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Chapter 2 - The World's First Armies

Conclusion

The evolution of sophisticated armies and the conduct of war in Sumer and Egypt, while truly a major development in human history, by no means represented the ultimate development of warfare in the ancient world. Much to the contrary. As sophisticated as the armies were in these societies, they represented only the beginning of a period of military development, the Iron Age, that continued for another two thousand years. In this later period it is fair to say that with only a few exceptions, most notably the classical Greeks, the world witnessed a period of fifteen hundred years in which the conduct of war increased in scope, scale, lethality, and sophistication in an unbroken, upward trend that finally ended with the collapse of the Roman imperium in the 5th century A.D. And when that period finally did come to an end, it took the armies of Europe more than a thousand years to reach the level of sophistication in war that the armies of the Iron Age had so consistently demonstrated for more than a millennium.

During the Iron Age almost every aspect of war was developed to modern scale. Armies increased in size with a corollary increase in their destructive power, which further produced larger and larger battles resulting in higher and higher casualty rates. The integration of military structures with their host societies increased greatly, in some instances (Assyria) producing the ancient equivalent of the modern military state. This permitted armies for the first time to suffer major defeats while the state retained the power to continue military operations for years on end (Second Punic War). The productive power of the state to generate ever larger populations and more sophisticated economies for use in war also increased, culminating in the ability of some states to give birth to an even larger form of sociomilitary organization, the imperium.

At the same time there was a genuine revolution in military technology that increased the range and rates of fire of weapons, providing armies with an ever increasing killing capability. When this ability joined with the ability to logistically support and maneuver larger armies over greater and greater distances, the ability to conduct war increased almost exponentially over the level of the Egyptians and Sumerians fifteen hundred years earlier. Indeed, it seems likely that the period between the collapse of Sumer and the fall of Rome can legitimately be viewed as the most dynamic period of military development ever witnessed by man until the 20th century. Modern warfare and its corollary, the destruction of whole societies, were already facts of life in the ancient world. Seen in this context, the invention and use of mechanized weapons in the modern era represents more of a variation on a very old theme than a qualitative change in the evolution of warfare.

Chapter 2 - The World's First Armies

The Armies of the Pharaohs, 3200-1300 BC

The two major combat arms of the Egyptian army were chariotry and infantry. The chariot corps was organized into squadrons of 25 machines, each commanded by a "charioteer of the residence." Larger units of 50 and 150 machines could be rapidly assembled and deployed in concert with larger ground units. The chariot corps was supported logistically by special units and staffs, including mobile repair stations and parts depots, whose task it was to keep the machines operational even when deployed. The fact that the pharaoh was usually pictured as leading a chariot charge clearly indicates that it was the elite striking arm of the Egyptian field force.

The infantry was organized into regiments of 200 men, each regiment identified by the type of weapon it carried. Units were further identified as being comprised of recruits, trained men, and elite shock troops. Each regiment was commanded by a "standard bearer." Below him in rank was the "greatest of fifty," who commanded a unit probably like a platoon. These platoons comprised a regiment, and several regiments were commanded by a "captain of a troop," who seems to have functioned as a brigade commander. Above this was a "lieutenant commander of the army," who was answerable to a senior general, often a royal prince, at division level. After the fall of Rome in the fifth century, European armies did not reach this same level of organization for more than a thousand years.

The administrative structure of the army was reformed and, we may presume, it was as highly bureaucratized as are today's armies. The Egyptians, after all, were remarkable record keepers. The army had its own professional scribes, the equivalent of the modern administrative officer. Logistical support was especially well-organized as befits an army that was expected to operate over long distances from its home base. Supplies were moved over hostile territory by ox-cart, and the Egyptians were absolute masters at integrating naval support into their ground operations. Then, as now, more supplies could be moved in a few ships than could possibly be carried by a ground army on the march.

The tactics of the Egyptian army were very well developed and supported by an excellent strategic and field intelligence apparatus. Tactical expertise was increased by the presence of a trained professional officer corps quite accustomed to maneuvering various types of large units over different types of terrain. The Egyptian army employed agents and patrolling techniques similar to those used in modern armies to gather tactical intelligence, and were adept at moving their armies across hostile terrain without being detected. They also utilized counterintelligence and deception in order to gain maximum surprise. Prior to the formulation of final battle plans the Egyptians routinely used the commander's conference, in which the pharaoh presented his battle plan while senior officers were expected to give frank and open advice. The result of these practices was sound battle tactics that allowed Thutmose III to conduct 17 major battle campaigns and win them all.

On the battlefield Egyptian forces usually deployed chariots to act as a screen for infantry. Engaging the enemy with the long-range composite bow, the chariots began killing at a distance and then smashed the enemy formations by shock. If the enemy gave ground, reserve chariot units could be used to exploit the weakness or, more commonly, infantry units could be brought into play in an effort to further disrupt enemy formations. The mobility allowed by a light, highly- maneuverable chariot (the Egyptian chariot was so light that two men could carry it across a stream) allowed the use of mobile reserves for the first time in warfare. These could be committed at a propitious moment to turn a flank or exploit a breakthrough. Once a rout began, the chariot archers could engage in ruthless, rapid, and lethal pursuit. If tactical surprise had been achieved, as at Megiddo, chariot forces could engage an enemy that had not yet deployed for battle. If something went wrong, as at Kadesh, chariots could be used to rescue a desperate situation.

The battle of Meggido (Armaggedon in the Bible) demonstrated all the characteristics of a modern army in battle. Thutmose III moved his army of 20,000 men from Egypt to Gaza, a distance of 250 miles, in less than 9 days and did so undetected. He immediately undertook another 10-day forced march to Yehem, near the village of Aruna, where he prepared to cross the mountains into enemy territory. Thutmose had to choose among three routes, two of which were easy marches but longer distances. The third was through a narrow defile but much shorter. Yet, this route would have placed the army in jeopardy since it would be strung out in file on the march and, if ambushed, would have been unable to defend itself. Thutmose's senior officers advised against the third route. Thutmose's intelligence units learned that the enemy was deployed to protect the easier routes. In a bold gamble, Thutmose risked security for surprise. Taking the dangerous route, he arrived completely undetected outside the city of Megiddo, where he faced only a screening force of enemy soldiers. The result was a smashing victory which would have been complete had the Egyptian troops not lost their discipline and stopped to plunder the defeated enemy's camp.

The battle of Megiddo provides an example of an army that utilized every major tactical device used by modern armies. Thutmose took advantage of his intelligence-gathering capacity and located the deployment of the enemy force. Using this information, he was able to achieve tactical surprise and to mass his forces at the point of the enemy's greatest weakness. He achieved flexibility of deployment by tailoring his units accordingly, and used his chariots to maximize his force at the point of attack (the schwerpunkt ). His reserves were deployed to rescue the situation if things went wrong, as they did for Ramses II in 1295 at Kadesh, where a rescue force of Egyptian chariots prevented a disaster. Thutmose maintained excellent communications along the route of march by messengers and semaphore flags and, when engaged, used trumpets, flags, and horse messengers to coordinate the battle in much the same way as Wellington did at Waterloo.

The Egyptian army lacked only cavalry formations, an innovation that would be introduced 600 years later by the Assyrian army. The failure of the Egyptians to develop cavalry remains a mystery in light of their knowledge of the horse that they obtained from the Hyksos. Perhaps it was a case of an army emphasizing one item of "heavy" equipment (the chariot) that worked so well that it saw no need for a "lighter" and more maneuverable "vehicle" such as the horse. But in almost every other respect the army of Thutmose III and later warrior- pharaohs was a modern army capable of conducting military operations in a modern manner, including the ability to mount seaborne invasions and to use naval forces in conjunction with ground forces for supply and logistics.

Chapter 2 - The World's First Armies

The Armies of the Pharaohs, 3200-1300 BC

The Egyptian soldier must have been terrified by these new weapons. While the Egyptians had to anchor their positions with exposed infantry formations, they could be killed from a considerable distance by the arrows from the composite bow which exceeded the range of their own arrows by at least 200 yards. Worse, the Egyptian formations were immobile while the Hyksos could mount horse-drawn chariot charges from all directions. The horse must have had a great psychological impact on the Egyptian soldier, who had never even seen one. The blade axe of the Egyptian soldier was no match for the killing power of the penetrating axe and, without body armor, the sword must have taken a heavy toll in close combat. In 1720 B.C. the Hyksos established their capitol at Avaris (modern Tanis), and in 1674 they captured Memphis. For the next century or so the Hyksos held control of most of Lower Egypt while Upper Egypt remained largely in the hands of the princes of Thebes.

Over time, the Theban princes rebuilt their power until, after a series of short, but bloody, clashes, Ahmose I (1570-1546) drove the asiatics from Avaris, and once again unified Egypt. Under Amenhotep I (1546-1526) Egypt began the process of establishing a great empire. Amenhotep pushed Egypt's borders beyond those of the Old Kingdom and established an Egyptian presence in Asia. Thutmose I (1525-1512), one of Amenhotep's generals, pacified the Nubian south, and his successor, Thutmose II (1512-1504), solidified the Egyptian presence in Palestine to the Syrian border. His successor, Thutmose III (1504-1450) became Egypt's greatest warrior pharaoh, and is known to history as the Napoleon of Egypt. Thutmose III established the empire far into Asia, exacting tribute from Babylon, Assyria, and the Hittites. He fought 17 campaigns abroad and was victorious in all of them. (See Map 2.) Thutmose III established a first-rate professional army through which Egypt reached its pinnacle as a military power.

It is also worth noting that the psychology of the Egyptian leadership had changed drastically. Prior to the Hyksos invasion and occupation, Egypt's strategic culture was marked by a concern for the status quo and a turning inward for a millennium. Unconcerned about foreign threats, Egypt concentrated on developing her high religious culture almost to the point of pacifism. The destruction of the Egyptian army and the occupation of the homeland by a culturally foreign power, the Hyksos , engendered in Egyptian culture a great fear of invasion. Accordingly, having eventually removed the Hyksos from Egyptian soil, the Egyptians continued to press outward from their borders in order to establish a series of weak states on the periphery that could act as a buffer to their territory in time of war. The new strategic culture of Egypt was marked by paranoia and a fear of being surrounded. As such, she became militarily aggressive in a search to control all possible threats to her east by a policy of preemptive military action and aggressive diplomacy.

The wars of liberation and expansion under the Thutmosides wrought a profound change in Egyptian society. For the first time there came into being a truly professional military caste. Military families were given grants of land to hold for as long as they provided a son for the officer corps. The army changed its structure and became a truly genuine national force based on conscription. Although the local militias continued to exist, they were thoroughly integrated into a national force structure and, more important, the local barons lost the power to challenge national policy or withhold troop levies. Thutmose III completely changed Egyptian weapons and tactics. He adopted the weapons of the Hyksos -- the chariot, composite bow, penetrating axe, sickle-sword, helmets, and armor -- and made further improvements in the design and tactical employment doctrine of the chariot in battle. Thutmose mounted his newly armed archers on chariots and produced the most important military revolution in ground warfare yet seen in Egypt.

The national army was raised by conscription, with the national levy being one man in 10 instead of the traditional one man in 100. The army was centrally trained by professional officers and noncommissioned officers. The pharaoh himself remained commander-in-chief and was expected to be a true field commander by leading his men in battle. There was also an Army Council that served as a general staff. The field army was organized into divisions, each of which was a complete, combined arms corps, including infantry, archers, and chariots. These divisions numbered 5,000 men, and each was named after one of the principal gods of Egypt. Later Ramses II organized Egypt and the empire into 34 military districts to facilitate conscription, training, and supply of the army. The rank and administrative structures were improved, and there were professional schools to train and test officers in the operational arts.

Chapter 2 - The World's First Armies

The Armies of the Pharaohs, 3200-1300 BC

Human settlement in Egypt may have begun as long as two hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Climatic and geographic conditions were highly favorable to the rapid development of a large-scale agricultural society. Egyptian society of 4000 B.C. was formed around provincelike entities called nomos ruled by individual chiefs or nomarchs. Over time, these nomarchs assembled in loose feudal arrangements into two clusters of kingdoms, Upper and Lower Egypt. In 3200 B.C., the king of Upper Egypt, known variously to history as Narmer, Menes, or, probably most correctly, Hor-Aha (Fighting Hawk), unified the two kingdoms by force into a single Egyptian state. Hor-Aha diverted the rivers of the Nile and founded the first Egyptian capital at Memphis. Thus began the reign of pharaohs of the predynastic period, which lasted for 700 years.

The kings that followed from 3100 to 2686 B.C. expanded the Egyptian state. Successful campaigns were launched against the Nubians to the south and the Libyans to the west. Expeditions were undertaken in the Sinai, and trade was established with the states north of Lebanon and Jordan. During this period a state bureaucracy was brought into existence, writing was introduced as a tool of centralized administration, and political institutions were transformed from a chiefdom into a theocratic state led by a divine pharaoh supported by administrative, religious, and military institutions.

The period from 2686 to 2160 B.C. was the period of the Old Kingdom, and it was during this time that we see the emergence of a definable military organization which was shaped by two factors. First, Egypt was protected by formidable natural barriers to her east and west in the form of great deserts. The peoples of these areas, the Sand Peoples of Palestine and the Libyans to the west, were largely nomadic and represented more of a nuisance than a military threat. Nubia to the south presented a real threat of invasion, but the fortresses and strong points built in 2200 B.C. seemed to have contained the threat relatively well. For a period of almost a thousand years Egypt was under no significant military threat from outside her borders. Second, Egypt's political order was somewhat fragmented. Although united in a single kingdom, the local chiefs maintained their own military forces and often exercised control over strategic trade routes. The situation was not unlike that of feudal Europe where the high king depended greatly upon the local barons for military and political power.

The impetus for the army came from the need of the central rulers to defend the state and deal with periodic revolts by the local chiefs. The pharaoh's army consisted of small but regular standing forces of several thousand organized like household guards. Egypt introduced conscription during this time, levying one man in a hundred to be called to service each year. The pick of the conscripts went to the regular army. During this period the first military titles and ranks also appear. Yet, the majority of the army was still organized into militia units under the command of local barons. In normal times, these forces were stationed and trained at the local level. In times of crisis, the political relationship between the barons and the pharaoh determined in practice how many troops were made available for national aims. Such a form of military organization produced an army that was unfit for forging a large national empire.

The exact structure of the Egyptian army of this period is unclear. Some distinctions were made between regular officers and others, and it is evident from titles that the army was broken into a number of military specialties and ranks. The size of the army is also a matter of some conjecture. Weni, a commander of the army in the Sixth Dynasty (2345 B.C.), recorded that his force was "many tens of thousands strong." A string of 20 mud-brick fortresses was built around 2200 B.C. to guard the southern approaches to Egypt; each required at least 3,000 men per garrison. This would suggest an army of 60,000 men in the frontier force alone. With a population approaching two million at this time, these and even larger force levels could easily have been achieved.

The Egyptian armies of the Middle Kingdom (2040-1786 B.C.) became more structurally sophisticated as Egypt struggled through periods of anarchy and the weakening of centralized power, leading eventually to its invasion and conquest by the Hyksos in 1720 B.C. Still, a clearer command structure did emerge with the pharaohs acting as field commanders on the major campaigns and with general officers in charge of safeguarding the frontiers and managing logistics. Titles emerged for such positions as commanders of shock-troops, recruits, instructors, and commanders of retainers. There was also the title for troop commander, and progression in rank seems to have moved from command of 7 men to a company of 60 to a command of 100 men.

By 1790 B.C. the centralized government of Egypt began to lose ground to the rebellious local barons, and the national army proved insufficient to bring them to heel. Taking advantage of the disarray, the Hyksos invaded Egypt and established themselves for almost 200 years as its rulers. The name Hyksos is probably a Greek rendering of the Egyptian term hik-khase, meaning "chiefdom of a foreign hill country." In the Egyptian lexicon of the day, these people were referred to derisively as asiatics. While the origins of the Hyksos remain obscure, it is likely that they were the nomadic tribes of the Palestinian land bridge.

It remains an interesting question how a people who were culturally and economically so far beneath the Egyptians could have conquered such an advanced culture as Egypt's. The answer lies in the use of very sophisticated military technology. The Egyptian army of this period was an infantry force organized by function in units of bowmen, spearmen, and archers. The primary killing weapon was the mace; even the bow was the simple bow of limited range and penetrating power. Given that the Egyptians had never fought anyone who had any more sophisticated weaponry than their own, this same weaponry had served sufficiently for more than a millennium. The Hyksos, on the other hand, were an army of mobility and firepower. The centerpiece of the Hyksos army was the horse-drawn chariot. They used the composite bow and penetrating axe and also carried the sword. In addition, the Hyksos wore helmets and body armor and carried quivers for rapid reloading of their bows. These weapons conferred a decisive military advantage, and the Hyksos made short work of the Egyptian army.

Chapter 2 continued

Other ancient Sumerian archaeological sources portray additional examples of important military innovations. A carved conch plate shows the king of Ur armed with a socket axe. The development of the bronze socket axe remains one of Sumer's major military innovations, one that conferred a significant military advantage. Ancient axe makers had difficulty in affixing the axeblade to the shaft with sufficient strength so as to allow it to remain attached when striking a heavy blow. The use of the cast bronze socket, which slipped over the head of the shaft and could be secured with rivets, allowed a much stronger attachment of the blade to the shaft. It is likely that the need for a stronger axe arose in response to the development of some type of body armor that made the cutting axe less effective as a killing instrument. Further, Sumerian axes by 2500 B.C. clearly show a change in design. The most significant change was a narrowing of the blade so as to reduce the impact area and bring the blade to more of a point. The development marks the beginning of the penetrating axe, whose narrow blade and strong socket made it capable of piercing bronze plate armor. The result was the introduction of one of the most devastating weapons of the ancient world, a weapon that remained in use for two thousand years.

The military technology of the ancient world did not, as in modern times, develop independent of need. There were, after all, no research and development establishments to invent new weapons. In the ancient world military technology arose in response to perceived practical needs arising from battlefield experience. And in Sumer, two thousand years of war among the city-states provided the opportunity for constant military innovation. In other countries, such as Egypt, that were sealed off from major enemies by geography and culture, there was little need to change military technologies. The weapons of Egypt, as a result, remained far behind developments in Sumer because they were adequate to the task at hand. There was no need to develop body armor, the helmet, or the penetrating axe when one's enemies did not possess this technology. But sophisticated weaponry and tactics required some form of larger social organization to give them impetus and direction.

We know very little about the military organization of Sumer in the third millennium. We can judge from the Tablets of Shuruppak (2600 B.C.) that the typical city-state comprised about 1800 square miles, including all its fields and lands. This area could sustain a population of between 30 and 35 thousand people. The tablets record a force of between 600-700 hundred soldiers serving as the king's bodyguard, the corps of the professional army. But a population of this size could easily support an army of regular and reserve forces numbering between four and five thousand men at full mobilization. Surely some form of conscription must have existed since theirs was a common tradition of corve'e labor to maintain the dikes and temples. Yet the military confrontations of the time may not have required very large armies. Conscript troops would not usually be capable of the training and discipline required of an infantry phalanx. If they were used, they were likely armed with some other weapons, like the sickle-sword or the bow, whose application could be taught to an average conscript or reservist in a few days.

One fact contributing strongly to the possibility of some sort of military organization was that by 2400 B.C. the Sumerian kings had largely abandoned their religious functions to the priesthoods while increasing their civil functions and control. The kings became the undisputed controllers of civic resources. Moreover, it is simply not reasonable to expect that a people who could organize themselves to tame the Tigris and Euphrates with an elaborate system of dikes, canals, and bridges and who could sustain a sophisticated system of irrigation would, at the same time, have simply left to chance the organization of their military arm, among the most important roles of the king.

The period following Eannatum's death was characterized by more war, a situation that led to a relatively even development of weapons technology throughout the city-states of Sumer. Two hundred years after Eannatum, King Lugalzagesi of Umma succeeded in establishing his influence over all of Sumer, although there is no evidence that he introduced any significant changes. Twenty-four years later, the empire of Lugalzagesi was destroyed by the forces of a Semitic prince from the northern city of Akkad, Sargon the Great. By force of arms he conquered all the Sumerian states, the entire Tigris-Euphrates basin, and brought into being an empire that stretched from the Taurus Mountains to the Persian Gulf. Sargon united both halves of Mesopotamia for the first time since 4000 B.C.

As with most early Sumerian kings, we know little about Sargon the Great. Cuneiform records indicate that in his 50-year reign he fought no fewer than 34 wars. One account suggests that his core military force numbered 5,400 men; if that account is accurate, then Sargon's standing army at full mobilization would have constituted the largest army of the time by far. Even for this time a standing army of this size is not as outrageous as it may seem. Unlike leaders of the previous wars between the rival city-states, Sargon created a national empire and would have required a much larger force than usual to sustain it, as he and his heirs did for 300 years. In this sense, Sargon faced the same problem as Alexander. Like Alexander, once the city-states were brought to heel, Sargon would have required them to place at his disposal some of their military forces. As we have noted, each of the 14 major city-states could have sustained an army of between four and five thousand men, not counting the small states that would also have been forced to contribute. Yet another source of military manpower would have been available from the conquered non-Sumerian provinces. It was common practice through Greek and Roman times to enlist soldiers of the conquered into the imperial armies of the time. The armies of imperial Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Rome all had large contingents of former enemies within their ranks.

That Sargon's army would have been comprised of professionals seems obvious in light of the constant state of war that characterized his reign. Even if they had begun as conscripts, within a short time Sargon's soldiers would have become battle-hardened veterans. Equipping an army of this size would have necessitated a high degree of military organization to run the weapons and logistics functions, to say nothing of routine administration likely attendant to a people who, by Sargon's time, had been keeping written records for more than a millennium.

During the Sargonid period, the Summerians/Akkadians contributed yet another major innovation in weaponry, the composite bow. The innovation may have come during the reign of Naram Sin (2254-2218), Sargon's grandson. Like his grandfather, Naram Sin fought continuous wars of suppression and conquest. His victory over the Lullubi is commemorated in a rock sculpture that shows Naram Sin armed with a composite bow. This rendering marks the first appearance of the composite bow in history and strongly suggests it was of Sumerian/Akkadian origin.

This bow was a major military innovation. While the simple bow could kill at ranges from 50-100 yards, it would not penetrate even simple armor at these ranges. The composite bow, with a pull of 2-3 times that of the simple bow, would easily have penetrated leather armor, and perhaps even the early prototypes of bronze armor that were emerging at this time. Even in the hands of untrained conscript archers, the composite bow could bring the enemy under a hail of arrows from twice the distance as the simple bow. So important was this new weapon that it became a basic implement of war in all armies of the region for the next fifteen hundred years.

The armies of Sumer and Akkad represented the pinnacle of military development in the Bronze Age. No army of the same period could match the Sumerians in military effectiveness and weaponry. The Sumerian civilization produced no fewer than six major new weapons and defensive systems, all of which set the standard for other armies of the Bronze Age and Iron Ages. Few armies in history have been so innovative.

The armies of Egypt, on the other hand, although already a thousand years old by the time of Sargon, were technologically inferior to the Sumerians and would remain so until, in a remarkable example of technological transfer, the Egyptians themselves obtained the weapons of the Sumerians and used them to forge the world's next great military empire.

Ch. 2 continued

The almost constant occurrence of war among the city-states of Sumer for two thousand years spurred the development of military technology and technique far beyond that found elsewhere at the time. The first war for which there is any detailed evidence occurred between the states of Lagash and Umma in 2525 B.C. In this war Eannatum of Lagash defeated the king of Umma. The importance of this war to the military historian lies in a commemorative stele that Eannatum erected to celebrate his victory. It is called the Stele of Vultures for its portrayal of birds of prey and lions tearing at the corpses of the defeated dead as they lay on the desert plain. The stele represents the first important pictorial of war in the Sumerian period. The Stele of Vultures portrays the king of Lagash leading an infantry phalanx of armored, helmeted warriors, armed with spears, trampling their enemies. The king, with a socket axe, rides a chariot drawn by four onagers (wild asses.) In a lower panel, Eannatum holds a sickle-sword. The information and implications of this stele are priceless.

The stele demonstrates that the Sumerian troops fought in phalanx formation, organized six files deep, with an eight-man front, somewhat similar to the formation used in Archaic Greece. Fighting in phalanx requires training and discipline, and the stele thus suggests that the men in this battle were professional soldiers. The typical neolithic army of men brought together to meet a temporary crisis found in Egypt throughout the Old Dynasty period had been clearly superseded in Sumer by the professional standing army. We know from the Tablets of Shuruppak (2600 B.C.) that even at this early date the kings of the city-states provided for the maintenance of 600-700 hundred soldiers on a full-time basis. This provision of military equipment for the soldiers was a royal expense. Gone was the practice of each warrior fashioning his own equipment. The stele provides the first evidence in human history of a standing professional army.

The first historical evidence of soldiers wearing helmets is also provided on the stele. From the bodies of soldiers found in the Death Pits of Ur dating from 2500 B.C., we know that these helmets were made of copper and probably had a leather liner or cap underneath. The appearance of the helmet marks the first defensive response to the killing power of an important offensive weapon, the mace, probably the oldest effective weapon of war. It was an extremely effective weapon against a soldier with no protection for the head. But in Sumer, the presence of a well-crafted helmet indicated a major development in military technology that was so effective that it drove the mace from the battlefield.

The first military application of the wheel is depicted on the stele which shows Eannatum riding in a chariot. Interestingly, the Sumerians also invented the wheeled cart, which became the standard vehicle for logistical transport in the Middle East until the time of Alexander the Great. The Sumerian invention of the chariot ranks among the major military innovations in history. The Sumerian chariot was usually a four-wheeled vehicle (although there are examples of the two-wheeled variety in other records) and required four onagers to pull it. The Sumerians are also credited with inventing the rein ring for use with the chariot in order to give the driver some control over the onagers . At this early stage of development the chariot probably was not a major offensive weapon because of its size, weight, and instability. In all probability it was not produced in quantity. Later, however, in the hands of the Hyksos, Hittites, Cannanites, Egyptians, and Assyrians, the chariot became the primary striking vehicle of the later Bronze and early Iron Age armies. Chariot drivers, archers, and spearmen became the elite fighting corps of the ancient world. In some countries of the area, the tradition continues to this day. It is not accidental that the Israeli army named its first tank the Merkava . In Hebrew, Merkava means chariot.

The lower palette of the Stele of Vultures shows the king holding a sickle-sword. The sickle-sword became the primary infantry weapon of the Egyptian and Biblical armies at a much later date. When the Bible speaks of peoples being "smoted," the reference is precisely to the sickle-sword. The fact that the sickle-sword appears on two independent renderings of the same period suggests strongly that the Sumerians invented this important weapon sometime around 2500 B.C.

The stele shows Eannatum's soldiers wearing what appears to be armored cloaks. Each cloak was secured around the neck and was made either of cloth or, more probably, thin leather. Metal disks with raised centers or spines like the boss on a shield were sown on the cloak. Although somewhat primitive in application, the cloak was the first representation of body armor, and would have afforded relatively good protection against the weapons of the day. Later, of course, the Sumerians introduced the use of overlapping plate body armor.

Chapter 2 - The World's First Armies

The Armies of Sumer and Akkad, 3500-2200 BC

The area of present-day Iraq is the site of ancient Sumer and Akkad, two city-states that produced the most sophisticated armies of the Bronze Age. The Greeks called the area Mesopotamia, literally the "land between the two rivers," a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates basin. In the Bible, the area is called Shumer , the original Sumerian word for the southern part of Iraq, the site of Sumer with its capital at the city of Ur. If the river is followed northward from Sumer for about 200 miles, the site of ancient Akkad can be found. From here, in 2300 B.C., Sargon the Great launched a campaign of military conquest that united all of Mesopotamia. Within a decade Sargon had extended his conquests from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea and northeastward to the Taurus Mountains of Turkey (Map 1). Sargon the Great provided the world with its first example of a military dictatorship.

Sumerian civilization was among the oldest urban civilizations on the planet. In Sumer the first attempts at writing emerged to produce ancient cuneiform, a form of administrative language written as wedged strokes on clay tablets. And in ancient Sumer the first detailed records, written or carved in stone, of military battles appeared. No society of the Bronze Age was more advanced in the design and application of military weaponry and technique than was ancient Sumer, a legacy it sustained for two thousand years before bequeathing it to the rest of the Middle East.

The cities of Sumer, first evident in 4000 B.C., provide the world's first examples of genuine urban centers of considerable size. In these early cities, especially in Eridu and Urak, people first manifested the high degree of cooperative effort necessary to make urban life possible. Both cities reflected the evidence of this cooperation in the dikes, walls, irrigation canals, and temples which date from the fourth millennium. An efficient agricultural system made it possible to free large numbers of people from the land, and the cities of ancient Sumer produced social structures comprised largely of freemen who met in concert to govern themselves. The early Sumerian cities were characterized by a high degree of social and economic diversity, which gave rise to artisans, merchants, priests, bureaucrats and, for the first time in history, professional soldiers. The ancient Sumerians were a polyglot of ethnic peoples, much like in the United States.

The period of interest for the student of military history is that from 3000 to 2316 B.C., the date that Sargon the Great united all of Sumer into a single state. This period was marked by almost constant wars among the major city-states and against foreign enemies. Among the more common foreign enemies of the southern city-states were the Elamites, the peoples of northern Iran. The conflict between Sumerians and Elamites probably extended back to Neolithic times, but the first recorded instance of war between them appeared in 2700 B.C., when Mebaragesi, the first king on the Sumerian King List, undertook a war against the Elamites, and "carried away as spoil the weapons of Elam." This first "Iran-Iraq war" was fought in the same area around Basra and the salt marshes that have witnessed the modern conflict of the last decade between the same two states.

Ch. 1 continued.

These early societies produced the first examples of state-governing institutions, initially as centralized chiefdoms and later as monarchies. The new government structures gave a degree of stability and permanence to the centralized direction of social resources on a large scale. Chiefdoms supported by organized but still small-scale armed forces forged the scattered elements of the protosocieties into true social orders. At the same time, centralization demanded the creation of an administrative structure capable of directing social activity and resources toward communal goals. By 3100 B.C., such an administrative structure, complete with writing and formal record keeping, was already evident in Egypt, and by 2700 B.C., it was present throughout the states of Mesopotamia. Although these structures were probably first employed on large scale public works projects -- building dikes, irrigation systems, the pyramids, and ziggurats of ancient Sumer -- it was but a short step to employ these new organizational resources in the service of warfare.

The development of central state institutions and a supporting administrative apparatus inevitably gave form and stability to military structures. The result was the expansion and stabilization of the formerly loose and unstable warrior castes that first emerged in the tribal societies of the fifth millennium. By 2700 B.C. in Sumer there was a fully articulated military structure and standing army organized along modern lines. The standing army emerged as a permanent part of the social structure and was endowed with strong claims to social legitimacy. And it has been with us ever since.

As important as these developments were, they could not have worked as they did without a profound change in the psychological basis of the people's social relationship with the larger community. The aggregation of large numbers of people into complex societies required that those living within them refocus their allegiances away from the extended family, clan, and tribe, and toward a larger social entity, the state. This psychological change was facilitated by the rise of religious castes that gave meaning to the individual's life beyond a parochial context. Organized belief systems were integrated into the social order and given institutional expression through public rituals that linked religious worship to political and military objectives that were national in scope and definition. Thus, the Egyptian pharaoh became divine, and military achievements of great leaders were perceived as divinely ordained or inspired. In this manner the terribly propulsive power of religion was placed at the service of the state and its armies.

It is important to remember that the period from 4000 to 2000 B.C. was a truly seminal period in the development of the institution and instrumentalities of war. When this period began, people had not yet invented cities or any of the other social structures required to support communal life on a large scale. Agriculture, which became the basis for the nation-state in the ancient period, was still in its infancy and could not yet provide a food supply adequate to sustain populations of even moderate size. Psychologically, people had not yet learned to attach meaning to any social group larger than the extended family, clan, or tribe. The important force of religion had not yet been given specific social focus to the point where it could become a powerful psychological engine to drive the spirit of conquest and empire. Even warfare itself had not in any meaningful sense been invented. There were only the embryonic beginnings of a warrior class still loosely embedded in a tribal social structure, a structure that lacked both the physical and psychological requirements to produce war on any scale. Military technology and organization were primitive, and the professionalization of armies and warfare had not yet begun. In any significant sense warfare had not yet been embedded in the social structure of man as a legitimate and permanent function of developed society.

The two thousand years following the dawn of the fourth millennium changed all this. As a mechanism of cultural development, the conduct of war became a legitimate social function supported by an extensive institutional infrastructure, and it became an indispensable characteristic of the social order if people were to survive the predatory behavior of others. This period saw the emergence of the whole range of social, political, economic, psychological, and military technologies that made the conduct of war a relatively normal part of social existence. In less than two thousand years, man went from a condition in which warfare was relatively rare and mostly ritualistic in which combat death and destruction were suffered at low rates to one in which death and destruction were attained on a modern scale. In this period, warfare assumed modern proportions in terms of size of the armies involved, the administrative mechanisms needed to sustain them, the development of weapons, the frequency of occurrence, and the scope of destruction achievable by military force. And it was in Sumer and Egypt that the world witnessed the emergence of the world's first armies.

Chapter 1 The Origins of War

(Note: the hyper link goes to a glossary of terms)

The invention and spread of agriculture coupled with the domestication of animals in the fifth millennium B.C. are acknowledged as the developments that set the stage for the emergence of the first large-scale, complex urban societies. These societies, which appeared almost simultaneously around 4000 B.C. in both Egypt and Mesopotamia, used stone tools, but within 500 years stone tools and weapons gave way to bronze. With bronze manufacture came a revolution in warfare.

This period saw the development of many new weapons -- the penetrating axe, armor, helmet, composite bow, the wheel and chariot -- and gave birth to a number of tactical innovations -- phalanx formations, increased mobility, pursuit, emergent staffs and rank structures. It would be incorrect to conclude, however, that new weapons were responsible for the great increase in the scale of warfare that characterized this period of human history. Improved weaponry, by itself, would have produced only a limited increase in the scale of warfare unless accompanied by new types of social structures capable of sustaining large armies and providing them with the impetus and means to fight on a heretofore unknown scale. The military revolution of the Bronze Age was rooted more in the development of truly complex societies than in weapons and technology.

What made the birth of warfare possible was the emergence of societies with fully articulated social structures that provided stability and legitimacy to new social roles and behaviors. The scale of these fourth millennium urban societies was, in turn, a result of an efficient agricultural ability to produce adequate resources and large populations. It is no accident that the two earliest examples of these societies, Egypt and Sumer, were states where large-scale agricultural production was first achieved. The revolution in social structures that rested upon the new economic base was the most important factor responsible for the emergence of warfare.

As of June, 1992

RICHARD A. GABRIEL is Professor of Political Science in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U. S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He has also taught at the University of New Hampshire, University of Massachusetts, and St. Anselm College. Dr. Gabriel is the author of twenty-six books and scores of articles on various military, political, and historical subjects. Professor Gabriel has held fellowships at the Brookings Institution, Hebrew University, the U.S. Army Intelligence School, the Center for the Study of Intelligence at the CIA, and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Several of Dr. Gabriel's books have been translated into other languages, and he is a frequent lecturer to the academic and military establishments of the United States, Canada, England, Germany, the People's Republic of China, and Israel.

KAREN S. METZ is the Head of Library Collections at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. She has also been a bibliographer and research librarian at the University of Michigan Medical Center and she is a member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals. Ms. Metz holds A.B. and A.M.L.S. degrees from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is the author of four books and has also written articles in journals and reference works.

Karen Metz and Richard Gabriel are frequent collaborators in works of military history. Their most recent work (1992) is A History of Military Medicine (2 vols.) published by Greenwood Press, and is the first comprehensive history of the subject to be published.

A Short History of War

A SHORT HISTORY OF WAR

The Evolution of Warfare and Weapons

Richard A. Gabriel

and

Karen S. Metz

June 30, 1992

Professional Readings in Military Strategy, No. 5

Strategic Studies Institute

U.S. Army War College

Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania

A Short History of War

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE (June 30, 1992)

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Forward (excerpt)

A Short History of War offers the reader a brief, but relatively comprehensive, overview of the forces that have shaped the development of armies, weapons, and war throughout the ages. Its broad thematic approach conveys that sense of historical context within which solders have had to act over the millennia. The reader will immediately recognize that there is little new in the current debates over force structure, weapons, tactics, and operational skills that has not gone before. The reader will also realize that those nations that did not accurately understand the context in which they carried out their policies paid a terrible price for their ignorance. The risk of similar mistakes is just as great today, and the price to be paid for ignorance often much higher. This book conveys a central lesson, drawn from history, for all modern warriors: if the soldier of the present is to deal with the challenges of the future, his first task is to relearn and understand the past.

Coming soon, a study course of war.

In The Beginning

I finally took the plunge and created this blog. I have another blog on another site that I have been using for a number of years. This is my first attempt at creating another blog.

I hope all that stop by will find this blog informative, entertaining, and one you would like to return to. When you do visit, you can call me Mark, since that is my real name.