Hunnic Quiver

Stonethumb · Post by **Stonethumb** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 7:51 pm

Hello

I am just about to make a new quiver. I have a Hunnic style bow, and therefore it would be great to have a Hunnic style quiver too.

I could not find anything on the web that described this kind of quiver.

Do any of you know what the Hunnic quiver or similar steppe tribes' quivers looked like?

Grateful for replies

white hawk · Post by **white hawk** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 6:55 am

I'm not sure, but i think they used gorytos...

Andrew Hall · Post by **Andrew Hall** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 7:15 am

Stonethumb

The Hunnic style bows from the Niya M3 and M8 graves were found with combined bowcase and double-quivers. These are also illustrated on one of the Kurgan-Tepe plaques.

There is a picture of the Niya M3 archery kit here:
http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/3/5/21/c12989.htm
This shows the double-quiver with the bowcase hidden behind.

The Kurgan-Tepe or Orlat battle plaque is pictured and was discussed here, although the link was not working when I tried it before posting:
http://www.transoxiana.org/Eran/Articles/mode.html

This type of bowcase/quiver is probably a bit bulky for use on foot.

Regards

Andrew

Stonethumb · Post by **Stonethumb** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 11:00 am

Thanks a lot. I agree that it would be difficult to use these quivers at foot. I think I will make a turkic quiver or something. They look realy nice

.

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 12:30 pm

Judging from what has been published, the bow case part of the bow case and quiver is soft leather or cloth and so would not get in the way too much when the bow was not in it. The two tube quiver could be made so the shorter tube exposed the fletching and the longer tube completely covered the arrows for protection. Then you would only have to change the angle to adjust for your height so that the quiver did not drag on the ground.

Orda Khan · Post by **Orda Khan** » Thu May 10, 2007 10:23 am

Andrew,
Do you have any information, dimensions, etc about the Niya M3 bow in your first link? I'd certainly appreciate if you do.

Andrew Hall · Post by **Andrew Hall** » Thu May 10, 2007 5:46 pm

The bow is from Niya Cemetery 1 Tomb M3 (95MN1M3) in Xinjiang, China. It was found in the grave of a royal couple in 1995. A sample from the grave was carbon dated to 215+/-60AD.

Overall length 61 3/4" round the curves. The following dimensions were scaled from several photos, so subject to some error. Siyah plates 15 1/2 and 9 1/4", limbs 14 3/4 and 13 1/4" and grip plates 9 1/4" long. Limb width circa 2" near grip, tapering to base of siyahs.

Found with three arrows 33.1" long, quiver with tubes of 35x3.9 and 29.1x3.1" and bowcase of 42.7x7.1". (These dimensions, together with the overall bow length, from the archaeological report on the M3 tomb in Xinjiang Wenwu 1999-2).

The site also supplied a similarly asymmetric but narrower bow (95MN1M8), two roughly symmetrical very wide-limbed bows similar to Stephen Selby's Khotan bow (59MNM001 and 95MN1M4), a wooden self-bow (also 95MN1M4) and two unidentified bows (95MN1M1 - probably composites, as the grave contained bowcases).

Regards

Andrew

Stephen Selby · Post by **Stephen Selby** » Fri May 11, 2007 2:53 am

I have these sorts of Xianbei figures dating from around 450AD:

But clearly, these wide-limbed bows should not have been able to fit in the bow holsters that are shown. I don't really have an answer to that

And the quiver:

Orda Khan · Post by **Orda Khan** » Fri May 11, 2007 10:00 am

Andrew,
Thanks for those details, much appreciated. This bow is intriguing with the upper siyah being longer than the limb. It is a little hard to tell from this photograph, the lower siyah appears to be recurved or it could be some distortion as there looks like it is slightly damaged? What would the curved shape be in the smaller arrow tube? There appears to be evidence of a serving on the string.

Stephen,
Regarding the bow case, I would put it down to a slight inaccuracy on behalf of the artist, which is common even to this day. Osprey publications feature a few questionable scale details; I would say the same for the arrow lengths in your second pic, which appear to be quite short. In the scenes on the Orlat plaque, some of the figures carry a strung bow which is obviously the wrong way around in the bowcase. We can overlook things like this as they are minor details which do not detract from the overall insight we get from the whole.

It would be interesting to establish the period where combined Gorytos style cases gave way to the seperate quiver and bowcase.
I really should get round to joining the Society of Archer Antiquaries

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Fri May 11, 2007 1:51 pm

Stephen's figures are at about the changing point. I am in Korea at the moment and the similarity of the quiver in Stephen's figure to some early Korean quiver parts is remarkable.

I think that the change from gorytus to quiver and bow case might be more complicated than it first seems. There might have been several transitions that gradually merged. There were a lot of cultures involved.

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 12:39 am

Please excuse my late reply to the Hunnic quiver question. In my article on Sakian rock art of the Silk Road, many pictographs have been discovered of archers from the last centuries Bc to the first centuries AD on foot wearing a single quiver at the waist. These are shown as almost horizonal. This would presumably be a tube-type quiver cylinder of rolled rawhide with a running stitch of the same holding it together. Some stuffing might have prevented the arrows from falling out on their own or maybe the lidded version was used or eighter.

The complete set found in Xinjaing does not look to be joined permanently together so maybe the arrangement was a flexible one.

Saka and Hunns were contemporaries/antagonists. I am not able to scan a pic presently but hopefully soon. -j-

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 1:56 am

Jack,
Are you talking about the Xiongnu or the Huns? When the Huns were invading Europe, the Saka as a political entity were out of the picture.

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 4:27 am

Bede; I am elaborating on Andrews post about Xinjiang finds from early AD. Xiongnu is one of the many Chinese synonyms for Hunns.

Saka remains are often confused with those of their more famous neighbors, Hunns.

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 5:20 am

Jack,
The Xiongnu are believed by many people to be the ancestors of the Huns in Europe, but the two names are not synonymous. The Xiongnu state at various times controlled what is now Xinjiang, but mainly in the first two centuries BC when there was active competition between them and the Western Han Empire of China.

The Xiongnu split into a Northern and a Southern confederation when their state broke apart due to civil wars. Scholars speculate that part of one of the confederations migrated westwards and eventually became the Huns in Europe. However, that does not imply that they were racially or linguistically related to the main body of the Xiongnu who stayed north of China until they were either wiped out or absorbed by their neighbours.

There are two other important nomad confederacies who moved through Xinjiang, the Wusun and the Yuezhi.

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:56 pm

Bede; I assume that this is a personal preference of yours as the literature is rife with examples identifying the Xiongnu as the Central Asian Hunns. There is no strong countertheory.

Dr. Karasev. co-author of "Shamans", "In the fourth century AD the first seed of the Turkic tribes is to be seen among the Hunns of Mongolia."

TB magazine printed the first part of our article recently. -j-

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