described, they are sometimes an attempt to drive off a besieging army. In this
sense it may be that Middle Bronze warfare in Mesopotamia was broadly
parallel to late medieval warfare in western Europe, where raids, sieges, and
attempts to rescue besieged cities were more frequent than efforts to defeat an
enemy field army in open battle.
46 On the Egyptian evidence see Schulman 1982.
47 See Lacambre 1997.
48 In Heimpel 2003, the translation of Letter 27 141 appears at pp. 457–458.
49 Letter 27 142, at Heimpel 2003, p. 459.
50 Letter 27 147, at Heimpel 2003, p. 460.
51 For translation of the formula and discussion of the events see Sasson 1998, p. 461.
Sasson believes that Zimri-Lim had died a natural death shortly before Hammurabi’s
expedition.
52 On the recruitment of 5000 Hana fighters see Hamblin 2006, p. 194. Heimpel 2003,
pp. 30–36, provides an excellent study of the Hana encampments, as well as an analysis
of the term or name ha-naor ha-nu-ú.
53 Heimpel 2003, p. 29.
54 See Ziegler 2008, p. 50: “L’idée de Samsî-Addu est simple: les gens pauvres lui seront
dévoués grâce aux avantages matériels qu’il leur procure.”
55 Hamblin 2006, pp. 428–429, presents what little is known about the training of
conscripts in OK and MK Egypt, and notes that considerable training in archery is
attested only in NK sources.
56 In the Mari tablets the spear is the most frequently mentioned weapon. See Hamblin
2006, p. 252.
57 Suzanne Richard (Richard 2006, p. 126) observes that “the general consensus among
scholars is that socketed (bronze) spearheads define the Middle Bronze urban era... .” but she argues that two or possibly three socketed spearheads found in the Levant
date as early as the EB IV period.
58 On the sickle-axe and sickle-sword see Hamblin 2006, pp. 66–71. On the sickle-sword
Hamblin observes (p. 71) that “[a]s with the Akkadian rectangular sickle-axe and the
Babylonian curved sickle-axe, the sharp blade of the weapon occupies only the upper
third, betraying its origin from the axe-head.”
59 Hamblin 2006, pp. 221–236, provides a detailed description of sieges in the Old
Babylonian period.
60 Kern 1999, p. 12; Burke 2008, p. 60.
61 Burke 2008, p. 48, notes that the terms “rampart” and “glacis” are often used inter -
changeably, but he restricts the term “glacis” for the outer facing of the rampart.
62 Burke 2008, pp. 56–59.
63 Burke 2008, p. 147 with Table 22, and p. 152 with Table 23.
64 Burke 2008, p. 144 with Table 20.
65 With reference to the composite bow that Naram-Sin appears to be holding on his
victory stele, Yadin 1963 proposed that the composite bow came into use in the armies
of Sargon and Naram-Sin in the Akkadian period. Yadin 1972, on the newly
discovered Mari slab, raised the date to the Early Dynastic period. Hamblin 2006,
pp. 89–95, concluded that in the Near East the composite bow did not become a
significant weapon until the 17th century BC. Although that is probably correct, I
believe that as a status weapon for kings and princes the composite bow had been
around since the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. Collon 2008 shows five
probable representations – three of them on cylinder seals – of a composite bow from
3rd-millennium Mesopotamia. For what certainly looks like the representation of a
composite bow on a stone slab at an Early Bronze Age tomb at Novosvobodnaya,
north of the Caucasus, see Shishlina 1997, p. 56 and Fig. 3.
100 Warfare in Western Eurasia