Weapons

By the eighteenth century bc most Great Kings in Mesopotamia and the Levant had acquired a few chariots, which they used for display, for recreation, and possibly for hunting excursions. In these lands, however, chariots were not yet used in warfare: none of the Mari letters mentions chariots in a military context. As Chapter 4 will show, there is some evidence that by ca. 1750 bc chariots were beginning to be used in sieges in central Anatolia. If so, the Anatolian kings not only would have acquired chariots and “tamed” horses but also would have recruited chariot drivers and archers who were experienced enough and skilled enough to warrant sending them and their precious transportation into danger.

There is no reason to think that kings in Mesopotamia and the rest of the Near East had yet made such an investment. In any case, the chariot revolution in warfare had not yet begun in Hammurabi’s Mesopotamia.

In hand-to-hand combat during the Age of Hammurabi a warrior usually carried a leather shield and for offense depended on a spear.⁵⁶ The spears carried by the king’s men were socketed. This was an improvement over Early Bronze Age spears, in which the metal spearhead was attached to the wooden shaft by a tang, the base of which was usually bent or hooked. Socketed spearheads were common in Twelfth Dynasty Egypt, and in the second millennium bc were standard throughout the Near East, including much of Anatolia.⁵⁷ Still important as a hand-to-hand weapon was the axe, which for much of the third millennium bc had been the primary weapon. The axe had of course a wooden handle, with a metal head fastened at the top, normally by a shaft-hole. Although it is conventionally called an axe, the term is somewhat misleading because today an axe is wielded with both hands and the ancient weapon was most often wielded with one hand. Perhaps “hatchet” or “tomahawk” would have been a better term, but “axe” is imbedded in the scholarly literature. Ca. 2000 bc Mesopotamians began experimenting with a sickle-axe, replacing the axe-head with a short curved blade. By the time of Hammurabi yet another cutting weapon, the sickle-sword, was in use in Mesopotamia and by the New Kingdom it made its way to Egypt, where it was known as a khopesh. The sickle-sword was some 50 or 60 cm long and was made entirely—haft and blade—of tin bronze. Toward the top of the bronze handle was a curved blade, whose convex edge was sharpened, and the weapon was used in much the same manner as the axe.⁵⁸ Swords were not yet part of a warrior’s weaponry. The sword had been known in the Near East long before Hammurabi’s time, but it was always a great rarity: precariously hilted, it was a ceremonial object or an impressive display piece for kings, rather than a weapon used in battle. In the Near East swords are not mentioned in texts or represented pictorially until after the Age of Hammurabi.