How Heavy Were Iron Age Bows? Part 2

In my first post on Iron Age bows, I showed that there is a lot of evidence that archers in England, the Ottoman Empire, and the Manchu Empire used bows with very heavy draw weights (over 100 pounds / 45 kg at the intended draw length) around the 15th-17th centuries CE. People who are keen on early modern archery often project these heavy draw weights onto all war bows in all cultures. But we have reconstructions of ancient bows from the area from Egypt to India by people who examined the remains of bows and arrows from that place and time. What kind of draw weights did those bows have?

• Reproductions of two composite bows from 18th Dynasty tombs in Egypt by Edward McEwen. “They took about 6 months to complete (far less than previous guesses). They are light weapons, with draw-weights of 18 and 23 kg. (40-50 pounds) at 90 cm. They are extraordinarily elastic, and seem capable of any draw-length. They are smooth to shoot, without any kick at release, extremely accurate, and cast a 40-g. arrow 160 and 169 m. respectively.” Source: Edward McEwen and Wallace McLeod, “The Ancient Egyptian Composite Bow: Some Notes on its Structure and Performance.” American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 89, No. 2 (April 1985), p. 341. See also Wallace McLeod, Composite Bows from the Tomb of Tut’ankhamūn. Tut’ankhamūn’s Tomb Series, Volume 3. Oxford: The Griffith Institute, 1970.
• Another replica of a New Kingdom Egyptian composite bow by Edward McEwen. This had a draw weight of 28.8 kg (63 pounds) and is also based on a bow from an 18th Dynasty tomb. Source: Bergman, C.A., McEwen, Edward, and Miller, R. “Experimental Archery: Projectile Velocities and Comparisons of Bow Performances.” Antiquity 62 (1988) pp. 658-670.
• Another replica of a New Kingdom Egyptian or Neo-Assyrian composite bow by Edward McEwen. This was made of wood, horn, and sinew and covered with birch-bark. It had a draw weight of 40-45 pounds at 30-33″. Source: Thomas Hulit and Thom Richardson, “The Warriors of Pharaoh: Experiments with New Kingdom Scale Armour, Archery, and Chariots.” In Barry Molloy ed., The Cutting Edge, Tempus: Stroud, 2007, pp. 57, 58
• A replica of a bow from Subeixi in Xinjiang. The bowyer felt that given the shape of this bow and its construction from wood and sinew without horn, it might break in use if it were any stiffer than 30 kiloponds (66 pounds) at 65 cm (26”), and that stronger draw weights would not have given the arrows which they were using a higher speed (air resistance increases significantly with velocity and there are limits to how quickly a bow can transfer energy into an arrow as it is loosed). Source: Godehardt, Erhardt et al., “The Reconstruction of Scythian Bows.” In Barry Molloy ed., The Cutting Edge, Tempus: Stroud, 2007, pp. 112-133
• Edward McEwan’s reconstruction of a Parthian-period bow from Yrzi cemetery near Baghouz, Syria. I am told that this had a draw weight between 60 and 70 pounds, but I cannot find the article by Jon Coulston. Source: Brown, Frank E. “A Recently Discovered Compound Bow,” Annales de l’Institut Kondakov (Prague, 1937) pp. 1-10; Rausing, G. (1967). The Bow: Some Notes on Its Origin and Development. Rudolf Habelt. p. 105, fig. 22; Coulston, J. C. (1985) “Roman Archery Equipment.” In M. C. Bishop (Ed.), The Production and Distribution of Roman Military Equipment. BAR International Series (Vol. 275, pp. 220-336). Oxford.
• A PhD dissertation by Philip Henry Blyth from the 1970s which looked at arrows from roughly the 5th century BCE and asked how much energy they could have delivered before the shafts buckled. His background was in engineering, so he focused on the ability of the join between the arrowhead and the shaft to absorb impact. The most common type of socketed arrowhead from Persian sites in Greece has a socket diameter of about 6.0-6.7 mm (external) and weighs about 5 grams, other types are even lighter. He had trouble estimating draw weights over 70 pounds for the long Persian bows worn on the shoulder, and even less for the short B-shaped Scythian bows carried in bowcase at the hip. Blyth’s work might have benefited from more practical knowledge of archery, and he had to make many assumptions from limited evidence. The species of reed used for arrows in the ancient world is not known, nor is how these reeds were prepared understood; differences in climate and processing can have a large impact on the mechanical properties of a reed arrowshaft. On the other hand, most archers agree that an arrow which is too light and flexible or too heavy and stiff will give poor performance. The anonymous authors at Comitatus have also not yet managed to build a reed arrow which can be shot from a heavy bow effectively. Source: Philip Henry Blyth. The Effectiveness of Greek Armour Against Arrows in the Persian War (490-479 B.C.): An Interdisciplinary Inquiry. PhD Thesis, University of Reading, January 1977. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.450089
• The first book of the Strategikon of emperor Maurice (+VI but drawing on a thousand-year tradition of technical military writing which was lost once they had his summary) suggests that a soldier’s bow is better a bit too light than a bit too heavy. A few centuries later an anonymous Roman treatise on archery (peri Toxeias) sees shooting powerfully, shooting often, and shooting far as equally important. Both of these sources suggest that soldiers in one ancient culture did not see the ability to draw a powerful bow as the most important attribute of an archer.

The warbow enthusiasts generally do not seem to know about these eight reconstructions, because they are published in places which only ancient historians and archaeologists read (and which are usually only available in university libraries). Their interest is in archery around the 15th/16th/17th centuries CE, not 2000 years earlier! So as far as I know, its not that they reject them, its that they have never heard of them or only by hearsay.

Its hard to understand many things because warbow enthusiasts do not write a lot down, and because I have never lived close to any of them or had a hobby which brought us into contact. Some people have money and energy for constant travel and meeting new people, but I did not even before COVID. But when I see them in old media or online, they cite the sources I discussed in part 1 of this post.

(In this blog post, I am not going to discuss literary sources such as the complaint of the Seven in the Erra epic that because they had not killed anyone recently they could no longer draw their strong bows, the story of the bow which Odysseus left behind on Ithaca which none of the suitors could string, or Amenhotep’s boast that he had shot arrows through a target of Asiatic copper one palm thick. These are interesting, but not as clear or reliable as archaeological evidence, and discussing them requires more space and nuance than makes a good blog post).

So in my first post I showed that there is a lot of evidence that war bows in 16th and 17th century England, Turkey, and China had draw weights over 100 lbs. But McEwen, Godehart et al., and Blythe did not think that the ancient bows they examined had such heavy draw weights, and the Roman treatises on archery emphasize that its better to have a bow which is a bit weak than a bit stiff. Adam Karpowicz and Stephen Selby are the only people I can find who looked at a bow before the year 1 and estimated a draw weight over 100 pounds, and their bow from Yanghai was very early and very far away from the places most of us are interested in. Ancient bows and arrows tend to be smaller and lighter than Turkish bows or Mary Rose bows.

I think that these ancient sources suggest that while some soldiers choose to use bows with a draw weight of 100 pounds or more, and most soldiers may have used such bows in Eurasia in the sixteenth century, its not true that all soldiers choose very heavy bows, or that a bow with a more moderate draw weight is not a war bow. If the best weapon were the one which shoots the heaviest projectile the farthest and fastest, modern armies would not issue soldiers with assault rifles and assault carbines shooting calibres like 5.56 mm NATO or 5.45 mm Russian. Since 1914, most armies which engage in intense combat find that infantry need to carry as much ammunition as possible, need to be able to shoot it as rapidly as possible at targets within a few hundred yards, and need to be able to maneuver their weapons in confined spaces. Relatively short weapons firing smaller, less powerful cartridges meet these requirements better than more accurate, powerful weapons.[1]

These researchers could have been wrong. But if someone wants to argue they were wrong, I think its their duty to make an argument, and not just assert that these bows must have had the same draw weight as much bigger bows thousands of years later in a world of arquebuses, crossbows, and cheap steel armour.

You needed money to be an archer. Help keep my quiver full and my bow strung with a monthly donation on Patreon or paypal.me or even liberapay

Further Reading:

• Csaba Grozer in Hungary produces reproductions of a variety of composite bows at various levels of accuracy depending on the customer’s budget. Nag him to make some New Kingdom Egyptian bows!
• On the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of fletching, see some articles by Russ Mitchell which I do not have to hand, probably including Russ Mitchell, “Archery versus Mail: Experimental Archaeology and the Value of Historical Context, Journal of Medieval Military History 4 (2006).
• Randall IV, Karl Chandler (2016) Origins and Comparative Performance of the Composite Bow. Doctor of Literature and Philosophy thesis, University of South Africa, 10 January 2016 https://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/21120
• Riesch, Holger (2017) Pfeil und Bogen in der Römischen Kaiserzeit. Ludwigshafen: Verlag Angelika Hörnig. ISBN 978-3-938921-50-0 (I have not yet seen this)
• Ivan Semyan and Spyros Bakas, “Archaeological Experiment on Reconstruction of the ‘Compound’ Bow of the Sintashta Bronze Age Culture from the Stepnoe Cemetery,” EXARC Journal Issue 2021/2 https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10579

The final outcome was a (replica Sintasha-culture, ~2000 BCE) bow of 187 cm in length, and a 64-pound draw weight (26″)

[1] Since I wrote the first draft of this post in the Before Times, the US military became the latest to decide that a round between 6.5 mm and 7 mm calibre might be the ideal balance between the deer-hunting rounds used in WW I and the even smaller rounds which rich armies had adopted by the 1980s. I’m not a rifle shooter and I don’t want to wake up to find a round of .276 Pedersen or .280 British or even 6.5x50mmSR Arisaka or 6.5 mm Carcano in my mailbox, so I’ll just say that these intermediate cartridges are still smaller with lighter bullets than those rifle cartridges from before 1914 and nobody thinks the average private should be shooting .50 BMG. ↑ back to text ↑

(drafted circa 2015, scheduled 17 August 2022)