步兵陣型：米索不達美亞
Infantry Formation: a study of the military culture of MesopotamiaAuthor: Chan Tze Wai
Introduction – Acknowledge Military History
War was, and continued to be one of the core foundations of our history progression, whereas the development of military history in modern studies often covered by gloom. For recent decades, western historians and western academic field believed warfare studies to belong to another profession which accompanied with the rise in social history and resentments of wars since the World War. This academic environment applied on studies of ancient civilization as well, which many traditional researches focused on political bureaucracy, economies developments, social cultures and relative phenomenon. Fortunately, western historians had turned back to the military history and military science in the last decade especially in America; and the studies on warfare of ancient Near East started. This piece will work on the history of warfare, exploring the issue with illustrations on the military culture of ancient Mesopotamia.
Method and Study Subject – Compare for reasoning
In order to analyze the military culture in ancient Near East, we must prompt into the investigation of the Mesopotamia Civilization; and which I will fulfill a sophisticated research with the aid of comparative methods, as many historians wished, to discover inspirations out of basic understandings. According to my own expertise, the Greek military culture, with concentration on their infantry culture, was chosen to compare with the infantry culture in ancient Near East.
Infantry was the most essential and fundamental unit in any armies and formed the cheapest and most reliable force in ancient era. When we look upon Mesopotamia, rigid infantry formation had been invented and introduced early as the third millennium. And on the Greek case, there were only significant infantry formational warfare since the end of its Dark Age. Further study delivers the phenomenon of declining infantry rigid and systematic formation system in Mesopotamia. This piece of research would put efforts on the study of infantry culture of Mesopotamia in order to give analytical responses to the question.
Infantry Formation
Formation, which concerning about the grouping and orderliness of military units, was a key in the operational art with illustration of modern technological military term. Battles were fought usually not always as the commanders anticipated, but following some common practices or culture, especially for the ancient period which communication was extremely poor during fighting. The infantry warfare in both the Near East and Greece presented systematic formation.
In our source of ancient Near East, many came from limited archaeological evidence. A strong evidence for infantry formation in ancient Mesopotamia came from “The Stele of the Vultures” shown in Figure 1a and 1b below.
(Figure 1a)
(Figure 1b)
“The Stele of the Vultures” was the Sumerian stele made to celebrate the victory of king Eannatum of Lagash over Umma which at about 2400 B.C. And with these steles, we may observe the image of infantry warfare in early Mesopotamia dated at the third millenium. The infantrymen inside the stele illustrated a neat and tight grouping, eventually a formation in military term, which proved a early development of operational art in infantry warware in Mesopotamia. This image and notion of infantry can be easily linked with the Greek heavy infantry, the hoplite.
The word “Hoplites” came from the Greek word “hoplon”, which was the shield of the infantryman himself. Hoplites were commonly defined as “heavy infantry” because of their bronze armors and other equipments which were relatively bulky and well-prepared comparing to every infantry units throughout the ancient time. One thing that must not be neglected from the hoplite warfare was the “phalanx”, which was known as a systematic formation and a significant operational art used in hoplite battles. Its origin was a formation that depends on the “cohesion” and “crushing” powers, which cohesion provided the endurance and crushing provided the formation with a winning condition.
Although we had no important sources and strong evidences to prove that the similar formation in Sumerians at the third millennium experienced the operational art as the Greek had since the eighth century B.C., the two shared some basic elements in infantry warfare. For instance, the infantrymen portrayed by the steles of Sumerians carried crushing spears which were not the battling axes or cubs. In the concept of military science, if infantry were undergoing individual fighting in the battle, the weapons of choice would definitely be close-in weapons such as axes, cubs in ancient period and swords, hitting weapons in later Mediaeval time, but not the long weapons like crushing spears. The infantrymen of Sumerians stood in a close distance, pointing their spears to the front, we can investigate the formational warfare of infantry in the third millennium Mesopotamia.
Wolfram von Soden even called the Sumerian infantry formation in the Greek term, “phalanx”, somehow was inappropriate. We had no further evidences in explaining the details of the Sumerian formation, which we have no idea on the conscription system and training condition. Despite from that particular point, Wolfram had raised that the Akkadian words for battle ranks, “sidru” and “sidirtu” indicated a thoroughly methodical arrangement of units; and thus we can understand the military culture of Mesopotamia in a better sense.
Rigid and systematic formation of infantry in southern Mesopotamia had believed to remain as the dominating military ideology of infantry warfare until the beginning of the first millennium. The change in military culture usually accompanied by various kinds of factor, and while comparing to the Greek, which phalanx warfare continued to be flourishing not later than the 300 B.C., many question would be raised; and I would tried to analyze possible explanations on this issue.
Metallurgy and Equipment
Mesopotamia was the first civilization that entered the Bronze Age, at about 3200 B.C. Supposing that Mesopotamia’s flourishing metallurgy and early started bronze manufactory, which proved by many archaeological sites in both the northern and southern area, would brought to the area with surplus of military industry bases. But irony this hypothesis was fail in explaining the relatively light armament in the common infantry units found in Mesopotamia, till the mid-first millennium.
(Figure 2a)
(Figure 2b)
Figure 2a is the “Standard” of Ur founded at third millennium showing image of Sumerian soldiers and Figure 2b is stele of Naram-Sin, king of Akkadian, at the end of the third millennium showing a victory celebration. From these two archaeological evidences, we can observe the common characteristic of the soldiers among the early and mid Bronze Age, which equipments were light and armaments were insufficient. The Sumerians used only armor made from cotton and thick clothes, or somehow we can say that there were no conspicuous armors.
If the protection to the foot soldiers was a lack, the formational operation would easily hindered by disturbing. For instance, using missile weapons like arrows and throwing spears would cause great damages to the rigid infantry formation, and hence orderliness of formation decline. The Parthian of Anatolia was famous for its cavalry archers in carrying such kind of disturbing tactics, which known as “Parthian shot” in modern language.
If we just grossly compare the case of the third millennium of Mesopotamia, which probably at the level of early and middle Bronze Age, to the first millennium Greek phalanx warfare, which during the High Bronze Age, we would be cursorily to argue that was the conclusion. But neglecting from this difference in period, the idea and inspirations from the armaments give strong guidance in the study of infantry culture in ancient Mesopotamia. If early fail in armament would discourage the development of the operational art in infantry formation, then, what would be the reasons for the same case continued to the High Bronze Age and even Iron Age?
In the following we will go deeper into the question of the development of infantry culture in Mesopotamia by investigating the role of infantry and answering the question with illustrations.
The role of Infantry in Mesopotamia Warfare
Greek hoplite and phalanx warfare were distinctive in the world history. In Mesopotamia, the infantry formation declined desperately into sorrow since the second millennium. As I had discussed above, the progression of metallurgy and armor industries would hopefully brought the Infantry formational warfare back into its operational trend. The reality had again disproved this hypothesis, which no more evidences on later period marked any image of infantry formation. To solve the question, I would use several perspectives to analyze the role of infantry in Mesopotamia.
The first consideration was the sources and forming elements of infantrymen in Mesopotamia. Although thing would change situation, whereas in the case of Mesopotamia, the forming class of the infantry was rather stable throughout the millenniums. Conscription was carried out to acquire force, and which the subjects of conscription were lower class of the society. Sargon of Akkadian Empire had made conscriptions and even in the Neo-Assyrian Empire conscripted a large sum of force reaching more than 10,000. With such a large armed force from lower class, there was no mean in providing infantry with sufficient armaments and equipments, either by the governor, nor the poor lower class. On the other hand, the class of hoplite in ancient Greece which was composed of wealthy farmers and property owners:
“These (refer to poor class) are the ones who give strength to the city much more than the hoplites or the well-born or the good men.”
(Xenophon, “The Constitution of the Athenians 2”)
Greek hoplites were supposed to carry their equipments on their own favors, and usually a battle of phalanx would only consisted of few hundreds, which diverse from the Mesopotamian experience. When comparing the case in ancient Mesopotamia and the Greek, we could figure out the massive conscription system, called into being the doom of formational infantry warfare in clear operational level.
Despite from the institutional constraint on infantry development, the nature of infantry also discouraged further development on rigid formation practice of infantry warfare. Basically, cavalry had no superiority over infantry in term of hand-to-hand combat, sometime even drawbacks if riders could not manage proficiently on the horseback. And constrained by the horsemanship, the weapons of choice in cavalry were always hard question to ancient civilization. For examples, cavalry could hardly equip with bows; and if only to form cavalry archers, soldiers must had trained by their childhood on the horseback as nomadic did. In the Neo-Assyrian period, horses used by archers were usually based on transporting foot archers, but not the case of cavalry archers.
Nevertheless, the vital weaknesses of infantry were its poor mobility and aggressiveness in military role. Although infantry could keep in massive, it was incapable in forming the winning condition. The style of infantry role in army was to undergo function of attrition, which probably deciding the endurance of battles. Cavalry took the active role in tactic of battles since the High Bronze Age. It exercised advantage of mobility to crush enemies and separate their armies. As a result, keeping rigid formation in Mesopotamia would suppose to be not mean for its geographical condition.
Unlike Greek military culture, which it developed on hilly relief that unflavored cavalry and surrounding by no major nomadic tribes; the Mesopotamia face complex condition rather than monoculture development. The southern part of Mesopotamia, the Sumerian had to face Assyrians from the north in its early dynasty, while Assyrians faced nomadic tribes from the mountain side and Hittites of Anatolia. Greek faced only Greek before the Persian War and the rapid uprising of Macedonians, which from eighth century B.C. to fifth century B.C. the phalanx warfare transformed to concrete military culture in monoculture development. Meanwhile, the unrest situation encountered by Mesopotamians discouraged the maintenance of any systematic operation art as the phalanx of Greek.
Conclusion – Declining of Rigid Formation in Infantry Warfare
With the illustrations of Mesopotamian infantry development in term of its operational art, we could understand more on the concept on ancient military. A rigid infantry formation would hardly be maintained in early Mesopotamia since the undeveloped metallurgy. And before the consolidation of such military culture, the unrest condition of Mesopotamia failed to foster a cultural practice of formational infantry warfare. And finally we can portrait and reconstruct the reasons of the development practice of Mesopotamia.
In fact, the decline of rigid formational practice in infantry warfare experienced by Mesopotamia repeated to the Greek, when Alexander entering the Asia. After Alexander’s death, the successors, which had influenced by the eastern military culture, began to abandon the phalanx ideology which their fore fathers firmly convinced to believe. And the further study on the post-Alexander military culture would hopefully give us profuse inspirations on the later military culture developments.
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Doyne Dawson, The First Armies (London: Cassell & Co, 2001), p.82.
Sage, Michael M., Warfare in ancient Greece: a sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1996), p.25.
Bradford, Alfred S., With arrow, sword, and spear: a History of warfare in the ancient world, (London: Praeger, 2001).
Hanson, Victor Davis, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp.19-39.
Wolfram von Soden,. Donald G.. Schley trans., The Ancient Orient: An Introduction to the study of the Ancient Near East (Leominster: Gracewing, 1994), p.82.
Ibid.
James D. Muhly, “Mining and Metalwork in Ancient Western Asia”, in J. Sasson ed., Civilizations of the Ancient Near East(New York: Scribner, 1995), pp.1501-1503.
Ibid, pp.1503-1506. Gary M. Feinman & T. Douglas Price ed., Archaeology at the Millennium: A Sourcebook (New York, Kluwer Academic, 2001).
Doyne Dawson, The First Armies (London: Cassell & Co, 2001), pp.84-85.
Ibid, p.96.
Doyne Dawson, The First Armies (London: Cassell & Co, 2001), pp.84-85.
Wolfram von Soden,. Donald G.. Schley trans., The Ancient Orient: An Introduction to the study of the Ancient Near East, p.82-83.
Sage, Michael M., Warfare in ancient Greece: a sourcebook, p.31.
市川定春著，林耿生譯，《世界武器甲胄圖鑑》(台北，尖端出版，2006)，頁26。
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轉自：http://ashahi.com.hk/main/viewtopic.php?p=2742#2742
原作者：絕鬼蘿莉太夫 什麼都是英文阿 米索不達美亞都不是中國，要英文都不出奇怪∼
可以還可以問問絕鬼蘿莉太夫∼ 絕鬼蘿莉是香港歷史系的學生
這篇文章映像在裸體團看過，應該是他學校的論文吧
只可惜沒辦法看到這篇文章的圖
[ 本帖最後由 過風典馬 於 2008-2-26 15:59 編輯 ] 找到發文的地方了
http://ashahi.com.hk/main/viewtopic.php?t=564
原來是在旭日
[ 本帖最後由 過風典馬 於 2008-2-26 21:12 編輯 ] 譯堂承包英文譯中文的服務嗎?
當中有些字還真看不懂= = 目前沒有~~如果你用翻譯器的話自己可以了解六七成的意思~~至於翻譯的話我也不敢誤人子弟阿~~
[ 本帖最後由 手天 於 2008-4-3 23:55 編輯 ]
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