In the Age of Hammurabi battles in open country, if they occurred at all, would
have occurred in asymmetrical warfare: such a battle may have been fought, that
is, if the king of a city decided to attack people who did not live in a city. In
Mesopotamia these would have been nomadic or semi-nomadic bedouin, Amorites
who lived in tents, or Gutian villagers in the foothills of the Zagros. In Egypt the
Kushites pressing northward into Upper Egypt or Libyans moving eastward into
Lower Egypt were certainly targeted in campaigns.
The men whom a king sent to do battle were not heavily armed and armored
members of a phalanx but skirmishers who wore no defensive armor and wielded
a single weapon: a bow, a sling, a spear or an axe. Most fighting men seem to
have come from the tribes of nomadic pastoralists. Men who lived within the walls
of a city were not often required to handle a weapon, while those who lived out -
side were likely to have a weapon readily accessible and to know how to use it
in defense of a herd or a flock. We may recall how (at I Sam 17:34–36) David
brags that as a lad he watched his father’s sheep and often slew or drove off lions
and bears. Nomadic pastoralists were especially ready to defend themselves and
their animals against either beasts or other nomads. Because they were not averse
to violence the nomads were sometimes a threat to a king’s land, and when they
caused trouble the king was compelled to drive them back into the wilderness.
For such a campaign the king impressed few of his own subjects into military
service, because few of them would have made good soldiers. Instead, he turned
to other nomadic communities and there found most of the archers, slingers and
spearmen he needed. Perhaps the king’s men and mercenaries would have looked
something like the wooden figurines of Nubian archers and Egyptian spearmen—
the latter carrying large leather shields—found in the Tomb of Prince Mesehti
(Mesehti was governor of Asyut, a short sail downstream from Karnak, late in
the Eleventh or early in the Twelfth Dynasty). Although they undoubtedly marched
together, there is no likelihood at all that the king’s warriors went into battle in
disciplined formations. Neither they nor their opponents would have worn
defensive armor, neither side could have had a chain of command, and in the
encounter it would have been every man for himself. Prisoners were seldom taken:
the victor would normally cut off the genitals of a wounded opponent or slit his
throat and decapitate him. A reward was given for every head and every penis
turned in as a trophy.
In Mesopotamia a nomadic tribe, such as the Banu-Yamina (“Sons of Yamin,”
or “Sons of the Right Side,” or “Sons of the South,” mentioned frequently in the
Mari texts), typically consisted of several clans, each clan supposedly descended
from its own eponymous ancestor. The clan, in turn, was scattered across many
encampments. A single encampment included only a few dozen men, because the
grass available within reach of an encampment was too sparse to feed a high
concentration of the nomads’ flocks and herds. When a king recruited several
hundred nomad mercenaries, they would necessarily have come from many
encampments. At seasonal festivals all the clans met in conclave at a traditional
holy place, and there an invitation could be made for a host of volunteers.
At one point Zimri-Lim of Mari recruited 5000 mercenaries from “the Hana,” which
70 Warfare in Western Eurasia