General

Assyrian Warfare

From about 900 B.C. Assyrian kings sent out their armies to conquer new lands. Over 300 years Mesopotamia and lands further to the east and west became part of an Assyrianempire. Conquering foreign cities brought wealth.Regions which had been conquered by the Assyrian army had to pay tribute to the king every year. If they rebelled against his rule...

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Weapons and Warfare in Ancient Israel

The book of Judges describes the period when the Israelites were settling into the Promised Land following the Exodus from Egypt. Because the conquest was not complete, warfare was frequent, and resulted in the hero stories preserved in Judges. These heroes were known as "judges", meaning, not people who decided court cases, but military leaders wh...

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Ancient Greek Military Technology

Ancient Greeks invented the use of technology in warfare. It is the base of military superiority of the civilization of the West. The first such invention was the Phalanx which was used against the Persians. The Athenians produced very fast triremes. The Greeks in Sicily developed the first advanced catapults. In the period of Alexander the Great c...

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Ancient Greek weaponry

The Hellenistic Age began with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and lasted until the true establishment of the Roman Empire upon the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC. The method of warfare inancient Greece, and the world, consisted of arrows spears, swords, axes and shields. Because of its ease of casting and superiority in strength, bronze wa...

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Ancient Egypt War Weapons

To win a war, the successful adversary must have a leading superiority in tactics and weapons. Even though a tactic could fail, if the army had good weapons, it could still help the soldiers to win. Even if the strategy to save more people actually meant more losses because it did not work, there could still be a victory in the end. Every army must...

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Ancient Egypt Edged Weapons

One distinguishes between two kinds of battle axe: the cutting and the piercing axe. Both were used by Egyptian soldiers, but under different circumstances. The cutting axe is a blade fastened to a sizable handle, the idea being to keep as far as possible from harm's way. As relatively little power was exerted the affixing of the blade to the handl...

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Weapons in Ancient Egypt

The Old Kingdom had soldiers equipped with a great variety of weapons: shields, spears, cudgels, maces, daggers, bows and arrows... Quivers and battle axes came into use before the second Intermediary Period, which was a time of revolution in the Egyptian martial arts. The earliest metal arrowheads date from the 11th dynasty (ca.2000 BCE), made of ...

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Defensive Equipment of the Egyptian Army

Ultimately, and outside of military architecture such as fortresses, the ancient Egyptians used three forms of defensive military equipment, which included body armor and helmets, shields and siege shelters, though most of these items were seen fairly late in the Dynastic period (with the exception of the shield, which may be dated back as for as t...

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The Chariot in Egyptian Warfare

Actually, the chariot is difficult to classify as a piece of militaryequipment. It was certainly a mode of transportation, but at the same time, most analyst consider it a weapon. Clearly, in the hands of the Hittites, one of Egypt's chief opponents during the New Kingdom, their heavy machines were weapons used to crash into the troops of their ene...

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Ancient Egypt Projectiles, Javelin, Bow and arrow, slingshot

Ancient Egyptian Weapons: Projectiles, Javelin, Bow and arrow, slingshot. The Throw Stick This somewhat boomerang shaped weapon had little military value, but was, according to the tomb depictions of hunting scenes, extensively used for hunting fowl in the thickets of the Delta reed marshes. They were cheap to make (unlike the much more sophisticat...

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