“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.Wimbleton is the main protagonist and professional fighter of the Madness Combat series. “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. Chariotsīefore horses were big enough to be ridden into battle as cavalry, the chariot was the speediest and most terrifying war machine.
Universal History Archive/Getty Images 8. Tutankhamun in battle armed with a bow riding a chariot, detail from a painted casket from the Tomb of King Tut. They fitted their javelins with diamond-shaped metal blades and made them easier to aim and throw with a well-balanced and reinforced wooden grip. Eliott says that Egyptians didn’t treat the javelin as a disposable ordinance like an arrow. At close range, they would use the javelin to thrust at the enemy behind their shields, but they could also launch the armor-piercing javelin at attacking chariots or lines of infantry. New Kingdom soldiers would carry a quiver of javelins over their shoulder like arrows. It also functioned in close combat as a short spear about a meter long (3.3 feet). The Egyptian javelin was more than a hand-launched missile. The Egyptians’ shields were utilitarian-three wooden planks bound with glue and animal hides-but they transformed into a formidable defense when the infantry closed ranks in a phalanx formation. The Syrians showed them how to forge simple bronze speartips with a hollow socket that fit tightly over a wooden shaft. “You could outfit hundreds of recruits with them, perfect for the warfare of the period.”īefore the Hyksos invasion, Egyptian speartips were wooden and prone to splintering on contact. “At a time when metal was so precious, all you needed was a small bit of bronze at the tip,” says Paul Elliott, a historian and reenactor who wrote Warfare in New Kingdom Egypt.
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