Scythian Bows Article

[Stephen Selby]

Thanks for sharing, well done........
but Stephen has reported recently there are findings of Scythian horn- bows done in the usual way: horn-belly, wooden core, sinew backing........much easier to do........
Michael

At my most recent visit (May 2010), my attention was drawn to a number of bows from Yanghai which partially featured the sinuous profile of the Scythian bows but were simpler in construction (indeed, some were self bows.) It was put to me that these represented an 'earlier stage'; but I could not find out on what basis that view was reached. (The staff who were talking to me were museum staff, not archaeologists.) I don't believe that any reliable C14 tests had been carried out on the different horizons at Yanghai. The variations could have been caused by co-habitation with a different cultural group or by non-working bows made for symbolic purposes. For this reason, I have held back from publishing details of the bows.

[Adam Karpowicz]

"If there are five bends in a Scythian bow, then only three of them conform to the natural bends in Ibex. The design is a reaction to its Near Eastern ancestor..."

Jack, I am not sure what you are trying to say. There is no question hornbows resemble animal horns and it may as well happened that this is how it all started. If that was ibex as the shape to follow in the case of Egyptians - that may be, but there are other horned animals with gently curved horns, not only ibex to serve as the "totemic" example. In the Scythian bow here, the entire bow was made on the base of the ibex horn (I am talking about the vertical strip inside). This points to a direct connection. If that is indeed a "reaction" to something earlier is a matter of speculation.

The association of curly horn with the shape of the bows is nothing particularly new. In Slavic languages the recurved ends of bows are called "roghi" - meaning "horns"...

Adam

[jack farrell]

Adam; I was just being rhetorical, that is all.

But the Egyptian bows were made from Ibex, it seems certain. Ageans are shown bringing Ibex horns as tribute. These horns are shown being sawed in the Royal bowmaking workshop. The complete horn strip conforms to the shape of the angular bow. (only 3/5 to the Scythian) It also seems most likely that the horn core was worked out earlier in the Near East.

Strangely, Herodotus sees Egypt as ancestral to Greek culture.

That the Scythians liked the iconography also would not be a surprise. They seem to enjoy the extreme shape of their bow as a cultural identifier.

[Adam Karpowicz]

I am not saying you are wrong about the Egyptian bow. However...

"The complete horn strip conforms to the shape of the angular bow. (only 3/5 to the Scythian)"

Does the thickness of horn (belly to back) in the Egyptian bow is as great as the vertical strip in the Scythian? Is it as narrow (side-to-side)? Did the strip have to come from the side walls of the horn, so the shape of the ibex horns had to be followed exactly?

I was under the impression the belly slat of horn in the Egyptian bow is still attached to a wooden core above (and the two side strips of wood). Plus, the horn slat was wider (side to side). Then it was sawn off the horn from its belly as a flat (however thick) strip. It would mean the horn could come from other animals and not necessarily had any particular association with ibex (or other). Basically, a bow which follows the shape of a (generic) horn. I am not saying the Egyptians did not use ibex, only that they could use other horns and were not necessasrily so infatuated with ibex as Scythians.

If the Egyptian bow was made with a side strip(s) of horn, as the Scythian, then the connection could be valid.

Adam

[Bede]

Adam,
I think Jack may have a point. The belly strip of many Egyptian angular bows are set in a groove, albeit produced by the belly side extentions of the side strips. And there are some bows where the central wooden core is missing entirely. It could be that it was eaten by insects, but why were the side strips intact.

I refer to the bow in Fig. 8b in Wallace E. McLeod's An Unpublished Egyptian Composite Bow in the Brooklyn Museum.

Since the centre strip of wood could be different in species to the side strips, it is possible some insect found it more attractive than the sides. The horn strips were sometimes destroyed by reaction to the damp in the tombs leaving hollows. If this happened in this case, it might indicate a similar design approach to the later Scythians. There is also the occurance of bows where the centre strip of wood was enclosed on the back and belly by horn and the strange case with alternating strips of horn and wood in the core in one of Tutankhamun's bows.

I am not a complete convert of the idea than bow shape was influenced by horn shape, but I can see constructional similarites between angular bows and Scythian bows.

On an aside about the use of side strips of horn, I wonder if those areas, where multiple strips were being used (as in Iran in recent centuries), were not trying to maximise the number of bellies that could be built from a fixed number of horns. I relate this to the importation of horns. If they are rare, they are probably valuable.

[Adam Karpowicz]

Bede,

My source of he Egyptian construction was McLeod's "Egyptian composite bows in New York". In all these bows the side strips were of wood, added to the sides of the normal horn/wood laminations. In some cases the horn lath was also laminated on top of the wood lath (at the back of bow). In one case there are two laminations of horn on the belly. These are all flat strips.

The horn laths were all around 2cm wide (side to side) and less than 1cm thick. Such strips can easily be taken from any horn available. Moreover, some of the bows had several butt-jointed horn strips - so, no "horn shape" there.

If you have a picture with a description of the Brooklyn bow with the side strips of horn of substantial thickness (more than 1 - 1.5 cm back to belly) and narrow at 0.5cm or less, please post them. However, in the absence of the inner strip, one will never know what it was. It could even be several, flat horizontal lams of horn (which the Egyptians obviously used as well). One can not make the case on the lack of evidence.

Adam

[JJ]

I think the cross sections of Egyptian composite bows given by Mcleod are in some cases "difficult" to interpret... Some of them were made after sketches of Howard Carter, another one after a description in an article. These should be used with caution. Other sections seem to be more reliable. Does somebody know something about the background of the author Wallace Mcleod?

I saw two egyptian composites in an exhibition in Hamburg and took some photos. They are of different construction and datation. Both were found in Theben. The first one, Museum of Berlin, must be the one of which Mcleod gives the section in Plate XIV, G. It can clearly be seen that a central vertical hollow section is present, that should have been the place for the - in this case gone - vertical hornstrip. The other bow, from New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, has a normal wooden core without a central groove with a flat, keeled horn strip on the belly. Wooden side strips are glued on. On it?s back the sinew layer is still present.





The bow with the vertical groove is opposed to what I would expect the YOUNGER one of them. Berlin Bow: 1292 - 1186 BC, New York Bow : 1650 - 1500 BC.



JJ

[Adam Karpowicz]

Thanks JJ, this is much more interesting than the usual ones. It seems from the picture that a little bit of the horn material is left in the central groove (it may be my imagination). Then one could examine the remains to see if the horn was indeed in one vert. strip or laminated as well. The construction of these ancient bows is so complicated. Is that sinew or more wood over the groove?

A friend of mine who is an antiquity professor did his PhD under McLeod. So, McLeod had to have an academic background.

Adam

[ginni]

For me is a mystery why the Scythian bow have so complicated construction, since the Egyptian composite bows have developed the much simple construction with flat core/horn and a very good design.
Making Egyptian bow should be far easier to build than Scythian bow and also looks more efficient.
Scythian bow looks like an technologically involution (same shape can be made with flat core/horn, like the one Lucas Novotni made).

[JJ]

There is something on the belly of the Berlin bow, that I thought of as a leftover of the belly horn strip, but when lightening it up with photoshop it seems to me that it is a piece of wood of the core that has gotten loose and shifted a little. I don?t see any horn in the central groove.




On the back there is the birch bark covering with lots of holes in it. I think that insects have eaten through it and that indeed all of the horn was eaten away. The grey substance between the wooden core and the bark can be the sinew/glue layer.



On the back of the New York bow I first thought to see a darkened sinew layer because of the irregular ridges in the surface, but again, looking closer, now I think it is a second hornstrip with grooves for better adhesion of the sinew layer.

Bede?s idea that the use of a smaller vertical horn strip in bow construction could have the reason of a certain shortage of horn material I find interesting. Maybe there was a tendency to make this kind of bow in addition to the "flat belly horn strip" construction as to use the ressource more effectively.

JJ

[Bede]

McLeod was a professor of Classics as I remember it in Canada and a member of the Society of Archer-Antiquaries. He had access to both literary material in Greek and Latin as well as knowing many practising archers and possibly some bowyers too. Judging from his publications, he was a keen observer. I used the past tense without justification. He may still be alive.

Adam,
JJ has supplied pictures of the bow I was thinking of. My access to the article was through an academic institution which doesn't encourage copying and redistribution.

I wonder at the vertical strips in Scythian type bows being necessarily from the sides of the horn. Surely cutting them from the front of the horn was just as easy (or hard). I think that as much of the horn as possible would have been used in the circumstances and it would only be limited by the cutting method.

I take your point about the Egyptians usually using flat strips, but I am not sure if that is restrictive. At least one bow had alternating strips that were arranged vertically.

[Adam Karpowicz]

I can not comment on your suggestion about cutting the vertical strips from the front of the horn. It may be so, but probably at the cost of more work. The sides could easily provide enough material, possibly enough for the whole bow. In both cases, the horn would yield similarly shaped strips.

I find it very interesting the oldest bows have horn in the core (however arranged), interspersed with wood. One explanation, as already put forward, would be the lack of good horn. There are other possibilities worth exploring.

Adam

[jack farrell]

Well Adam; I think it was you who suggested the practicality of using side wall horn for standing slats. The jump from Scythian to Angular is a natural given the construction similarities of some of those. Given this lead it is most natural to see the shape of a horn more clearly in the older of the two, the angular.

Also consider that there were angular bows more than one thousand years older than the Egyptian ones we have. Still there are ancient holdover techniques among those bows at hand.

I would like to turn to cult use of Ibex. In Tut's tomb there is a boat with two Ibex, can I say, figureheads. I understand there may be another of these out there. The cult association is not now known.

But among the Scythians there is something else of interest. In the Silk Road exhibit at the HMNS there was a bronze mirror with an Ibex handle. Turn the mirror around to see the Ibex and he is standing on the mirror.

There is also a post cap or such from the Black sea area with an Ibex standing on a kind of ball. What I see is that there is a reference to an Ibex with the moon. There are other examples.

Comments?

[Stephen Selby]

There are plenty of examples of Ibex totem art, for example in the Arthur M Sackler collections. Even I have several examples in my collection.

[JJ]

Sorry, I mixed up with the age of the two bows in my post. The bow with the vertical horn groove - the Berlin bow - strangely is in fact the YOUNGER and not the older one (I just corrected it in my previous post).

I don?t understand that discussion on "totems". Sure there were animal divinities, but what has that to do with the bows? There are dozens, possibly hundreds of animal gods, why should the bow represent just the ibex one. On scythian objects a lot of animal species are depicted, lions, red deer, horses and so on and so on. I think that is a bit of an exaggerated discussion. Besides, other horns are also curved, not just the one of the ibex. In fact I never saw much of a difference in ibex horns with the exception of the knobs.

JJ