“Hanging from the chariot would be double quivers of arrows and also javelins, and the Egyptians could afford hundreds and hundreds of these mobile machine gun nests.”Īncient battle records tell of large chariot formations of more than 100 teams bearing down on an enemy and viciously attacking its flanks and rear positions. “The chariots raced around the battlefield with the warrior peppering the enemy with arrow after arrow from his composite bow like an ancient machine gunner,” says Elliott. Again, the Hyksos were the ones who introduced the Egyptians to lightweight wooden chariots with flexible leather floors as shock absorbers, but it was the Egyptian New Kingdom, with its vast wealth, that deployed swarms of heavily armed chariots on the battlefield to deadly effect.Įliott says that the Egyptians treated the chariot like a fast-moving “weapons platform” manned by a chariot driver and a warrior. Ramses III is cited as bringing back 603 composite bows from his defeat of the Libyans.īefore horses were big enough to be ridden into battle as cavalry, the chariot was the speediest and most terrifying war machine. The composite bows were so expensive and difficult to make that conquering Egyptian armies often asked for bows instead of gold as tribute. To improve accuracy, the arrows were fletched with three feathers. The strings of composite bows were made from tightly woven animal gut and the arrows were fashioned from bronze-tipped woody reeds, which were plentiful in the Nile Valley. The layered construction, plus the recurved design, allowed the bow to snap back with far more action than the simple self bow, launching an arrow as far as 250 to 300 meters (820 to 984 feet) by ancient accounts. They had platoons of 50 archers apiece who acted as shock troops all shooting at the enemy at once.”Įgyptian composite bows were long, about 1.5 meters (nearly 5 feet), and carefully constructed from birch wood, goat horns, bull tendons and sinews, all cemented together by animal glues. “The composite bow became the Egyptian superweapon,” says Elliott. But the Syrians introduced them to the compact power and accuracy of the composite bow, an intricate and expensive weapon made from layers of wood, animal horn and sinew that was “recurved” to generate incredible force. Before the Hyksos invasion, the Egyptians relied on the “self” bow, a simple bow and arrow weapon made from a single piece of wood.
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