Combat in Earnest
Although evidence for human conflict during a time of climatic change is present in the form of ‘overkilled' human remains from a Palaeolithic cemetery at Gebel Sahaba in Nubia (at least 11,600 years ago), the earliest continuous and iconographically informative evidence for the imagery of human conflict begins in Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia around the cusp of the fifth and fourth millennia bce.
Parallel to the ritual equation of hunting and warfare, organised conflict in ancient Egypt emphasised speed and manoeuvre over the clash of major opposing forces that would underpin hoplite battles of the second half of the first millennium bce. This general eschewing of shock tactics led to the increased employment of mercenaries, particularly during later phases of the Pharaonic period, with resulting implications for Egyptian society.[372] Nevertheless, military training could be violent itself, and may have involved considerable exercise in hand-to-hand combat, along with the development of the physical stamina necessary for rapid movement over long distances.[373] Scenes in the Middle Kingdom tomb of Baket at Beni Hasan show what appear to be 220 different wrestling positions/holds, in decoration that depicts military activity that involves the storming of a fortified position.[374]Both the pictorial evidence and human remains suggest that the majority of injuries resulting from both projectile weapons and the crushing blows of close combat were to the chest and abdomen.[375] Although not referenced in any royal monument, conflicts both within Egypt and on the periphery thereof could take the form of a monomachy (duel) between champions.[376] Nevertheless, in scenes and laudatory texts, the king ultimately battles directly against the enemy leader, all other combat seemingly incidental.
A victory hymn of Old Kingdom date suggests that a truly successful campaign involved both defeat of the enemy and the safe return of the Egyptian force.[377] No ancient Egyptian source expresses reluctance to kill the enemy, although a scribal text (in P. Lansing) suggests that Egyptian soldiers could be discomfited by care for prisoners. Soldiers may have waded amongst the dead and dying, dispatching the latter (in reality perhaps as the result of medical triage, for which Papyrus Edwin Smith may be a surviving manual), but plunder during the battle appears only in a negative light.After the battle, the collection of booty is the source of long and monumentally memorialised lists. Although dismemberment as deconstruction of the damned appears throughout the New Kingdom Netherworld Books, the only well-attested and sanctioned application of mutilation to an enemy on the battlefield is the New Kingdom tradition of removing a hand from an apparently deceased opponent as proof of a kill; a soldier might carry the hands gruesomely transfixed on his spear.[378] From their Libyan opponents, Ramesside period Egyptian soldiers might similarly remove the phallus and testicles, perhaps at once a reference to what for the Egyptians was the odd appearance of the uncircumcised Libyans, and a graphically physical attestation of the defeat of enemies likened to the elimination of their ‘seed'. For presentation of such trophies, a combatant might receive the ‘gold of valour'. In addition to allowing for a tally of the enemy slain, the severed body parts could have formed part of a display of victory in Egypt. Texts make occasional allusions to the painting of the body with the blood of enemies, but the contexts are those of royal epithets and the symbolic toilet of the personification of the city of Thebes as warrior goddess.[379]
Egyptian military scenes do not often emphasise sufferings of the enemy populace or punishment of the defeated, except in smiting scenes.
The reigns of Akhenaton and Merneptah provide evidence for the impaling of enemy commanders - the former following a relatively small raid led by the viceroy of Kush against an Eastern Desert group apparently threatening the goldmining regions, the latter following a large battle resulting from a Libyan invasion of Egypt.[380] The Egyptian idiom, ‘placed atop a stake', does not indicate whether living bodies or corpses were involved. The treatment is otherwise attested for Egyptian criminals,[381] and reveals - as do the earlier execration texts - that all those outside of maat (cosmic order), both Egyptians and foreigners, could expect similarly damning treatment. From the reign of Ramesses III, depictions of the attempted land invasion by elements of the ‘Sea Peoples' attacking Egypt show the families of the invaders, transported in great carts alongside the invading military force, coming under attack by pharaonic troops.Egyptian forces could employ food as a weapon, both during internal Egyptian struggles and foreign campaigns. Devastation of foreign vegetation probably provides the background to the trees appearing alongside foreign animal resources on the Predynastic ‘Libyan Palette', and appears again in the iconography of Ramesside warfare, devastation of foreign landscapes corresponding to the destruction of enemy fortifications.[382] A Middle Kingdom rock inscription from Nubia describes a scorched earth policy in which an Egyptian military force burns both dwellings and food supplies of the Nubian foe, part of a general royal approach.[383] The Nubian King Piye (c. 744-714 bce), during his subjugation of the northern portions of Egypt at the time of the establishment of Twenty-fifth Dynasty hegemony, could bemoan the plight of horses discovered in a besieged city, although this appears as part of a royal reproach against an enemy ruler; the tribulations of the human population receive no attention, as apparently they are perceived as having brought it on themselves by opposing the victorious Piye and thus set themselves against the cosmic order.
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- This chapter will explore ritual violence in the form of close combat in precolonial western Africa (and the African diaspora) during the period of European contact from the mid fifteenth century until the late nineteenth century, a period which saw an end to the slave trade and the start of European colonisation.
- Capabilities for War and Operations Other than War
- Civil Affairs Missions in Operations Other Than War
- Summary