Welcome to Historical Tidbit Thursdays. Once again, I plan to gallop away from our usual Texas History research to explore the history of weapons and armor. Should be interesting. Hope you enjoy!
For the next few weeks, we'll follow the timeline presented in the book, "A History of Weaponry" by John O'Bryan. Aside from some adult language, this book is a great reference to the most commonly used weapons and tools in each of the time periods presented and it also includes the related and similar weapons. For this blog series, I'll only point out some of the ones that interest me and my own works.
This week we'll look at some of the tools in the Ancient Period (4000-500 BCE) used by those in the Middle East regions - Egyptians, Assyrians, Mesopotamians, Hittites, Sumerians, etc.
Dagger - one of the earliest weapons was the short blade dagger that could be easily concealed and required little skill to wield; since it was made of copper it had to be sharpened often but it was also easier and quicker to make.
Sickle - a curved sword; invented by the Sumerians and were used against the Egyptians (who later adopted it as the Khopesh; it was about 50-60 cm; this tool was also used for threshing wheat and is still used today as such as tool
Socketed Axe - dated around 3000 BC; used by the Sumerians; stone axes existed previously but this design was special as the axe head had a socket into which the wooden handle would be fitted (thus allowing a user to replace it if damaged or broken).
Egyptian Mace - Dating to about 3000 BC, this device was made of bronze and could crush skulls
Source:
A History of Weaponry by John O'Bryan; ISBN#978-1-4521-1054-7
Photo Credit: Sickle - https://www.lowes.com/pd/True-Temper-Sickle/50408250
Photo Credit: Socketed Axe - https://artefactual.co.uk/2015/08/21/a-new-bronze-age-axe/olympus-digital-camera-130/
Photo Credit: Egyptian Mace - https://collection.maas.museum/object/258592
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