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 BCwere
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
BChad 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 con -
ventionally 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 BCMesopotamians 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.
Sieges in the age of Hammurabi
Siege warfare in the Age of Hammurabi must be clearly differentiated from sieges
in later periods of ancient history.^59 In classical antiquity the siege of a city—such
as the Spartans’ siege of Athens in 404 BC, or the Visigoths’ siege of Rome in
410 CE—was often the culmination of a war, and the prerequisite for those con -
ducting the siege was the decisive defeat of their enemy in battle if not the complete
destruction of the enemy’s military capacity. In Hammurabi’s Mesopotamia, in
contrast, when a king besieged a city it was not because he had already defeated
the enemy. When Hammurabi and his contemporaries went to war, they fought
no preliminary battle of any significance but proceeded directly to the siege itself.
An ambush and mêléemight have occurred when the king of one city sent an
“army” to besiege another city: the king of the city about to be besieged might
have posted some of his fighting men in an ambush along the way, to harass the
would-be besiegers and to delay or discourage their arrival.
72 Warfare in Western Eurasia