THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN COMPOSITE ANGULAR BOW
Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2014 4:09 am
Here is a short article from one of the magazines in my collection of pre-1970 archery magazines. The magazine itself is the National Field Archery of America's own magazine called 'ARCHERY'. The article is by one Eugene Robinson on pages 4 and 5 of the April 1951 edition.
Figure 3 of the article needs to be closely followed during reading to understand what is being explained. The diagramme has many small direction markers to different parts of the bow's construction which can be a bit difficult to follow.
The bows themselves are very sophisticated indeed. I had not realised how complicated they were. Characteristically with many eastern composite bows, they were basically a composite of sinewed back, horn belly and a core of wood with a difference in this case reminiscent of the construction of the Japanese Yumi. How the handle was spliced has always been a question in my mind. The bend in the diagrammes do not suggest that it was heat bent, but rather that the limbs were spliced in the same manner of the siyahs of the mongol and other asiatic bows. the author does not explain how this was done presumably because he was not able to examine a bow without its protective coverings. Where the horn was sourced is not discussed. If it were from the Asian buffalo, it begs the question of how widespread was ancient Egyptian trade and whether they were in trade contact with south eastern Asia, or was the horn used that from their very long horned domestic cattle commonly seen on public building reliefs.
The other bow I would like to have seen discussed at some time was the standard military issue bow which apparently from some sources I recall reading was made from indigenous Acacia but which had the ends well bent into deflex presumably to lessen the bending load on the wood which would have been very dry from the Egyptian climate, while still allowing their long draw to or past the ear. It did not make it to this article of course, but would have been interesting.
Anyway, the article has been made into PDF format for members to read and/or download.
Figure 3 of the article needs to be closely followed during reading to understand what is being explained. The diagramme has many small direction markers to different parts of the bow's construction which can be a bit difficult to follow.
The bows themselves are very sophisticated indeed. I had not realised how complicated they were. Characteristically with many eastern composite bows, they were basically a composite of sinewed back, horn belly and a core of wood with a difference in this case reminiscent of the construction of the Japanese Yumi. How the handle was spliced has always been a question in my mind. The bend in the diagrammes do not suggest that it was heat bent, but rather that the limbs were spliced in the same manner of the siyahs of the mongol and other asiatic bows. the author does not explain how this was done presumably because he was not able to examine a bow without its protective coverings. Where the horn was sourced is not discussed. If it were from the Asian buffalo, it begs the question of how widespread was ancient Egyptian trade and whether they were in trade contact with south eastern Asia, or was the horn used that from their very long horned domestic cattle commonly seen on public building reliefs.
The other bow I would like to have seen discussed at some time was the standard military issue bow which apparently from some sources I recall reading was made from indigenous Acacia but which had the ends well bent into deflex presumably to lessen the bending load on the wood which would have been very dry from the Egyptian climate, while still allowing their long draw to or past the ear. It did not make it to this article of course, but would have been interesting.
Anyway, the article has been made into PDF format for members to read and/or download.
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN COMPOSITE BOW.pdf- (872.25 KiB) Downloaded 160 times