Wounds on ancient soldiers’ remains offer insights into siege warfare during Bronze Age

AMMAN — Iconographic motifs help historians and archaeologists reconstruct the weaponry from the ancient period. One of such examples is the motif of the Egyptian pharaoh smiting enemies with a mace. This picture demonstrates the widely used mace for hand-to-hand combat during the Middle Kingdom.

"Human remains from mortuary contexts can help us on both counts. The physical evidence of wounds and casualties suggest the frequency with which various types of weapons were actually employed to bloody effect, as well as indicating exactly how they were intended to be used. The main obstacle to this approach is the small size of the excavated sample," noted Professor Aaron Burke.

Burke added that mortuary evidence from the Levant and neighbouring regions provide, nonetheless, considerable insight into the mechanics of warfare in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages.

Researchers excavated tombs and analysed wounds sustained by corpses and one of such collections was dated from the Eleventh Dynasty.

"Fifty-nine mummified Egyptian soldiers found in a communal tomb near Deir Bahri were identified by Herbert Winlock (1945) as troops of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II (ca. 2043–1992 BC). Most of these soldiers sustained mortal wounds from arrows, many of which appear to have had ebony heads, although a few of the arrowheads were apparently of the blunt type," Burke said.

He noted that entry wounds on many of the soldiers indicate that arrows were fired from above, as if during a siege.

Four of the soldiers also sustained head wounds prior to their participation in a final battle, and three of these suffered injuries to the left sides of their heads, indicating that their attackers were right-handed.

In addition to arrow wounds and head traumas inflicted by blunt objects, Winlock observed frontal wounds on fourteen other soldiers that were probably inflicted by stones (if not sling projectiles) apparently hurled from above, Burke elaborated, adding that it also appears that a number of the soldiers were not immediately killed by arrow wounds but were finished off with blows to the head by blunt objects such as clubs or even maces, though it is possible that these final wounds were inflicted by objects thrown or dropped upon them from the town wall.

After death the soldiers’ bodies had lain exposed for some time since flesh was missing on many of them. This led Winlock to speculate that they were gruesomely “pecked at by carrion birds”.

One clear example from the Levant of an individual killed under similar conditions comes from Late Bronze Age Ugarit, ca. 1,300 BC. The remains of a man between eighteen and thirty years of age were recovered.

"He had been killed by an arrow that pierced his chest from above and in front of him, which became lodged in his spine within his chest cavity. The arrowhead was so deeply embedded that it was impossible to remove it. The angle of the entry wound indicates that the arrow was fired from a sharp angle above the victim, and the depth of penetration suggests that it was shot from close range, perhaps no more than 50 m," Burke underlined.

To these casualties of war, it is possible to add several others known from burials in northern Mesopotamia and the Levant. At Tuttul (Tell Bi‘a), for example, the remains of eighty individuals buried in a mass grave were discovered in layers of the central mound dated to the reign of Samsi-Adad, ca. 1719–1688 BC.

"The corpses were laid haphazardly in a single grave and it appears to be possible to distinguish wounded soldiers from civilians. Similar evidence of carnage comes from the siege of Ebla in the northern Levant at the end of the Middle Bronze Age," Burke said, "here a mass grave dating to ca. 1,550 BC was recently discovered on the outside slope of the rampart to the east of the fortress."

This array of Bronze Age casualties of war, mostly from the Middle Bronze Age, makes it possible to draw some important conclusions concerning warfare in this period.

"The first conclusion is that siege warfare was as frequent and as dangerous as has been suggested based on both references among the Mari texts and Egyptian reliefs. Although the sample size is small, the nature of the wounds inflicted on the corpses suggests that sieges and not pitched battles were responsible for many of the casualties incurred by armies in this period," Burke underscored.