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Warfare:Part 2-advancing weaponry & strategy

© Lucy Charlotte Acland Johnson

Described in the last article in this series were various primitive Ancient Egyptian weapons; however, as fortresses and foreign powers became stronger, the weapons and military strategies used had to as well. Below is an extract from "Ramses: The Battle of Kadesh" by Christian Jacq, which describes the organisation of Ramses army to fight the Hittites:

"The Amon regiment marched in the Van[guard], followed by those of Ra and Ptah. The Set division was in the rear."

As you can see, the army was set up into several different fighting divisions. Each one would have consisted of roughly four thousand foot soldiers and one thousand charioteers (in the case of a big war, such as the one which the troops in the above extract are preparing for, then the charioteers fighting would be the best-charioteering was a very elite form of fighting). These divisions were then broken up again into about twenty groups of two hundred and fifty men, two hundred of which would have been foot soldiers, the remaining fifty charioteers.

It was a rather complicated, but none-the-less successful, strategy (Don't worry if you have to read the above paragraph two or three times to understand it!)

My second extract (from the same book by Jacq) describes what kind of weapons the New Kingdom soldiers would have carried with them into battle:

"The soldiers checked their weapons: daggers, spears, swords, short sabres, clubs, battle axes and bows_ _ _" As I'm sure you can imagine, to carry all of that you had to be pretty strong, which is why the army had to undergo very rigorous (in other words, tough!) training.

The charioteers would have had the added burden of checking their horses and chariot; however, during battle they were faster than foot soldiers and as there were two men to many war chariots they often had the use of "two pairs of eyes". Being a charioteer was dangerous, as if you fell from the chariot itself it was quite likely you would get tangled in the reigns (which many drivers precariously tied round their waste, to leave their hands free) and would be dragged along by the horses. A man such as Pharaoh would not have had to carry his own weapons, he would have had one (if not several) arms carriers.

This final extract from the book describes vividly how a piece of weaponry can be a beautiful work of art as well a practical piece of machinery:

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