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General Category => Army Research => Topic started by: Andreas Johansson on May 28, 2024, 06:35:43 AM

Title: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Andreas Johansson on May 28, 2024, 06:35:43 AM
For unusual reasons (https://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=6750.msg102587#msg102587), I've been thinking recently of what a Middle Elamite (ca 1600-1200 BC) army might look like. AANE says that almost nothing is known except from a relief showing archers with helmet, tunic, and dagger (probably this one (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Susa%2C_Middle-Elamite_basrelief_of_warrior_gods_1600-1100_BCE.jpg)), on which shaky grounds I've previously toyed with the idea of borrowing the chariotry from my Mitanni - they're supposed to have been role models for charioteering all over the ANE, right? - and adding a horde of foot archers in tunics to round the army out.

But AANE is now forty years old, so maybe more evidence has turned up in the meantime? Discouragingly, the other wargamer's guide to the ANE I've got, Zeughaus' Die Heere im Alten Orient (2010) doesn't have any reconstructions of Elamites at all.
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Mick Hession on May 28, 2024, 10:58:38 AM
It might be worth posting this to the DBMMlist group Andrea's as Nigel Tallis is a member and should be able to confirm the current thinking
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: gavindbm on May 28, 2024, 10:17:50 PM
Quote from: Mick Hession on May 28, 2024, 10:58:38 AMIt might be worth posting this to the DBMMlist group Andrea's as Nigel Tallis is a member and should be able to confirm the current thinking

Good idea ... and please post any answer back here.
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Andreas Johansson on May 29, 2024, 06:20:15 AM
I did, though haven't had any direct response from Nigel yet.

Duncan did post this (paywalled) article (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/714657?journalCode=jcs), which might be useful, and Nigel said it should be on JSTOR next year.
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Andreas Johansson on June 02, 2024, 07:37:52 AM
User "andrewnz" over at TMP gave this reply:

QuoteI spent a lot of time looking around for images or information. My best single source resource was Potts, 1999. The archaeology of Elam: Formation and transformation of an ancient Iranian state. Cambridge University Press. There is a copy of the first edition on line with academia.edu

There were some great items in the Louvre: cylinder seal impressions, chariot wheel hoops, some stone reliefs.

Ultimately I decided that the Late Bronze Age was a very international era (long range trading tin to make the bronze) so perhaps well equiped Elamites did not look so different from others. More unarmoured archers with head bands as a nod to the much later Assyrian relief sculptures to be sure.

Also, that chariots were not mass produced in factories so they could also look different. And ideally should. But most pulled by armoured horses.

I think I can get access to the 2nd edition, so I'll report back if/when I get around to reading or skimming it.
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: DBS on June 03, 2024, 06:14:38 AM
Had a quick flick through my copy of Potts last night. Relevant chapter is no7.

Not a lot in there in terms of your question. Middle Elamite is arguably when the region was at its strongest, beating up Babylon and Assyria, marrying a lot of Kassite princesses, and rulers calling themselves "king of Susa and Anshan", though Susa itself seems to have waned with the seat of power 10km away at Haft Tepe.

No obvious signs of large palace organisation usually associated with the period and chariot squadrons. There are temple records, which mention expenditure on chariots and armour, but these seem to be sacred silver and gold gods' chariots in the temples. Also, are they true chariots or just processional vehicles.

My suspicion, no more than that, is that royalty probably had chariots, technology having been obtained via Babylon, but possibly not in large, tactically significant, numbers. Elam had controlled a little earlier the flow of tin to Mari, so no reason to assume a lack of bronze armour for those who merited it.

Perhaps just not a culture of palace chariot squadrons, rather than well led, effective hillmen, good at archery?

Of course, absence of evidence does not necessarily equal evidence of absence!
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Andreas Johansson on June 04, 2024, 12:30:38 PM
I've now given the chapter (2nd 2016 edition) a quick read-through myself, and the chief takeaway, from a military modelling point of view, seems to be that the Middle Elamites just weren't much interested in depicting warriors. (This affliction seems to be shared with their Kassite Babylonian contemporaries.)

Weapons found include swords, axes, and arrowheads - the apparent lack of spearheads perhaps supports the idea that Elamite infantry was largely archers (as Ashurbanipal had them depicted half a millennium later).

Potts only mentions chariots belonging to gods and kings, but the paper (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/714657?journalCode=jcs) Duncan linked to identifies a "a mid-fifteenth to mid-fourteenth century BCE state-controlled arsenal of war chariots and weaponry" at Haft Tepe, suggesting that charioteering was of practical military significance. It also makes good intuitive sense that chariots would be similarly useful in the Elamite lowlands as in neighbouring Mesopotamia - perhaps they were less popular at Anshan in the highlands.

Potts made no mention of the relief with archers mentioned above.
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: stevenneate on June 07, 2024, 09:54:33 AM
'Man in kilt with bow' about sums it up. I can't think of any other depictions for the specific period you mention, even Assyrian works. We're lucky that the Late Assyrians were great artists of those they crushed!
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Imperial Dave on June 07, 2024, 10:12:44 AM
And that they loved walnut whip helmets
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Andreas Johansson on June 08, 2024, 07:39:59 AM
What's the evidence for kilts? The above-mentioned relief shows tunics.
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Cantabrigian on June 08, 2024, 09:31:07 AM
Quote from: Andreas Johansson on June 08, 2024, 07:39:59 AMWhat's the evidence for kilts? The above-mentioned relief shows tunics.

Devils in Skirts, either way...
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Imperial Dave on June 09, 2024, 11:39:05 AM
 ;D
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: stevenneate on June 10, 2024, 01:20:19 AM
Routledge published a book on the Elamites in 2018.

I have not seen or read it so cannot vouch for its content unfortunately.

Álvarez-Mon, J., Basello, G.P., & Wicks, Y. (Eds.). (2018). The Elamite World (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315658032
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: stevenneate on June 10, 2024, 02:36:27 AM
There was also The Art of Elam c.4200-525 BC, published by Routledge in 2020.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003018254

I'm sure there's a dozen Slingshot articles to be prised from their hiding place in these two books!
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Imperial Dave on June 11, 2024, 06:26:21 AM
YES!
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: stevenneate on June 11, 2024, 10:31:26 AM
An expensive way to generate a dozen articles though, although I appreciate my sentiment trying to persuade someone else to spend the big bucks. I've just spent my book allowance on Assyrian archaeology to read on my next holiday excursion. I do that.
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Imperial Dave on June 11, 2024, 11:21:29 AM
I have lost count the amount of spend on publications, books and the like over the past few years.....what can I say. I am a book hoarder
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: stevenneate on June 14, 2024, 04:38:17 PM
It"s a great part of the hobby, or should I call it an affliction?
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Imperial Dave on June 14, 2024, 05:08:09 PM
Therapy
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: stevenneate on June 15, 2024, 02:14:25 AM
Then consider me on life support.
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Imperial Dave on June 15, 2024, 06:47:47 AM
quick....send journals!
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: stevenneate on June 17, 2024, 09:31:36 AM
Thanks Doc....
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Imperial Dave on June 17, 2024, 11:06:09 AM
speaking of which...Slingshot 352 is now at the printers
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: stevenneate on June 17, 2024, 01:48:22 PM
Yay!
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Imperial Dave on June 17, 2024, 05:40:32 PM
so that's your Christmas week reading sorted Steve
Title: Re: Sporting the Middle Elamite look
Post by: Andreas Johansson on August 01, 2024, 06:49:39 AM
Quote from: Andreas Johansson on May 29, 2024, 06:20:15 AMDuncan did post this (paywalled) article (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/714657?journalCode=jcs), which might be useful, and Nigel said it should be on JSTOR next year.
I found a pdf of this article: PM me if you want a copy (please include an email address to send the file to!).

It says that the arsenal at Haft Tepe / Kabnak was in the service of a charioteering warrior elite comparable to those of Hattusas, Alalakh, and Nuzi, emphasizing especially parallels with the last (which of course is the geographically closest). It doesn't offer a lot on appearance, but in saying that Elamite chariots would have looked and behaved much like Hurrian ones it offers some justification for the morphing I mentioned in the OP.

It does, incidentally, mention the production of spearheads at the site. Combined with the insistence that chariot warriors were primarily archers, the existence of foot spearmen is implied.