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of men brought together to meet a temporary crisis found in Egypt throughout the Old Dynasty period had been clearly superseded in Sumer by the professional standing army.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.