Egyptians and Bows

Hello to all my fellow Egyptologists,

I went through this whole section of the board last night and while I found a couple of threads about the angular bows I was just wondering if anyone knows if the Egyptians used any other styles of bows besides the Angular. I was wondering because as I looked at some of the pictures (I believe Todd posted them) of various egyptian weapons, it appeared to m that there were stacks of bows that would not conform to the Angular bow.

Cordially,

Michael

Not sure offhand. There are two books edited by Wallace McLeod "Self Bows and Archery Tackle From the Tomb of Tutankhamun" and "Composite Bows from the Tomb of Tutankhamun" discussing the hundreds of bows and thousands of arrows found there.

If someone has access to these books I love to see a summary of what was found.

Thanks Sean,

I found them both on Amazon and decided to buy them for myself as an early Christmas Present. The Self Bow was what I was hoping to find they had.

Cordially,

MJB

If someone has access to these books I love to see a summary of what was found.

My university library owns both. I have some notes and I'll see if I can find them, but it may take time. I've got an article for Ancient Warfare Magazine to finish ...

Dan, Sean, and anyone else,

OK, now that I actually read the relevant section I see a number of errors in my post which I will now correct.

The author reports two types of arrows found: self and composite. Most arrows were composite, which means a reed with a plug of wood in the tail end and a plug of some sort in the other end. Most of the composite arrows were tanged with a wooden nock. All the wooden arrows were self nocked and longer than almos all of the composite arrows. More interesting developments arose concerning the points. All but one of the wooden arrow points were simply sharpened wood, the other had an attached bronze 'leaf' point. The author seemed very impressed with the even nature of the wooden sharpening both for length and taper of the wooden arrows. Most of the reed arrows also had sharpened tanged wooden points. Oddly (at least from my expectations) most of these composite arrows had as a point simply a sharpened object (wood, horn, ivory, & bone mostly) insered into the reed. There were few additional points added onto the insert. Another odd point that emerged from my first scan was that the wooden arrows were uniformly lacking any fletching, or even remains of any fletching. The author figures they were never fletched. Many of the reed arrows had either full fletching, or at least remains of some fletching, although a few were also lacking any sign of fletching. One last oddity, most of the arrows that had fletching, had four feathers instead of the usual three. Perhaps all this is old new to you, but it was new and interesting to me.

More time for reading led to corrections to the above and this additional. The author includes references to earlier burial finds which indicate that the above mentioned self arrows (the all wood ones) probably were originally the majority type for the Old Kingdom, and possibly the Middle Kingdom as well. Furthermore the vast majority of these earlier arrows were also lacking fletching.

If anyone is interested they also talk about the quivers and bow cases found. If anyone wants to know anything in any of these regards or from the Composite Bow book which is not what I am interested in let me know and I will endeavor to answer your questions.

Otherwise, I will post more when I get the chance.

Cordially,

Michael

Wonderful. Thanks Michael. Keep it coming.

Hello all,

Sorry for the delay, managed to get the plague. Good news, more time for reading. Bad news, less memory of reading.

Feeling up to a few minutes at the computer so I thought I would update some more info.

On the arrows. There is much info offered from other books on this subject, plusthe actual Tut stuff bargained for. It appears based on a significant first dynasty tomb (Hemaka) that at that stage all of the arrows were solid wood and the vast majority were unfletched (only 23 out of more than 400 were fletched). By the Middle Kingdom (11th Dynasty) the two type of arrows were about even with the all wood arrows still unfletched. With Tut the vast majority of the arrows were reed, all tanged with nocks and foreshafts. But the few (21 out of about 500 total) that were all wood conform to the same model as the first dynasty models: one piece arrow, self nocked, wooden point, no sign of ever having been fletched. The Reed Arrows also show a uniformity over time: tanged nocks and foreshafts, usually fletched, the point is usually an extension of the foreshaft. While I did not actually add the numbers up, my impression was that the reed arrows were about evenly divided with three and four feathers if fletched. On the Reeds few reeds have been tested to determine their species. All of those that have been tested (about 5 if memory serves) were Phragmites Communis. Foreshafts tended to be wood or bone, but horn also appears as well as a few bronze. Also included were a fair assortment of blunted arrow heads theorised for hunting birds. Which would explain those tens of thousands of mummified birds I read about in the last Current World Archaeology. As far as length goes the arrows found in Tut's tomb range in size from .145 (of a meter) to .95. The largest single group was 140 examples ranging from .805 to .95. The second largest group with 102 examples ranged from .465 to .531. Interestingly for my purposes the all wooden arrows were at the very top of the chart (.91) with very few reed examples longer than them.

Anyway, that is about enough for now. As always email if you have any specifc questions. Next time I think I will go for some of the 'archery paraphenalia'.

Cordially,

MJB