The First Sieges in History (5,000—1,500 BC)

the Arch of Titus Towers at the Eastern end of the Roman Forum it commemorates one of the greatest triumphs of the Roman Emperor Titus the conquest of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD it is no coincidence that this Monument occupies such a central position on the Forum sieges have been among the most memorable events ever and have a special place in stories myths and Collective memory for example the conquest of the Hebrew City of Jericho by Joshua has great significance in the B the conquest of Troy in Greek and Roman mythology and the siege of Leningrad in Russian memory culture given the intensity of sieges this is understandable according to the historians Jeremy Armstrong and Matthew trundle quote no other military encounter comes as close to a total war experience as a Siege of a major city end quote but since when has this been the case when did the first sieges take place and what did they look like and what Siege equip equipment was used in this video we address these questions and search for verifiable traces of the earliest sieges in history but before we continue I'd like to introduce today's sponsor who made my life easier when visiting France and specializes in teaching languages through real life conversations Babel I've been visiting France at least once a year in summer with my significant daughter and dog and I usually have the same problem she speaks French and I don't or at least not very much of it it's just annoying not being able to jump into conversations I remember well that in the beginning when we visited France for the first time I couldn't even ask for the check this pushed me to finally start putting the work and learn what 9 years of school in Switzerland couldn't get somewhat fluent in French it's still an ongoing process but Babble is a big helper I've done a couple of lessons so far and here's what I like about it firstly Babble teaches practical conversations so you can actually go out in into the word and use the phrases you learned 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and build permanent settlements they felt the need to protect their homes they soon began to build fortifications particularly famous examples of early fortifications are Jericho which had a city wall from the 8th millennium BC the city of chatal huk where the outer wall of the dwelling formed a closed front and the salt production site of Sal nitata in present day Bulgaria soon most cities in large villages were fortified and of course it was not long before people found ways to overcome these walls according to Armstrong and trundle archaeological evidence Britain sources and pictorial representations from Egypt and the near East suggest that quote as long as we had stable communities we seem to have had assaults on communities end quote however not all attacks on communities are sieges so let's first ask what constitutes a Siege in the first place according to the historian Peter Wilson five features characterize a Siege first firstly it is a conflict of sufficient importance to be considered an isolated event secondly all parties involved must fight over an object such as a city with the attacker separated from the defender for example by a wool one of the parties must attack this boundary while the other defends it trying to stall the attacker until help arrives or until they run out of resources so simply put a Siege is a battle for a fortified Place defended by one party while the other tries to get in to overcome fortifications an attacker had five basic Methods at hand from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages they changed surprisingly little a procedure's options were to scale the wall breach it undermine it surround the city or Fortress or use a strategy of War these methods could be used all at once adapted to the situation and combined with other strategies such as intimidation or distraction by attacking another important Target this is already true for the earliest sieges so without further Ado let's look for their first traces more than 4,000 years ago in the southeast of modern day Syria on the banks on the Euphrates River lay the city state of Mari in 1971 the archaeologist Andre parrot found a small stone slab with a war scene in the ruins of this former Cultural Center it was was created between 2550 and 2,400 BC and shows a soldier in typical Samaran armor holding a large curved shield and a Archer recognizable as a soldier of Mari by his Overcoat aiming at the enemy from behind the shield above them a naked man appears to fall this depiction is usually interpreted as a Siege scene because the shape of the shield and its size would have been useful when fighting against an enemy in an elevated position also so such a shield could not really be used for quick Maneuvers due to its size this fragment from Mari is one of the earliest tangible depictions of a Siege there are older ones but these are very abstract for example the so-called Libyan pallet which was made between 3,200 and 3,000 BC and shows seven towns Under Siege but the first traces of urban Warfare date to even earlier recently archaeologists found large quantities of air dried clay bullets dating to 3,500 BC in the ancient city of hamar in northeastern Syria along with widespread signs of Destruction they indicate that archaeologists might have uncovered the first Siege in history apart from the archaeological record we also have early texts that describe sieges of debatable historicity among them are for example the siege of Arata in around 2,600 BC which is mentioned in a legendary account from SU Tor and the siege of uro which is said to have taken place somewhat later and is recorded in the Epic of gilgames after that in the second half of the third millennium BC we find much more references to sieges according to the historian Aaron Burke the sources even clearly indicate that they were the predominant form of conflict in Mesopotamia during the Bronze Age while hardly any significant battles were recorded in the near East before the Battle of megido which is usually dated to 1, 457 BC the references to sieges are all the more numerous under the third dynasty of ER for example at least 12 major cities were besieged within 96 years some more than once and one even 11 times a similar picture emerges in Egypt according to the historian Robert Schulman almost all of the numerous pictorial representations of wars in tombs from the old and middle kingdoms show an attack on a fortified site so it seems that sieges were very common and probably the dominant form of warfare in the third or second Millennia BC either way they decisively shaped Warfare in the Bronze Age thanks to the numerous accounts from Mesopotamia especially from the Mari archives which are considered one of the best sources on Military and political activities in northern Mesopotamia and the lant but also thanks to numerous wall reliefs and tomb paintings from Egypt we get a reasonably good impression of what sieges of this period looked like about 170 km south of modern Ankara lies the city of atusa the capital of the htide empire in the 17th or 16th century BC a double ring of woles was built around it in a way typical of the early and middle Bronze Age of course there were very different fortifications and only the most significant cities like Usher Babylon or husa had double walls however most walls were built like those of atusa they consisted of air dried M bricks rested on a quarry stone or tamed Earth foundation and were up to 10 m High along the wall were rectangular Towers at regular intervals from which archers and Slingers could shoot at the enemy from all sides most cities were further fortified with a ditch with a bank sloping down from the wall called a glasses the ditch and cles made it challenging to approach the wall especially for the early Siege engines of the Bronze Age which could include Siege Towers or battering rams these fortifications were not only the primary means of the Defenders but also the greatest challenge to an attacker an attack probably began with Slingers and archers advancing to put the Defenders under pressure and force them to take cover behind the wall meanwhile mobile Chariot units prevented the city's inhabitants from fleeing this was not meant to capture the town but to keep the Defenders at Bay so that the rest of the army could prepare for the assault which usually relied on multiple of the five methods mentioned before the easiest way into a city apart from the gates theoretically LED over the wall therefore the most common Siege tool was the ladder scaling a wall was very risky and often involved High casualties but it also had the potential to end a Siege quickly if it failed attackers usually turned to timec consuming methods such as mining breaching the wall and building seed ramps even in the Bronze Age the most reliable but most costly method of overcoming a wall was undermining texts from the previously mentioned Archive of Mari explain that the attacking Army started digging outside the reach of the Defenders and Tuck their way under the wall or the city to either bring down the defenses or to break through the surface behind the wall to surprise the Defenders digging such a tunnel was a lot of work and often took weeks because of this undermining was most likely not to goto solution for most attacking armies the actual core element of bronze AG Siege technology was siege ramps another report from Mari reads quote as long as the Earth and ramp did not reach the height of the top of the city wall he could not conquer the town he could not seize it but when the earth and ramp reached the height of the top of the city wall he conquered this city the idea of such ramps was to build an Ascend to the top of the wall by piling up Earth and rock creating a slope over which troops could reach the wall and Assault The Defenders on the top building it however was a very lengthy and complex process in Babylon for example military academies trained Siege experts to calculate the required height and volume of these ramps before workers began to Heap up materials in front of the wall for weeks or even months all the while archers and Slingers had to provide constant cover which is well attested in the necropolis of deor el Bahari north of theves where 95 mummified bodies of Egyptian soldiers were found one of the excavators of this site Herbert Winlock suggested that these belong to the Troops of motep II and participated in the Pharaoh Siege of harac clop pois most of the injuries found on the mammies came from arrows and Stones shot with slings clearly showing that these weapons played a major role in sieges as in this case the historian and archaeologist Herman Gans notes bow and slingshots were often deployed side by side nevertheless it is unclear exactly how they work together various later Neo Assyrian reliefs suggest that the Slingers were always positioned directly behind The Archers these long range weapons were so important in sieges because there was no catapults or similar machines yet and therefore bows and slings were the best Alternatives regarding range this became even more extreme during the Bronze Age because the bow became became much more efficient when the composite bow was invented with this type of weapon a good Archer could shoot at Defenders on their Rampart from over 200 M and directly into the city from about 40 m some historians and archaeologists even believe that these projectile weapons also assumed the function of medieval artillery at EA a Bronze Age City about 55 km Southwest of present day Aleppo excavators found huge clay balls from the middle Bronze Age some archaeologists interpreted this as a form of artillery ammunition because Slingers usually use ground Pebbles or clay balls of fist size however the damages such bullets would have done to a wall would undoubtedly have been marginal to knock down walls heavier equipment was needed as soon as I had approached the town of kirh hadat I set up a tower and made its Wall fall down by tunneling and in 8 days I captured the town of kirh hadat end quote this is how a letter from Mari written in the early 2 millennium BC describes the conquest of a city it makes clear that complex technology was used alongside the relatively simple and timeconsuming methods we have discussed so far the siege Towers mentioned in the latter are just one of several Siege engines used in the Bronze Age while it is unclear what they look like in Mesopotamia Egyptian reliefs give us at least a rough IDE idea of the Egyptian version one such depiction was found near the beaches of luor it shows Egyptian and ubian soldiers attacking a city with a Siege Tower with wheels in most cases this was impossible because the sloping glasses of Bronze Age fortifications prevented approaching cities with heavy machines on Wheels and the mode would also have to be filled in first in addition many Siege Towers probably had no wheels at all Aaron Burke suggests that the towers served mainly as a raised platform for Slingers and archers providing them with the necessary Heights to keep the Defenders on the wall at Bay while workers built a ramp undermined the wall or tried to breach it battering rams are the second bronze AG Siege machine we know of generally speaking there are two types of devices to break walls one can be seen in a wall painting at benih Hassan which depicts the siege of a Desert Fork the rudimentary Siege weapon used by the attacking Egyptians consists of of a pole operated by three soldiers from some sort of shelter the image suggests they try to pry out individual stones from a wall because of this this tool is usually referred to as a Siege pole while this was most common in Egypt battering rams can be traced in Mesopotamia from about 2,300 BC pter Stein Keller a Harvard University Professor has found evidence of such machines on the EA tablets a collection of about 1,800 clay tablets made between 2,500 and 2250 BC and several Mari texts also mention them however there is no physical evidence dating further back than 1,500 BC and the brief literary mentions give little indication of how these battering rams worked nevertheless they probably consisted of a frame from which a large beam or trunk with a reinforced tip was suspended so they were probably quite similar to the later Assyrian battering rams although going through the wall could work quite well sometimes a little cunning was more efficient in taking a city if anything makes us think of a Siege it is the Trojan Horse after years of fruitlessly besieging the city of Troy the Greeks supposedly built this giant wooden horse to outsmart the Defenders their finest Warriors hid in its belly until the Trojans had holded the supposed gift inside came out of their hiding the following night and open the gates for their comrades this strategy of War is probably the most famous One although it is mythological but similar Maneuvers are already reported from the earliest sieges for example when pharaoh to MOS III besieged Jaffa in the 15th century BC he allegedly HD some of his soldiers in baskets so that the Defenders brought him into the city along with supplies even if this story May belong to the realm of lend as a trojan horse probably does it shows that strategems were already part of the Arsenal of procedur of course the Defenders did not remain idle while the attackers tried everything possible to defeat their fortifications in many cases they actively pushed back by launching sorties that is sneaking out of the Fortress and surprisingly attack the workers Siege engines or camps of the attacker this practice is well documented by the fact that bigger and better fortresses such as ashur or husha had so-called postern narrow passages below the walls that allow the Defenders to leave the city without opening a gate in addition The Defenders sometimes reinforce the Walls by piling Earth and Rubble against them to back them up while archers and Slingers try to keep the enemy at a distance if the attackers made it into the city's walls despite the Defenders efforts or breach the walls The Siege was decided in hand-to-hand combat in those cases the weapons used were the same as in open field battles javelins Spears AES daggers and others in the climactic battle for a city The Defenders would use anything they could get their hands on a look at Bronze Age sieges in Mesopotamia and Egypt shows that the same basic methods were used to overcome a fortress from the earliest times except that artillery in the form of catapults or similar devices did not yet exist but despite all the similarities Siege Warfare has changed massively throughout history in the period considered here inventions suggest a composite b or the battering ram revolutionized this form of conflict in combination with the siege towers of the time they created entirely new possibilities comparable to those The Chariot brought to pitched battles nevertheless a well fortified City stood a good chance of surviving a Siege because of this even more efficient tactics more powerful Siege weapons and better strategies were developed soon the armies of Egypt and notably the Neo Assyrian Empire would revolutionize Siege Warfare build more formidable Siege engines and find even more efficient ways to conquer fortresses

Channel: SandRhoman History

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Keywords: bronze age, history, documentary, education, educational, bronze age warfare, warfare, bronze age history, ancient egypt warfare, ancient sumer warfare, ancient akkad warfare, sumerian warfare, egyptian warfare, akkadian warfare, akkadian empire, ancient egypt, ancient sumer, sumeria, ancient akkad, first sieges, first siege in history, staggering sieges, siege warfare, ancient siege warfare, sieges in antiquity, bronze age siegs

Id: Z4zOkCk13rw

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 21 2024