December 3, 2018

Weapons

By Stuart Munro-Hay

Military equipment is shown on certain stelae at Aksum. The so-called `Stele of the Lances’ is now known to be part of Stele 4 (after the DAE notation), whose apex is to be found elsewhere in the town (Chittick 1974: 163); on it two spears, one with a long blade and one with a shorter blade, were depicted. The Ethiopian slave Wahsi, one of the first of his countrymen to embrace Islam, was famed for his skill with the spear. Ibn Ishaq’s comment here is interesting, in that he specifically mentions that Wahsi could “throw a javelin as the Abyssinians do, and seldom missed the mark”. Wahsi himself questioned later at his house in Homs, mentioned that at the time when he killed Hamza, the prophet Muhammad’s uncle, in battle, he was “a young Abyssinian, skillful like my countrymen in the use of the javelin” (Guillaume 1955: 371, 376). He also killed the false prophet Musaylima with his javelin after Muhammad’s death. It seems from the reports about Wahsi’s career that spear-fighting was an Ethiopian specialty at the time. On the reverse of the Stele of the Lances is depicted as a round shield. What may be around shield is also carved on the back of the still-standing Stele 3. The Arab author al-Maqrizi, who died in the mid-fifteenth century, mentions that the Beja still used shields of buffalo hide called `aksumiyya’ and `dahlakiyya’ (Maqrizi, al-Khitat Ch. 32, in Vantini 1975: 621). The former was made of buffalo-skin, reversed or `turned around the side’. Illustration 58. The reverse of the so-called Stele of the Lances (part of no. 4), depicting a round shield.

A shotel is a curved sword originating in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian swordsmen who were trained in using this weapon were known as shotelai

No personal armor has yet been found, nor are there any surviving representations of soldiers, except from one most unusual source. In the Musée des Tissus, Lyon, there is a brightly colored woven textile fragment, apparently of Egyptian manufacture of the sixth century, which, it has been suggested, is a copy of a Persian textile based on an original fresco (Browning 1971: 176). Grabar thought it might be either imported from Persia or made in a factory in the Roman empire after an Iranian model (1967: 326). It came from the excavations at Antinoë, and is thought to represent a battle scene from one of the Yemeni (or Aksumite — Grabar, 1967: fig. 382) wars of the time of Khusrau I. A seated potentate, possibly the Persian king himself or perhaps his viceroy, is enthroned, seated in a hieratic pose holding his sword, point downwards, watching a contest between Persian warriors and black and white troops. The Persians are shown mounted or on foot, fully clothed with tunic and trousers, and armed with bows. Their adversaries wear only a small kilt, and what seems to be a sword-belt diagonally across one shoulder; a black warrior, who seems to be a captive tied by a rope to a Persian horseman, has his broad-bladed, flat-ended sword slung behind his back. The white warriors are long-haired, like the Persians and earlier Yemenis as depicted on their coins and in sculpture, and one holds a small round shield. This textile may provide the only picture we have of an Aksumite soldier, albeit fighting in the Yemeni wars outside Aksumite control. The Periplus (Huntingford 1980: 21-2) lists certain weapons among the imports into the Aksumite region. Iron (sideros) used for spears is specified, the spears being used for hunting elephants and other animals as well as for war. Swords are also in the list, and iron and steel figure as raw material.

Tomb finds at Aksum have revealed iron weapons, including tanged spear-heads which closely resemble those on the Stele of the Lances. Iron knives or poniards, probably originally with bone or wood handles, were also found, and, from Matara (Anfray and Annequin 1965: pl. LXIV, 1), came a handle of bronze decorated on each side with bosses formed by the heads of large nails. The Aksumite kings depicted on the coins sometimes hold a spear (or, in Aphilas’ case — Munro-Hay 1984: 50 — what is apparently a sword), and spears and shields are mentioned in the description of the Byzantine embassy to Ethiopia by John Malalas (see Ch. 7: 2). A few arrow-heads, but no swords as yet, have been found during archaeological excavations in Ethiopia.

Although there is as yet no direct evidence, one would suppose that horses were known and used in warfare; some of the regiments could perhaps have been cavalry forces. That horses have valued possessions in at least one of the lands under Aksumite hegemony is shown by the burial of horses, in elaborate silver and jeweled harness, at the tombs of the `X-Group’ monarchs at Ballena (Kirwan 1973). In later times in Ethiopia favorite chargers were of such importance that a leader could be named after his horse; one suggestion even relates the `Bisi’-title of the kings to their horses (Pankhurst 1961: 30, n. 68).

The use of elephants for Kaleb’s state chariot, and the report (Photius, ed. Freese 1920: I, 17-19) of one of the Byzantine ambassadors, Nonnosus, that he saw some 5000 of Ethiopians rarely trained them (Wolska-Conus 1973: 354). Camels would have been used in desert warfare, and two camel-riding spies were captured by Ezana during his Noba campaign. Camels, as well as donkeys or mules, may have been employed as transport animals.