When Artaxerxes III began assembling a naval force at Sidon, Nectanebo encouraged the Sidonians to revolt and sent Greek mercenaries under the famous Mentor of Rhodes to help them. The rebellion began to spread through Phoenicia and Cyprus, before finally being put down in or around 346.
Artaxerxes took Mentor (who had defected), Bagoas and an imperial army into the Nile Delta in 343, and Nectanebo first tried to hold Memphis, then Thebes, and finally to Nubia, where he died a year or two later. Egypt was now returned to Achaemenid hands. Greek sources allege that Artaxerxes desecrated temples and killed the Apis bull, as Cambyses had done, though Lendering throws doubt on such rash behavior.
Although the Egyptians resented Persian rule, it appears that Egyptians were still taken into the imperial army, as a stele records how the noble Somtutefnekhet of Heracleopolis (Hwt-nen-nesu) fought at and survived the Battle of Issus. The last two Achaemenid satraps are recorded in (Latinized) Greek as Sabaces, who died at Issus, and Mazaces, his successor. As Sabaces' garrison accompanied him to Issus, Mazaces was left with no army and was forced to hand over Egypt to Alexander the Great without a fight when he arrived in 332.
Alexander was received warmly in Egypt. At the Oracle of Amun in the Siwa Oasis, he was declared the son of Amun (Zeus-Ammon) and rightful pharaoh of Egypt. It was after this that he began to openly speak of himself as having divine lineage and his portraits to include horns alluding to the ram that symbolized Amun. Alexander founded Alexandria (modern Iskandariyah) and appointed Cleomenes of Naucratis as nomarch of Egypt's Arabian district and collector of the country's taxes.
With Alexander's death in 323, Perdiccas, regent of the infant Alexander IV, appointed Macedonian general Ptolemy as satrap of Egypt. Cleomenes was retained as his deputy, but Ptolemy executed him on suspicion of spying for Perdiccas. In 321, Perdiccas tried to bring Ptolemy to heel with an invasion, but was defeated on the Nile and assassinated by frustrated officers including Seleucus. Ptolemy held Egypt throughout the Wars of the Diadochi, establishing the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt, which remained independent until falling to the Romans under Octavian Caesar in 30 BC.
For more than six centuries Egypt remained in Roman hands. For a few years, the Sassanid Persians wrested control from the Eastern Roman empire, then lost it again, and then in 641 the country fell to the first Muslim caliphate. Thereafter, Egypt underwent a process of Arabization, though still recognized as the selfsame historical region of the pharaohs. A series of native dynasties interspersed with foreign occupation ended with the Revolution of 1952, when army officers under Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser established the current republic.
Language
Egyptian was an Afroasiatic language. It is thus distantly related to the Semitic, Cushitic and many other subfamilies in the area, but, like Greek in the Indo-European family, formed its own branch. The phase of the language used in Achaemenid times was Early Demotic Egyptian, which also refers to its writing system, a consonantal alphabet. The Early Demotic script was used for administrative and commercial purposes while literature and religious texts were written in older scripts (hieroglyphs and hieratic).
From around the turn of the 5th century, the writing system entered the Middle Demotic phase, while the spoken language moved on, evolving into something a bit closer to Coptic. Coptic itself gradually gave way to Arabic after the Islamic Conquest in the 7th century, but hung on as a daily language for some even after the Middle Ages. Today it's mostly restricted to liturgical use among the Christian Copts.
Religion
Due to its long history, Egyptian polytheism had had plenty of time to develop and change. As it stood in the late period, the wind god of Thebes, Amun, had long since merged wtih the sun god Re or Ra and assumed the role of supreme god. Other major deities included Maat, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Ptah, and Bes, who was popularly worshipped on Cyprus.
The Egyptian kingship, like the Persian, rested on a principle encompassing order, truth, righteousness and the universal binding force. However, unlike aša or arta, Maat could also be personified as a goddess who personally judged the dead. Both king and commoner had to uphold maat through proper behavior, including charity and maintaining tradition. Impiousness and injustice could upset the natural order and cause misfortune. Upholders of maat would be rewarded in the afterlife. Thus the Egyptian statue of Darius the Great declares in hieroglyphs that the king is "the perfect god who rejoices in maat," along with Persian cuneiform expressing his accustomed veneration of Ahura Mazda.
The struggle of maat versus isfet (evil and untruth) is expressed via the myth of Osiris, the ancient god-king and lifeforce of the land, who was killed by his brother and usurper Set, god of chaos. In the late period, Set was portrayed negatively though still worshipped in certain religious centers. He was said to have cut Osiris' body into 42 pieces and scattered them around the country, their landing places corresponding with the 42 nomes. Thus the resurrection of Osiris by his wife Isis (earlier regarded as the wife of the sky god Horus, now reidentified as his mother) is tied to the unification of Egypt. Horus became the next king, and Isis' association with the throne (the literal meaning of her name, is.t) may mean that the throne was metaphorically regarded as the king's mother.
Although the pharaoh retained a kind of divine status (to my knowledge, it is only in Egyptian-language documents that the Achaemenids claimed divinity rather than mere divine favor) his role as intercessor between gods and humanity became less important as direct personal devotions on the part of commoners became more so. The gods were now seen as less distant, more involved in day-to-day human affairs, and individuals sought out divine favor on their own. Concurrent is the spread of funerary texts like the Book of the Dead among commoners to ensure that they, like the king, would be protected and guided in the afterlife.
Clothing
The Egyptian at Naqš-e Rostam is clad simply in an ankle-length tunic with long fitted sleeves and a keyhole neckline, worn unbelted (in my estimation it would probably be bloused over a belt for combat, like the ancient Gaels, who wore a similar tunic). Unfortunately, the Persepolis relief is badly damaged, showing only the Egyptians' lower legs, though they also wear garments with a long hem; a wide embroidered border (or perhaps a fringe) is also visible. The sculpture, or at least the quality and lighting of the photo, is too indistinct even to tell what kind of footwear they have. As for women's clothing, Fashion-Era has a guide on wrapping a shawl-type dress Egyptian-style from a rectangular length of fabric. Ancient Egypt was famed for its production of linen and this is therefore an even more appropriate fabric here than for peoples from elsewhere in the empire, but wool is also fine. Cotton was not yet grown in Egypt and would have to be regarded as an imported luxury good from India.
Weapons
Herodotus lists Egyptian arms as "woven helmets," "hollow shields with broad rims, and spears for sea-warfare, and great battle-axes. Most of them wore cuirasses and carried long swords (machairas)."
The woven helmets may have very ancient precedent. Headgear resembling woven rope helmets are said to be worn in paintings in the tomb of Ramses III. However it's equally true that over the centuries between then and the Graeco-Persian wars there is likely to have been changes in style and technology.
The Cyropaedia (VI.2 and VII.1) describes Egyptian shields as very large, covering the body down to the feet, being pushed forward with one shoulder, and used with very large spears. New Kingdom Egyptian troops had often been portrayed carrying shields with flat bottoms, arched tops and blotchy patterns perhaps indicating that they were covered in hair-on animal hide, and these late period shields are likely an enlargement of those. If equipped with a telamon they could be used in conjunction with large spears in the same manner as early Mycenaean warriors.
Swords were quite long by 5th century standards, straight, made of iron and with U-shaped pommels. A few fragments may be seen here. If Persian art is to be trusted, the Egyptians and many other peoples wore long sword scabbards on slings like rifles, rather than belts or baldrics.
Egyptian cuirasses are believed to have been made of linen; Herodotus mentions that Amasis sent such a one to a temple of Athena on Rhodes. Although you can still find a lot of sources claiming that linen armor was glued, the people whom I trust most on this (such as Dan Howard, author of Bronze Age Military Equipment) have said unequivocally that linen armor should be quilted, not glued.
A footnote: Yes, it really is pure coincidence that the "Peoples of the empire" series reached Egypt just as Egypt is dominating international news. It's things like this that are why I'm not 100 percent atheist.
Artaxerxes took Mentor (who had defected), Bagoas and an imperial army into the Nile Delta in 343, and Nectanebo first tried to hold Memphis, then Thebes, and finally to Nubia, where he died a year or two later. Egypt was now returned to Achaemenid hands. Greek sources allege that Artaxerxes desecrated temples and killed the Apis bull, as Cambyses had done, though Lendering throws doubt on such rash behavior.
Although the Egyptians resented Persian rule, it appears that Egyptians were still taken into the imperial army, as a stele records how the noble Somtutefnekhet of Heracleopolis (Hwt-nen-nesu) fought at and survived the Battle of Issus. The last two Achaemenid satraps are recorded in (Latinized) Greek as Sabaces, who died at Issus, and Mazaces, his successor. As Sabaces' garrison accompanied him to Issus, Mazaces was left with no army and was forced to hand over Egypt to Alexander the Great without a fight when he arrived in 332.
Alexander was received warmly in Egypt. At the Oracle of Amun in the Siwa Oasis, he was declared the son of Amun (Zeus-Ammon) and rightful pharaoh of Egypt. It was after this that he began to openly speak of himself as having divine lineage and his portraits to include horns alluding to the ram that symbolized Amun. Alexander founded Alexandria (modern Iskandariyah) and appointed Cleomenes of Naucratis as nomarch of Egypt's Arabian district and collector of the country's taxes.
With Alexander's death in 323, Perdiccas, regent of the infant Alexander IV, appointed Macedonian general Ptolemy as satrap of Egypt. Cleomenes was retained as his deputy, but Ptolemy executed him on suspicion of spying for Perdiccas. In 321, Perdiccas tried to bring Ptolemy to heel with an invasion, but was defeated on the Nile and assassinated by frustrated officers including Seleucus. Ptolemy held Egypt throughout the Wars of the Diadochi, establishing the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt, which remained independent until falling to the Romans under Octavian Caesar in 30 BC.
For more than six centuries Egypt remained in Roman hands. For a few years, the Sassanid Persians wrested control from the Eastern Roman empire, then lost it again, and then in 641 the country fell to the first Muslim caliphate. Thereafter, Egypt underwent a process of Arabization, though still recognized as the selfsame historical region of the pharaohs. A series of native dynasties interspersed with foreign occupation ended with the Revolution of 1952, when army officers under Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser established the current republic.
Language
Egyptian was an Afroasiatic language. It is thus distantly related to the Semitic, Cushitic and many other subfamilies in the area, but, like Greek in the Indo-European family, formed its own branch. The phase of the language used in Achaemenid times was Early Demotic Egyptian, which also refers to its writing system, a consonantal alphabet. The Early Demotic script was used for administrative and commercial purposes while literature and religious texts were written in older scripts (hieroglyphs and hieratic).
From around the turn of the 5th century, the writing system entered the Middle Demotic phase, while the spoken language moved on, evolving into something a bit closer to Coptic. Coptic itself gradually gave way to Arabic after the Islamic Conquest in the 7th century, but hung on as a daily language for some even after the Middle Ages. Today it's mostly restricted to liturgical use among the Christian Copts.
Religion
Due to its long history, Egyptian polytheism had had plenty of time to develop and change. As it stood in the late period, the wind god of Thebes, Amun, had long since merged wtih the sun god Re or Ra and assumed the role of supreme god. Other major deities included Maat, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Ptah, and Bes, who was popularly worshipped on Cyprus.
The Egyptian kingship, like the Persian, rested on a principle encompassing order, truth, righteousness and the universal binding force. However, unlike aša or arta, Maat could also be personified as a goddess who personally judged the dead. Both king and commoner had to uphold maat through proper behavior, including charity and maintaining tradition. Impiousness and injustice could upset the natural order and cause misfortune. Upholders of maat would be rewarded in the afterlife. Thus the Egyptian statue of Darius the Great declares in hieroglyphs that the king is "the perfect god who rejoices in maat," along with Persian cuneiform expressing his accustomed veneration of Ahura Mazda.
The struggle of maat versus isfet (evil and untruth) is expressed via the myth of Osiris, the ancient god-king and lifeforce of the land, who was killed by his brother and usurper Set, god of chaos. In the late period, Set was portrayed negatively though still worshipped in certain religious centers. He was said to have cut Osiris' body into 42 pieces and scattered them around the country, their landing places corresponding with the 42 nomes. Thus the resurrection of Osiris by his wife Isis (earlier regarded as the wife of the sky god Horus, now reidentified as his mother) is tied to the unification of Egypt. Horus became the next king, and Isis' association with the throne (the literal meaning of her name, is.t) may mean that the throne was metaphorically regarded as the king's mother.
Although the pharaoh retained a kind of divine status (to my knowledge, it is only in Egyptian-language documents that the Achaemenids claimed divinity rather than mere divine favor) his role as intercessor between gods and humanity became less important as direct personal devotions on the part of commoners became more so. The gods were now seen as less distant, more involved in day-to-day human affairs, and individuals sought out divine favor on their own. Concurrent is the spread of funerary texts like the Book of the Dead among commoners to ensure that they, like the king, would be protected and guided in the afterlife.
Clothing
The Egyptian at Naqš-e Rostam is clad simply in an ankle-length tunic with long fitted sleeves and a keyhole neckline, worn unbelted (in my estimation it would probably be bloused over a belt for combat, like the ancient Gaels, who wore a similar tunic). Unfortunately, the Persepolis relief is badly damaged, showing only the Egyptians' lower legs, though they also wear garments with a long hem; a wide embroidered border (or perhaps a fringe) is also visible. The sculpture, or at least the quality and lighting of the photo, is too indistinct even to tell what kind of footwear they have. As for women's clothing, Fashion-Era has a guide on wrapping a shawl-type dress Egyptian-style from a rectangular length of fabric. Ancient Egypt was famed for its production of linen and this is therefore an even more appropriate fabric here than for peoples from elsewhere in the empire, but wool is also fine. Cotton was not yet grown in Egypt and would have to be regarded as an imported luxury good from India.
Weapons
Herodotus lists Egyptian arms as "woven helmets," "hollow shields with broad rims, and spears for sea-warfare, and great battle-axes. Most of them wore cuirasses and carried long swords (machairas)."
The woven helmets may have very ancient precedent. Headgear resembling woven rope helmets are said to be worn in paintings in the tomb of Ramses III. However it's equally true that over the centuries between then and the Graeco-Persian wars there is likely to have been changes in style and technology.
The Cyropaedia (VI.2 and VII.1) describes Egyptian shields as very large, covering the body down to the feet, being pushed forward with one shoulder, and used with very large spears. New Kingdom Egyptian troops had often been portrayed carrying shields with flat bottoms, arched tops and blotchy patterns perhaps indicating that they were covered in hair-on animal hide, and these late period shields are likely an enlargement of those. If equipped with a telamon they could be used in conjunction with large spears in the same manner as early Mycenaean warriors.
Swords were quite long by 5th century standards, straight, made of iron and with U-shaped pommels. A few fragments may be seen here. If Persian art is to be trusted, the Egyptians and many other peoples wore long sword scabbards on slings like rifles, rather than belts or baldrics.
Egyptian cuirasses are believed to have been made of linen; Herodotus mentions that Amasis sent such a one to a temple of Athena on Rhodes. Although you can still find a lot of sources claiming that linen armor was glued, the people whom I trust most on this (such as Dan Howard, author of Bronze Age Military Equipment) have said unequivocally that linen armor should be quilted, not glued.
A footnote: Yes, it really is pure coincidence that the "Peoples of the empire" series reached Egypt just as Egypt is dominating international news. It's things like this that are why I'm not 100 percent atheist.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Armored bruiser
It's generally agreed that the Persian army wasn't very well-armored overall. However, two types of body armor are known to have been used.
Scaly
The older type is a scale corslet of the same general sort used in West Asia for centuries. According to archaeological finds, Persian scale was mostly iron and sometimes bronze. Xenophon describes Persian cavalry wearing bronze thorakes, but doesn't explicitly describe them as scale. A cavalry commander named Masistius is reported to have worn golden scale (presumably gilded iron, which would be protective but resist rust) under his tunic (Herodotus IX.22). If wearing scale under the tunic was standard practice, perhaps to keep the sun off the metal, that could account for the lack of scale portrayed in period art, even among the presumably elite guards of the king in imperial reliefs.
If earlier Mesopotamian art is any indication, it's likely the Persian corslet had short or no sleeves. Anyone looking to replicate one might look to the work done by Sean Manning. It is a massive undertaking.
T&Y!
The Persians and Scythians also sometimes used Greek-style corslets. The type has been widely known as the linothorax ("linen chest"), which is actually a term from Homer, though references to thorakes of linen exist in Classical literature. In fact there is no clear evidence linking the style of corslet to linen construction, and a competing theory has emerged linking the style to the term spolas, indicating hide (probably leather) construction.
Some long (but worthwhile!) threads at RAT have examined the literary and artistic evidence, cost and protective qualities of quilted linen, glued linen and leather in the style. One outcome of the discussions is that the style is increasingly referred to as a "tube-and-yoke" or T&Y corslet/cuirass, since the fact that it was made out of a tube around the body and yoke over the shoulders is the only thing that can be said for certain about it.
As for what it all means for us: To be honest, I haven't done enough research on the experiments many reenactors have performed to recommend what the new XMFM member should use if you choose to wear a T&Y. The tentative rule will be that you may use any material that could plausibly have existed in the period and demonstrably provides decent protective qualities. (That is, if your corslet is no more going to save you from a spear thrust than a motorcycle jacket would, you need to go back to the drawing board.) Keep in mind that the two options aren't mutually exclusive: It's not impossible, given what we know, for some T&Ys to have been linen and others leather.
After the Graeco-Persian wars, the T&Y was sometimes reinforced with scale, usually around the midsection.
Upon the head
Scaly
The older type is a scale corslet of the same general sort used in West Asia for centuries. According to archaeological finds, Persian scale was mostly iron and sometimes bronze. Xenophon describes Persian cavalry wearing bronze thorakes, but doesn't explicitly describe them as scale. A cavalry commander named Masistius is reported to have worn golden scale (presumably gilded iron, which would be protective but resist rust) under his tunic (Herodotus IX.22). If wearing scale under the tunic was standard practice, perhaps to keep the sun off the metal, that could account for the lack of scale portrayed in period art, even among the presumably elite guards of the king in imperial reliefs.
If earlier Mesopotamian art is any indication, it's likely the Persian corslet had short or no sleeves. Anyone looking to replicate one might look to the work done by Sean Manning. It is a massive undertaking.
T&Y!
The Persians and Scythians also sometimes used Greek-style corslets. The type has been widely known as the linothorax ("linen chest"), which is actually a term from Homer, though references to thorakes of linen exist in Classical literature. In fact there is no clear evidence linking the style of corslet to linen construction, and a competing theory has emerged linking the style to the term spolas, indicating hide (probably leather) construction.
Some long (but worthwhile!) threads at RAT have examined the literary and artistic evidence, cost and protective qualities of quilted linen, glued linen and leather in the style. One outcome of the discussions is that the style is increasingly referred to as a "tube-and-yoke" or T&Y corslet/cuirass, since the fact that it was made out of a tube around the body and yoke over the shoulders is the only thing that can be said for certain about it.
As for what it all means for us: To be honest, I haven't done enough research on the experiments many reenactors have performed to recommend what the new XMFM member should use if you choose to wear a T&Y. The tentative rule will be that you may use any material that could plausibly have existed in the period and demonstrably provides decent protective qualities. (That is, if your corslet is no more going to save you from a spear thrust than a motorcycle jacket would, you need to go back to the drawing board.) Keep in mind that the two options aren't mutually exclusive: It's not impossible, given what we know, for some T&Ys to have been linen and others leather.
After the Graeco-Persian wars, the T&Y was sometimes reinforced with scale, usually around the midsection.
Upon the head
Xenophon states in the Anabasis and the Cyropaedia that the king's cavalry wore helmets, though Persians generally didn't. A bronze helmet found at Olympia was inscribed with a claim that it had been captured from the "Medes" and is believed to be a trophy from Marathon; it's an old Near Eastern onion shape.
Others have ventured that Persians wore helmets of the Kuban type, more commonly associated with the Scythians; these are low-profile bronze caps, dipping low between the eyes and with a straight, rather high cut from the sides around the back, to which some sort of aventail may have been attached. The low shape could conceivably allow it to be completely hidden under a tiara.
An interesting but under-publicized find is an iron helmet from Achaemenid Sardis. Its segmented construction and large cheek guards bear a startling resemblance to those of spangenhelmen of centuries later.
Next time: If I am not shield...
Next time: If I am not shield...
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