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Ancient Egyptian warfare: everything you wanted to know
00:48:34
Nicky Nielsen dives into the 3,000-year history of ancient Egyptian warfare – from the earliest skirmishes to the campaigns of Ramesses II
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- [00:01]
Wendy
This is Wendy from Science Versus. This month our friends at Ford are the presenting sponsor of Science Versus. If you're curious to learn more about things like electric vehicles, Science Versus is a great lesson. We dive into topics like how beavers are helping the fight against climate change, what the greenest way to die is, and what a 100% renewable future looks like, and more. Listen to Science Versus on Spotify, brought to you by Ford. Want to Shop Walmart Black Friday deals First Walmart plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and get 50% off a one year annual membership. Shop Black Friday deals first with Walmart + see terms@walmartplus.com youm can get the most important meal of the day any time of day. I'm Talking about the $5 Big Deal breakfast meal from Jack in the Box, available all day and all night. A breakfast Jack with a freshly cracked egg, a hash brown and French toast sticks for five bucks. Sounds good for breakfast, lunch and dinner at Jack.
- [01:05]
Nikki Nielsen
Every bite's a big deal.
- [01:07]
Wendy
Order Jack's $5 big deal breakfast Meal now. This episode is brought to you by Amazon. The holidays are here and you know what that means. It's time to get your friends and family the gifts they deserve. Take the stress out of shopping with Amazon's great deals and low prices on a huge range of items from toys to tech and much more. Whoever you're gifting for, Amazon has great prices on everything you need this holiday season. Shop Black Friday Week deals now. Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Ancient Egypt conjures up images of pharaohs, pyramids and hieroglyphics. But what about soldiers, generals and military campaigns? The historian Nikki Nielsen joined us recently on the podcast to discuss the Battle of Megiddo. And today he's returning to talk about ancient Egyptian warfare as a whole, covering tactics, technology and weaponry and revealing why the chariot was not all it was cracked up to be. Speaking to Nikki this time was John Baulkham.
- [02:27]
John Baulkham
Now, we've got around 3,000 years of history to cover, but let's start by going back to the early dynastic period, around the end of the fourth millennium bc. How were the earliest ancient Egyptian armies formed?
- [02:41]
Nikki Nielsen
Well, that's a. It's a good question because it goes to the heart of what are our preconceptions about what is an army? What is warfare? These very kind of deep questions. And you know, what we consider to be warfare today versus what we consider to be warfare in the medieval Period, the Roman period and pre dynastic Egypt. It's not necessarily the same thing. So it is a little bit of an umbrella term that it generalizes quite heavily. So if we're looking at the evidence base that we have, it's not great, to be honest. We have some iconographic material like the Narmer palette, which seems to show the aftermath of a battle, possibly. So it certainly shows the king inspecting a bunch of enemies, one would expect, who've been laid out in a row, so deceased bodies who've been laid out in a row with their heads chopped off and put between their legs. That doesn't really show us much about the battle. And again, with a lot of this early iconography, the focal point really is on the king. It's not on providing some kind of detailed strategic analysis of what's going on. In terms of archeological evidence. I think we have to go probably a little bit earlier. If we look at some of the evidence from elsewhere in Egypt and Sudan, there's a site called Jebel Sahaba, which is sort of a cemetery site. It's also been called a massacre site, and it's a good deal earlier. It's about 12,000 BCE and it contains the bodies of a number of individuals who were killed in violent circumstances. And if you look at the wounds, there was a study published a few years ago on some of these human remains. If you look at their bones, a lot of the injuries were caused by projectile weapons, so arrows in particular. And then some of the kind of killing blows were blunt force trauma from things like maces and clubs, stuff like that, war clubs at close range. And looking at the whole assemblage, it seems to suggest almost like a dawn raid, something that was a surprise attack, something that began with long range weapons. And once the enemy was essentially neutralized, the attacking force moved in and it essentially finish them off. And what is quite horrific in those conditions in that particular example, is that the remains are of both men, women and children. So it's an attack on a camp, essentially. So maybe that is what the earliest warfare is. It's raids very, very violent and not necessarily targeting. This idea of having combatants versus non combatants, that may be a slightly later idea. So I think what we can really say about armies in the very earliest period of Egyptian history is either based on much earlier evidence like Cebel Sahaba, or it's based on slightly later evidence like Old Kingdom textual sources, where we begin to have an idea of what a composition of an army looks like. So it's all kind of educated guesswork, using sources that are perhaps a little bit out of sync in terms of chronology.
- [05:33]
John Baulkham
Fantastic summary. And you mentioned the Old Kingdom there. So we're talking about the mid to late third millennium bc how was military technology evolving by this point then?
- [05:45]
Nikki Nielsen
Well, I mean, you're still looking at one of the big kind of changes from Cebel Sahaban pre dynastic material is of course, that you now have much greater availability of bronze weapons. That doesn't mean that you don't have stone weapons, which are the prevalent thing during the pre dynastic as a Stone Age culture. The Egyptians, for instance, keep using flint arrowheads and chert arrowheads right into the late Bronze Age. And even after that, because flint is really useful as a projector, you can get it wickedly sharp, it's more available. It doesn't require you to get hold of fairly rare resources like tin that you need in order to make bronze. So certain technologies change. You start seeing bronze axes, for instance, the Old Kingdom, and depictions of bronze axes replacing things like stone maces. But in terms of spears, javelins, arrows, there isn't probably a huge amount of change there in terms of how the arrows are produced and in terms of how the bows look. They're essentially self bows. So a stick with a string on it, basically slightly more complex than that. But that is what a self bow is. Basically it's a stick with a string on it. But there haven't been any major technological innovations. What does change is that because Egypt during the Old Kingdom is a highly centralized state, if we're to believe the written sources like Weni, whose biography is found at Abydos. He writes about commanding an army that was sent out by the Egyptian king. And he makes a point of the fact that the army is comprised of lots of what we would call mercenaries, essentially people from around Egypt, tribes from modern day Sudan, from the Western Desert, presumably alongside a kind of corps of levy troops or conscripts from Egypt. So it's probably not a professional army in the sense, again, that we understand it. It's an army that's raised via forced conscription and then augmented by probably somewhat more hardy and somewhat tougher mercenary troops from places like Yam in Sudan.
- [07:54]
John Baulkham
And Nikki, can you tell us a little bit more about the biggest threats that the Old Kingdom fairies faced?
- [08:00]
Nikki Nielsen
Well, I mean, the question is whether they really faced any threats at all. Certainly territorial threats in the sense that enemies that could overwhelm Egypt's borders and lead a wholesale invasion and conquest of the country probably not because there isn't really anyone around Egypt who seems to be particularly interested in that. There is warfare towards the south in Sudan, for instance. But a lot of the early Old Kingdom kings, the kings of the third Dynasty, for instance, they seem to be sending raids into Sudan. They're not fighting a defensive war. They're sending essentially armed troops into Nubia to steal cattle, to take people slaves. But in a way which is sort of borderline genocidal and does seem to lead to a significant depopulation of especially lower Nubia around that time. There's an entire cultural grouping that more or less vanishes probably as a result of these very, very aggressive raids. And if we look at the kind of phrasing that's used around these campaigns, both in the Old and the Middle Kingdom, it's not two armies standing across each other on an open plain and beating the living daylights out of each other. It's something much more destructive, a bit like Jebel Sahaba. The inscriptions talk about fire was put in their villages, their wells were poisoned, their cattle was killed and stolen. It's much more of a. It's what I think a raid. It's an attack on essentially a civilian enclave by armed people. So whether the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom are actually dealing with a significant threat, I don't necessarily think so. A lot of the campaigns of the Old Kingdom seem to be basically resource raids. They're going into a territory either to take control of some sort of raw material like quarries or mines, or they are raiding for stuff that's valuable, like cattle. There are a few sources during the Old Kingdom that seems to indicate that it doesn't always go the way the Egyptians necessarily want. So there's an inscription from the later Old Kingdom where a nobleman is sent on a mission by the king to recover the body of another high ranking Egyptian who's been killed essentially in an ambush by Bedouin, by people living in the desert. So the Egyptians are not always just getting their own. But I don't think we can really talk about existential threats during the Old Kingdom.
- [10:28]
John Baulkham
Sure. And moving on to the Middle Kingdom. So for context, the late third millennium bc, I think to the mid second millennium BC around then there are some notable warrior kings, aren't there, who were the most prominent?
- [10:41]
Nikki Nielsen
I mean, I think probably Senbos wrote the first and the third in terms of their foreign policy priorities, because both of them invest very heavily in constructing fortress in Nubia along the Nile. And really that seems to be a redevelopment of the foreign policy of the Old Kingdom, where the kings of the Old Kingdom send trading missions into Nubia. They send military expeditions into Nubia to trade for gold or steal gold or cattle or ivory, whatever other luxury products they want. The kings of the Middle Kingdom, like Senvosret I and Senvosret iii, they want to control the territory in a much more formal way. So they build these giant fortifications at places like Buen Megiza and Semna that essentially not only control river traffic on the Nile and so essentially controls trade that goes from further south, sub Saharan Africa and towards the Mediterranean, but also controls the hinterland and things like gold mines. There's a lot of gold mines in what is modern day North Sudan. These fortifications make it possible for the Egyptians to have permanent armed garrisons protected, protecting mining expeditions and quarrying expeditions and essentially, well, cutting out the middleman. Right. They don't have to trade for this stuff anymore. They can basically just take it themselves in a permanent way. Senbosrut iii, additionally to his affairs in Nubia, also seems to either send or lead campaigns into the Near East. And there is at least one inscription, the Stele of Ku Sobek, which is actually in the Manchester Museum at the moment, which describes one of these military campaigns into the Levant. So Sen Masrud III is very much a sort of warrior king in that it's a major part of his foreign policy is to build out Egyptian military fortifications in Nubia and in modern day Sudan, and also lead expeditions into the Levant. So in east essentially of Egypt.
- [12:46]
John Baulkham
Now, Nikki, we had a few questions about this. So as with all our Everything youg Wanted to Know episodes, we put questions out to the listeners on social media. We also look at top search engine queries too. There were a few questions about the Hyksos. Why are they important to discussions regarding ancient Egyptian warfare? And firstly, Nikki, can you just tell us who they were?
- [13:06]
Nikki Nielsen
That's a really good question. It is kind of the ten thousand pound question. Who were the Hyksos? They are a non Egyptian cultural grouping that appears in northern Egypt towards the end of the Middle Kingdom. Basically, initially their appearance in Egypt was phrased in these very sort of catastrophic terms. They were seen as essentially an invading. And that's partly because some much, much later Egyptian historians like Manetho or Greco Egyptian historians wrote descriptions of the Hyksos that were in that vein, you know, that they came almost as a punishment of the gods. They were this incredibly destructive invasion of northern Egypt. The archeological evidence from places like Tel El Daba, which would become the Hyksos capital at Avaris in northeastern Egypt. It doesn't really bear that out. What seems to have happened is that the Hyksos are initially a mixture of mercenaries, foreign sailors, prisoners of war, who have been settled in this area of the northeastern Nile Delta, probably by the rulers of the Middle Kingdom. As the Middle Kingdom begins to lose political control due to a series of succession crises, the Hyksos grouping, and they've essentially preserved a lot of their internal hierarchies. So they begin to emerge as a. Well, essentially a sort of competition to the Egyptian pharaohs. And essentially the Egyptian crown creates a power vacuum which the Hyksos step into, and they gradually take control of the Nile Delta, Northern Egypt. And what remains of the Egyptian royal family is essentially a kind of rump centered around Thebes. Egypt loses control of the fortifications built by Sen. Mossret III and send Morserit III and gets pushed all the way back to Aswan, out of Sudan, out of Nubia. And Egypt is really just reduced to this kind of bit around Thebes. And that leads to a series of wars which eventually leads to the expulsion of the Hyksos they get, or their commanders, I suppose, their elite gets kicked out of Egypt. And the Theban royal family, this new Theban royal family takes over the country.
- [15:17]
John Baulkham
And what else do they bring to the table in terms of military tactics and technology?
- [15:22]
Nikki Nielsen
Well, there are some changes to military tactics that seem to be instigated by the Hyksos into Egypt. One of them is chariot warfare. We don't really have chariot warfare in the Middle Kingdom. It's not a thing. It exists elsewhere in the world, but it hasn't really made it to Egypt at that point. The Hyksos seem to be the catalysts for the emergence of chariot warfare in Egypt. It's something that they bring. The Hyksos have very well developed relationships with the southern Levant and this trade network that stretches across the Near East. The chariot technology comes via that, essentially. And the Egyptians, not only they don't just sort of ape this technology they develop, they turn it into their own thing for using their own materials and their own needs. That's one of the changes. There are some changes to archery as well. Composite bows become a lot more common. So instead of the stick on a string kind of set up, you have bows that are made from essentially thin strips of different materials like woods and horn, laminated together, tied together with bronze thread, for instance. You get them recurved as well, and you can pack. First of all, the bows can be made shorter. You don't necessarily want to be firing what is essentially a longbow standing in a moving chariot. Because it's too big, it'll catch on things. You stick that into the wheels. It's a little bit like sticking a branch or a broom shaft into the wheels of a bicycle that's going around. Whoever's on that bicycle is going to go over the front of it. And ditto the chariot. So you want something shorter, more compact for Chariot Wolf and the composite bow allows that. Not only does it allow the bow to be shorter, but it packs a lot more power so the shots become more precise and also a lot more powerful. And that's needed around this time because there is also a gradual emergence of personal armor. So soldiers start wearing protective clothing, so you need to be able to punch through that with your arrows.
- [17:19]
John Baulkham
We had a lot of questions about armor, so that's excellent. Thanks for that.
- [17:23]
Wendy
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- [18:52]
John Baulkham
I know you touched on this earlier in the conversation in the context of the early dynastic period, but I did have a very specific question from Aidan on X. What he wants to know is are there many sets of human remains bearing Evidence of wounds such as arrow tips in bones that can be attributed to injuries sustained in battle. So particularly, yes, these Middle kingdoms battles very early on.
- [19:14]
Nikki Nielsen
Djebel Sahaba, I've already mentioned, that's a good example when we go into the Pharaonic period, not enormous amounts. Most famously, we have a mass grave at Deir el Bahri across the river from modern day Luxor on the west bank that contains a group of individuals who were most likely soldiers serving in the armies of one of the early Middle Kingdom kings. In fact, the king that kind of founded the Middle Kingdom, Mentuhotep ii. They seem to have suffered mortal injuries. In a lot of cases, these injuries are to the skull and the top of the skull in particular. So one theory is that they, they died essentially storming a city, some kind of fortification, and the wounds were sustained while trying to climb up siege ladders, basically. Another good example is the royal mummy of second Henry Tau, who was one of the Egyptian kings that began the war against the Hyksos. He was put through the wringer. His mummy bears evidence of axe blows, an axe blow to the head, javelin wound, an arrow to the face, dagger wounds. There's a catalogue of injuries now, whether these were sustained and there are different theories about this. Some people have suggested that the lack of defensive wounds suggest that they were actually the result of an assassination of the king. So not necessarily a death in battle, but maybe a group of assassins jumped the king in his sleep, for instance, which would explain the lack of defensive wounds. Other people have suggested that it's a combination that some of the wounds, like the arrow for instance, which is an odd assassination weapon. In any case, bringing a bow and arrow to a close up assassination is a bit odd. So one idea has been that things like the arrow, for instance, was an injury sustained in battle after which the king was captured and ritually executed by the Hyksos. And that explains the close quarter injuries. So we're not quite sure. We do know how he died in terms of the wounds, but we're not quite sure under the conditions under which these wounds were caused, whether they were an assassination, normal kind of battle injuries, or r execution or a combination of all of the above, essentially.
- [21:21]
John Baulkham
So I want to talk now, Nikki, about the New Kingdom in the mid second millennium to the late second millennium bc. Is that a golden age of Egyptian warfare?
- [21:32]
Nikki Nielsen
I mean, it depends what you mean by golden age in terms. What is a golden age of warfare? There's a fair amount of it. I think it's important to bear in Mind with these things, that that's not a good thing, you know, from our perspective, as having a lot of source material, that's great for us as historians and Egyptologists trying to reconstruct this. But, you know, these are the records of very, very horrific things that occurred, in many cases, to completely unarmed civilian populations. So it's easy to sometimes get almost a bit triumphalist with this stuff, but it is, in reality, quite horrific. Now, yes, the Egyptians have a different approach in some ways, to their foreign policy. So the figure of the king during the New Kingdom becomes more of a hero. Now, I'm not talking about here what kings actually were, you know, if you met them for dinner. I'm talking about how they wanted to be perceived. And the role of a king during the New Kingdom is increasingly a king who is a conqueror, a king who leads their armies, who goes out and expands Egypt's borders. And Egypt becomes much more of an empire, essentially. Egypt maintains a vast network of vassal states across the near east, up the coast, places like Byblos, the Lebanese coast. It has more or less total control of Nubia. It expands westward into the western desert, out along the Malmerican coast, into what we call Libya. And generally there is more of a focus on warfare as a means of securing wealth, as a means of securing, especially tribute to the God Amun as the God of victories, but also of creating essentially an enormous class of prisoners of war, a slave population, basically, that is forcibly brought back to Egypt. And we have evidence of these prisoners of war, these enslaved individuals, for instance, being banned from speaking their languages. They're forced to speak Egyptian. Their names are forcibly changed to reflect something Egyptian, like an Egyptian deity. And there is much more of a kind of systematized empire building in the New Kingdom. And because of that, we have a lot more source material to work with. Because it's something that is more of a priority, I think, to the Egyptians at the time also, because for the first time, really, they come into direct and very close contact with powers that can rival them. So the Mitannian empire, for instance, the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Babylonian kingdom, these are great powerful civilizations that in some cases are as powerful or more powerful than the Egyptians themselves. And I think the New Kingdom really is the first time where the Egyptians seriously have to deal with that. That during the late Middle Kingdom, they're dealing with the city state of Kerma down in Nubia, which is also building up and rivaling Egypt in kind of power and influence. But the Egyptians have not dealt with this on a kind of permanent large scale before. And a lot of the warfare is aimed at trying to essentially create buffer zone of vassal states. Across modern day Palestine and Israel and Syria. Essentially trying to block off any attempt of any kind of foreign enemy. To directly enter Egypt.
- [24:53]
John Baulkham
And, Nikki, you talked about the power of the pharaoh there. And the power of that individual to really affect matters. One famous New Kingdom figure is Moses iii. He's been described by some people as the Napoleon of Egypt. What do you feel about that statement?
- [25:11]
Nikki Nielsen
I mean, it's always tricky, isn't it, when you use a kind of modern equivalent. He certainly. I mean, unlike Napoleon, he's born a prince, right? That's a big difference. Of course, that Thutmose is not just some guy. Even from an early age. He is born to be king, basically. His stepmother, Hatshepsut. Who reigns on his behalf. As his regent for much of his youth. Seems to have deliberately placed him in a situation where he grows up and is raised within the army. And by, you know, in kind of military contexts. So he spends a lot of time with the army. And he spends a lot of time on campaign. More so than, I think, really, any other king of the New Kingdom. It's every year he's leading campaigns out of Egypt into the near east for decades. And partly, I think he's called Egypt's Napoleon. Because we have a couple of battles that he wins. Through kind of stealth or cunning or a combination of both. So the Battle of Megiddo. He chooses to take a dangerous path to the city of Megiddo. And in doing so, he surprises his enemy. They don't expect him to basically arrive where he arrives with his army. And he manages to get the better of them. So that's. I suppose some people could say that's a sort of Napoleon thing to do. It's a strategically brilliant move. It's a big gamble. But it really, really pays off. Another case is the Siege of Joppa. Which we only know about from a literary source. Where one of Thutmose's generals manages to conquer the city of Joppa. By pretend to surrender. And sending a donkey caravan of tribute into the city with donkeys with baskets on their back. And, of course, inside every basket, there isn't tribute. There are Egyptian soldiers. Now, that story may seem familiar to those of you who've read both the Iliad. And the tale of Ali baba and the 40 thieves. Because it's the same literary device that's used. So I think Thutmose gets that reputation partly because he himself, in his own monumental records, things like the tribute lists, also called the Annals of Thutmose III that were put up in the Karnak Temple, where he essentially just lists how much tribute he managed to get from all of his military endeavors. He himself was really focused on that part of his royal Persona surviving. So that's helped. And also the fact that we have these kind of narrative about the battle of Megiddo and the battle of Joppa, which we don't necessarily have about other kings to the same ext extent or in the same detail. So whether he was in reality or whether this is all just smoke and mirrors and what he wanted us to think about him, that's kind of anyone's guess really.
- [27:58]
John Baulkham
And this is based on a question by CJ on X. And that's to what extent did pharaohs like Thutmoses III rely on diplomacy to solve disputes?
- [28:09]
Nikki Nielsen
And probably a lot more than warfare diplomacy. It is in most cases the better option we have, have more evidence for diplomacy for specific reigns. So we have a corpus of diplomatic messages called the Amarna Letters, which were found in the royal capital of Amarna, as the name would suggest. And they pertain to the reign primarily of Amenhotep III and his immediate successors, so Akhenaten and Tutankhamun in particular. And these are diplomatic missives between either they are between Egypt, the king of Egypt and other great kings. This is called the brother correspondence because they refer to each other as my brother, my brother the King of Babylon, my brother, the king of Mitanni, and so on. Or it's between Egypt and some of its vassals. So the kind of vassal correspondence where it's usually letters from Egypt's vassals asking for things like military protection, writing to Pharaoh to say, oh, I've sent you a present, I've sent you tribute, or these sort of things, or reporting various local occurrences that are happening around their cities. So the Amarna letters give this impression of this very complex network of great rulers, especially Babylon, Mitanni, Elisha, Alishia and to a certain extent, the kind of later Hittite empire. And all of these brothers are in alliances that are dependent on gift giving. They're constantly sending gifts to each other, intermarriages. So Amenhotep III marries an ungodly amount of foreign princesses in order to secure alliances. Interestingly, he refuses to send any of his own daughters. Completely point blank refuses. So no Egyptian. He actually, you know, this is even said to the king of Babylon, who is not a powerless Individual, basically. I know I've married several of your female family members, but no, you can't have one of mine. Which perhaps says something about the perceived power relationship, relationship between the two. But also this quite complex network of these great brothers who all have their own vassals and have this sort of system instead of constantly fighting each other. So this network that Amenhotep III helps create to a certain extent, replaces the constant warfare that kings like Thutmose III engage in. It doesn't last very long because the rise of the Hittite empire, which starts to essentially push out Mitanni, it kind of puts pay to that system to a certain extent. And it starts to fall apart.
- [30:50]
John Baulkham
Because when you search for anything to do with Egyptian battles, you come up almost immediately with the battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC. And that's between Ramesses II and the Hittites, led by Muatali ii. Why is that so significant?
- [31:06]
Nikki Nielsen
It may not have been, to be honest. But this is the thing with historical sources. Just because something is well preserved or well documented doesn't mean it was more important than absolutely everything else. It also doesn't mean that in the case of Kadesh, we know about Kadesh. We know so much about Kadesh because Ramesses II goes out of his way to make sure that we remember Kadesh. He inscribes poems about Kadesh, a description called A bulletin about Kadesh in Abu Simbel, in Luxor, in all of his major temples. It's pretty impossible to escape information about the battle of Kadesh. Given what seems to have happened at the battle, which is either it ended in a grudging stalemate or Ramesses actually lost. Then maybe the reason he is going out of his way to underline how brave he was and how great he was at this battle and how he personally won the battle. None of his soldiers helped him. They were all useless. He did all of it himself. Maybe that's simply because he was a bit of a soul or loser or because he's trying to spin something positive out of a situation that at best really was a little bit meh. For the Egyptians, there isn't a huge amount of territorial change. The Egyptians do not succeed in their aims of the campaign. They don't manage to take back the stronghold of Kadesh. They don't manage to conquer the region of Umuru. But then the Hittites don't really seem to have gotten that much out of the battle either. So I think it may simply have been that the battle is important because of the way it was reported by the Egyptians, it may not have strategically been super significant either. What I will say is I think the battle stands out a bit because it is a moment where things could have gone very differently very quickly in terms of kind of what if history. So Ramesses reigns for 60 years. He's one of the longest reigning monarchs of Egypt. He has an enormous building program, Abu Simbel and all these famous monuments in Egypt. His name is almost everywhere. When Kadesh happens, he's a young guy, I mean, he's barely a teenager and he's only been on the throne for a very short period of time, which kind of comes across in the text. He comes across as an impetuous youth who doesn't want to listen to his older, more calm, reasonable generals. And he creates a situation where he's separated from his own army and the Hittites manage to ambush his camp. And his own bodyguard, his royal bodyguard, have to basically stand between Ramesses and the Hittite shock troops. That's one of those moments where history spins on its axis a little bit, because if Ramesses had been killed, then Egyptian history goes in a very different direction than it actually did. So I suppose in that sense the battle is important not necessarily because of the strategy or the importance of the tactics, but because how close it came to history, just spinning off down a different pathway entirely.
- [34:07]
John Baulkham
Yeah, a real sliding doors moment, as you might say, for the ancient Egyptians. You mentioned there, Ramesses II and his extraordinary building projects. Did he build many military structures, fortifications?
- [34:21]
Nikki Nielsen
Yeah, quite a lot of them. I mean, he builds a whole chain of fortifications along the Marmarican coast. So that's basically the coastline west from Alexandria out towards the Libyan border. And the furthest of these outposts is the fortress of Saud al Marakam, near the modern town of Mersa matrua, so about 300 km from Alexandria. My personal opinion is that he largely continues a project, I suppose, a program that was instigated by his father, Seti I, because Seti during his reign, builds a number of fortresses in Sudan at Amara west and Aksha, for instance. And they are architecturally pretty identical to what much what Ramesses builds. But Seti dies very unexpectedly. He dies quite young, maybe mid-30s, early-40s. And I think Ramesses essentially takes over his building project with regards to these fortifications and just continues it. He also refortifies a lot of the fortifications along the ways of Horus, which is this line of fortresses that stretches across the Sinai Peninsula. So, yeah, he spends a lot of resources on military fortification as well, in every direction, basically, from Egypt. Now, a part of this, of course, is that it allows you to expand your sphere of influence, your sphere of interest. All of these fortresses also come complete with a temple that is partially dedicated to Ramesses himself. So it's also a really good way to make sure that lots of people, you know, worship your name and you get to put your name on lots of inscriptions. So there is both, I think, a military and a religious reason for that. And honestly, with these Ramesside fortifications, it was not more than a couple of years ago that a French team found another one near Alexandria that we didn't know about. One of these Ramesside forts that's now being excavated pretty much as we speak. So we don't have the full extent of it yet. We're still finding more information about it fascinating.
- [36:16]
John Baulkham
And Nikki, let's now talk about the late period. We're now into the first millennium bc. How did the ancient Egyptians react to invasions from the likes of the Assyrians, the Nubians and the Persians? How did they deal with that?
- [36:32]
Nikki Nielsen
Mostly by resisting it. The history of a lot of these invasions, like the Achaemenid period, the Persian invasions of Egypt, it's essentially the history of just never hectic rebellions by local Egyptians. You get the feeling a little bit that there are so many cadet branches of the royal family in Egypt. There are so many noble families who can claim some sort of obscure connection to the Egyptian throne. So, you know, during Persian occupation, you get multiple people who suddenly just appear and declare themselves the real kings of Egypt and lead rebellions against the Persians. And then the Persian army has to come into Egypt and quell the rebellion. And then the moment the Persian army leaves again, there's another rebellion and another pretend king of Egypt. And, you know, the Egyptians don't deal very well with it in terms of they're certainly not suffering it quietly. So there is a lot of military pushback, a lot of rebellions, and a lot, especially with regards to the Persian occupation, attempts to create alliances with Greece and especially with Athens, because, of course, Persia is a common enemy. And some of these rebellions are helped by Greek and Athenian soldiers that are sent to Egypt to basically help the rebels against the Persians.
- [37:47]
John Baulkham
And how did Egyptian warfare change after the conquest of Alexander the Great?
- [37:52]
Nikki Nielsen
It changes because the Greeks bring hoplite warfare warfare into Egypt. So most of the Egyptian army at the time is called the machimoi. That's the term that writers like Herodotus use. They're not Just professional soldiers. They are military families. Basically. They're multiple generations of soldiers. They have certain land rights, certain tax rights. They are quite strong in terms of their numbers. There's tens of thousands of them. The Greeks are clearly the Ptolemies, I think, are maybe a little bit worried about their ability to be become a power bloc. So they institute some rules. For instance, the Machimoi, the Egyptian soldiers are not allowed to learn hoplite tactics. They can't fight like that. And not until later in the Ptolemaic period when that's kind of relaxed. The Ptolemies bring their own hoplite troops with them all the way back from Ptolemy. I, you know, these are basically the remnants of Alexander's armies that had gone with Ptolemy, become part of the professional Egyptian army. They bring in Greek mercenaries, clerics who are given fat, fantastic economic deals for coming and fighting in Egypt. They're given land in the fum, they're given tax dispensation. It's a fantastic deal, frankly, if you're a Greek soldier, to go and fight in Egypt. There's even a Greek play where there's a scene in there where two friends are sitting around and chatting and one of the friends has had his heart broken. And as Today or maybe 100 years ago, someone would say, I'm so heartbroken, I'm going to run off and join the foreign legion. He says, you know, I want to go, so I can't be here, I need to go somewhere else. I'm going to go off into foreign service and be a mercenary. And his friend says, well, if you're going to do that, you need to go to Egypt, because there is no better paymaster than Ptolemy. There is no better master of a soldier because the Ptolemies are paying premium basically for good Greek mercenaries. And that's partly, I think, to create a counterbalance to the native Egyptian soldiers just in case they decide to rebel. And partly, partially also because the Ptolemies are at war with everyone all the time. Pretty much. It's a sort of never ending series of wars.
- [40:05]
John Baulkham
Yeah. And we're in this period of decline. What is the situation by 30 BC and the Roman annexation?
- [40:13]
Nikki Nielsen
I mean, fundamentally the situation is that the Ptolemies have spent all the money, really, especially Cleopatra's father, Cleopatra VII's father. And I feel very sorry for Cleopatra because she is clearly an incredibly capable ruler. She's well educated, speaks multiple languages, she's cunning. But she is saddled with this horrible inheritance where her father has basically bankrupted the country. He's Bribed half of Rome, but has then run out of money. Other ancestors have done stuff like leaving Egypt to Rome in testaments and wills and things like that. So she's absolutely fighting an uphill battle, partly because she can't pay mercenaries, because there just isn't enough money. And to make it worse, as projects, including a recent one at the University of Liverpool, has shown, Ptolemaic currency, the actual coins, have been debased, so they have reduced the value of silver, for instance, in the coins, in order to make what they had stretch further. But when you do that, you're sawing off the branch you're sitting on, because it will become apparent to people that your silver coins are not really silver anymore, and then the perceived value of them will decrease and suddenly the mercenaries want more coins because they know that what you're paying them is rubbish, basically. So you're creating this situation where suddenly there's just no money for anything anymore.
- [41:42]
John Baulkham
Excellent. Thank you, Nikki. And a pretty general question we have here is simply what role did women play in ancient Egyptian warfare?
- [41:50]
Nikki Nielsen
It differs greatly. There's a good example of a female commander, Ahotep, who's the wife, actually, of King Seconden Retal, the guy who was murdered, executed for whatever happened to him to cause those grisly injuries when he dies. Her son, his son. Their son is too young to rule, so she takes over as a regent. And there are inscriptions that talk about her leading her armies, gathering deserters or reassembling deserters who have run away and essentially taking on military leadership. That's also something perhaps that's reflected in her grave goods, which include battle axes and things like that as part of her royal treasure. Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh, is depicted riding a chariot in inscriptions as well, a war chariot, although we don't know the extent of the campaign she was on completely. But of course, as king of Egypt, she is also in charge of the army. So there are examples, Cleopatra is another example, of course, of women leading entire armies in battle. Other Ptolemaic queens as well. During the Battle of Raphia, one of the biggest battles in the ancient world, according to some of the descriptions, when the Egyptian line begins to buckle and it looks like it's not going so great for the Egyptians, it's not the Egyptian king that manages to turn the tide of battle, it's his queen who basically steps out in front of the soldiers in the heat of battle and screams at them to essentially buck up. And that also any man who stands will be given a gold coin. Which is what, in the end, holds the line and the Egyptians win the battle. So I think there is quite a lot of evidence of women playing a very active part, certainly at that level, as commanders in military affairs.
- [43:37]
John Baulkham
And, Nikki, another very general question I have here is what is the biggest myth about ancient Egyptian warfare that you'd like to dispel?
- [43:48]
Nikki Nielsen
I think the idea that the chair chariot of the New Kingdom of the late Bronze Age was a tank, that it should be considered in that way, because if you look at most of the actual archeological evidence of chariots that we have from the tomb of Tutankhamun, for instance, Egyptian chariots, I should say, because they do differ based on what kind of country they're from, what civilization. But the Egyptian chariots, for instance, in the tomb of Tutankhamun, they are pretty flimsy things. The spoke wheels are made from just wood. There's no suspension to speak of. The cab is reeds and woven leather. Super kind of lightweight material, but not very sturdy. And I think you have something like that pulled along by two horses going at a gallop. You don't necessarily want to just charge that into a scrum of infantry carrying spears, because I don't think it's going to go very well for you if you try that. I'm not even sure it would work super well on uneven ground, because wheels would break, horses step in gopher holes and break their legs. And, you know, it can very quickly go very wrong. So I do wonder whether the chariot is. Firstly, it's a status symbol. So it's something that the elite likes to be depicted. In some cultures, like the Mitannian civilization, they have a whole kind of warrior nobles called the Marianu, who are chariot warriors. So there's a status thing. The chariots may have been used as mobile firing platforms, so a way to essentially harass enemy infantry while they're setting up before a battle. And then the chariot allows you to make a kind of speedy retreat out of range before the enemy can get their archers into position. But I don't think the idea that it is a tank is necessarily very useful. So that I think that is one of the biggest myths, because it's just. They're just not that sturdy.
- [45:36]
Wendy
That was Nikki Nielsen, senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. You can find a link to his last episode with us about the Battle of Megiddo in the episode description of this podcast. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.