hill forts. Beneath them were trained offi cers who oversaw
a well-disciplined infantry and cavalry. It is possible that
Axum’s army included elephants. Part of Axum’s ability to
protect its people from harm was its ability to project its
power overseas. Its navy could transport divisions of the
army throughout the Red Sea and along the southern coast
of Arabia and the Near East, and Axum used this ability to
eff ect wars and rebellions in areas it considered important to
its well-being. Oft en when a rebellion or war of conquest dis-
rupted Arabia, Axum would send its army to restore order
and place its friends as rulers.
On the continent of Africa, Axum shared power with
Egypt, Kush, and various small groups. Beginning around the
1470s b.c.e. it maintained trade relations with Egypt, which
were sometimes interrupted by wars and civil wars in Egypt.
Whether it meant to or not, Kush contributed to Axum’s se-
curity by protecting African trade routes from bandits and
nomadic marauders. Perhaps Axum’s greatest king, ‘Ezānā,
was in power when the kingdom of Kush expired under the
eff ects of farmland lost to desertifi cation and attacks from
nomads of the Sahara. ‘Ezānā forged peace treaties with the
nomads that were meant to protect Axum’s borders and its
trade, but the nomads who gave up their nomadic ways to
settle in the remains of Kush persisted in attacking trade car-
avans. Th e breaking point seems to have come when the Red
Noba mistreated ambassadors of Axum in 350 c.e. ‘Ezānā led
a punitive expedition into Kush, destroying villages along the
way. At Meroë his army defeated the Nobu. Losses on his side
seem to have been light, but his army may have k i l led as many
as 15,000 enemy warriors. He took home with him several
thousand head of cattle, many horses, and slaves.THE BANTU SPEAKERS
Although Axum persisted as an important power for another
thousand years, a people who would reshape Africa to the
present day were on the move to the west by 200 c.e. Th ese
were the Zande-speaking and Bantu-speaking peoples of
West Africa, probably the descendants of the farmers of the
Sahara who had fl ed south 1,000 or more years earlier. Th ey
had iron technologies, and their blacksmiths had learned how
to carbonize iron w it h charcoa l to ma ke steel. Th is was tricky,
because too much or too little carbon could result in metal
that was too soft or too brittle to be of good use. Th ey were an
agricultural people, and as they pushed the Pygmies and the
Bushmen out of their ancient territories, the Bantu speakers,
in particular, made the land permanently their own by set-
tling and farming it. Even though it is unlikely that the Bantu
speakers could summon huge armies, they could call upon
more warriors on short notice than could either the Pygmies
or the Bushmen.
Among themselves, the Bantu speakers at the end of
the ancient era fought wars that had well-understood rules.
Warriors, rarely more than 100 on each side, would gather
on open land. Th ey ca rr ied shields made of a ni ma l sk i ns, a nd
their weapons were usually spears. Th ey painted their facesand their bodies to make themselves look frightening. Actual
combat seldom took more than a few lives before one side
fl ed. In the event that neither side fl ed, the side that was win-
ning would refrain from wholesale slaughter by leaving an
opening for the losers to use for running away. It was against
the rules for one side to surround the other because it was
understood that trapped warriors would fi ght to the death,
increasing casualties for the winners as well as the losers. It
was from these warriors that the important military powers
of medieval central and southern Africa would evolve.EGYPT
BY MARIAM F. AYAD
Perhaps no other civilization survived as long as that of the
ancient Egyptians. In its long history Egypt not only invaded
and annexed foreign territories but also was occasionally
the subject of military conquest by invading armies. In dis-
cussing the development and organization of Egypt’s armed
forces and Eg y pt’s imperialistic role in histor y, it is important
to clarify terminology. Th e Egyptian word mesha, tradition-
ally translated as “army,” is used in reference not only to a
body of soldiers but also to any kind of expeditionary force,
such as a mining expedition or similar peaceful endeavor.
Th us the meaning of the word is not inherently militaristic
but much broader, perhaps even referring to any organized
group of individuals who undertake state-sponsored excur-
sions to achieve a state-sponsored objective, militaristic or
peaceful. Avoiding use of the word army when describing
Egypt’s military force might be prudent, because the term
would imply the existence of a national body of soldiers from
the beginning of Egyptian history until the demise of phara-
onic civilization, which was not the case.OLD KINGDOM (CA. 2575–CA. 2134 B.C.E.)
Th e earliest reference to a war in ancient Egyptian evidence
appears on the Narmer Pallet. On one side of the pallet is a
highly stylized pictorial representation of a king grasping
the hair of an enemy in one hand and holding a mace in
the other upraised hand. Th e king is shown in the process
of hitting the fallen enemy, a pose that became associated
with smiting enemies throughout Egyptian history. Th e
other side of the pallet depicts the king marching in a vic-
tory procession. Th e representation preserved on the pallet
has been interpreted as a record of a single militaristic ac-
tion that led to the forceful unifi cation of Egypt by a king of
Upper Egypt. Although most scholars subscribe to a theory
of a more gradual unifi cation process, this scene, one of the
earliest preserved, records some kind of a militaristic inter-
nal struggle.
As early as the Old Kingdom, Egypt wanted to acquire
the natural resources of the region immediately south of its
border, Nubia. To expand their kingdom’s boarders south-
ward, Egyptian forces occasionally mounted campaigns into
the southern region. Egypt’s southern expansion came as a1126 war and conquest: Egypt0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1126 1126 10/10/07 2:31:10 PM