Scythian Bows Article

Fantastic! It's very generous to publish it here at Atarn too. This will be great reading for tonight.

Seconded!

Much appreciated to both of you

Nicely done article. Adam, I am always amazed by your bow building techniques/insight.

Many Egyptian bows have a horn core center strip and ridge along the belly. Any thoughts?

Hi there, all. A very interesting article, thanks for posting. If Adam is reading? I would be very interested to hear about the performance of the replica?? Historicaly, amazing finds!! From a purely practical point of view though, with what I know about bow construction, these bows dont look like they should work too well. They appear very time consuming to construct in a way that their performance wouldnt justify??? This makes them very intriguing...
I'm sure(or, I hope), that these people wheren't in the habit of wasting their time and these bows must have worked well, I would be interested to hear others thoughts on why these bows where made this unusual (unusual to us) way. It seems an strange solution to the problem of constructing a bow?

I may be the only person to have shot with this bow! :shock:

I tried at 5 metres into a stack of cardboard after it had been kept braced with a bracing string for some four months in a warm climate. It was much too heavy for me to draw fully (I guess it would have drawn to around 80# at 28". ) It showed no sign of instability and drew smoothly to about 20" (my maximum draw on it) and was smooth and fast. I was gripping above centre.

Stephen, thank you very much for mposting the article!

Incredible work of Adam in reconstructing the bow. It is really very, very complicated. I don?t understand why the scythians went through such an effort for making the bows. The only explanation may lie in the fact that it was not possible to be done in another way (?) with the material and the tools available. I am sure they had metal saws, however... Maybe the problem was the extreme bend of the central section, so the use of a naturally grown bent piece was preferred. But why cutting it in two halves and glueing it together again ?

And I don?t exactly understand what is happening to the horn strip in the central section?



In the cross sections of the above image it is indicated that the central standing horn strip is running throughout the central section (cross sections above the sideview sketch, also in the apex of the central part). However in the detail view of the central section there is no vertical horn. It is indicated that this is the back view. Is this really the back view or rather a belly view? In the cross section beside it there is a horn strip in the center. The next section on the right shows wood-only construction.

In the reconstruction Adam Karpowicz builds the central area without horn strip.

Maybe Stephen can answer these questions:

a. Is the central horn strip running through the entire middle section or not?

b. If not, where do the horn strips end?

c. Are there additional wood overlays on the belly?

JJ

As to the Egyptian bows, if I remember correctly, there are two side strips of wood in the limbs with the horn belly in between. It may be that they did not have the horns of sufficient width for a stable (and strong) bow and this was the only solution for that? Narrow and thicker (the belly ridge) strip to yield a decent bow.

JJ - there is a drawing in the article and also look at the hand drawing by Stephen: there is no vertical horn in the grip. However, the belly horn is present over the grip as usual. The grip's core is composed of vertical laminations of wood.

Unless new data come to light, we see this bow as an "imitation" of ibex (much improved to serve as a bow), but not as a deliberate engineering attempt to make a perfect bow from the start. I think our modern approach does not always work so well in understanding the ancients (perhaps the TBB series is partly to blame....)

I wonder if it could be useful for people to have the article linked to the Central Asian section as well?

Adam

The Angular composite is the oldest type of composite bow and the ancestor of the Scythian bow, so the idea of the central narrow horn strip in the limbs seems inherited. I don?t know anything about the construction of the central section of the Angular composite. Perhaps they were constructed in a similar way? Does somebody have data on that? Jack, how did you reconstruct the handle of your angular composite reconstructions? For the stability in the strongly deflexed handle at least it seems logical to use a naturally grown piece of wood which should have a greater stiffness as a heat bend straight grown piece. If that was the case the handle construction method could have been inherited, too. Only the technique, not the shape, of course. In societies where tradtions change only very slowly, a logical explanation.

I highlighted the spot that confused me on Stephen?s drawing:
[external image]

There?s vertical horn indicated in the cross section of the apex of the central curvature, but maybe it was in an early stage of inspecting the bow and later revised in the cross sections beneath the handle detail.

JJ

Hi
Great Stephen:
you discovered and collect a lot of eastern archery culture,they are real treasure of human being.i am always appreciate what your have done

Thanks for sharing, well done........
but Stephen has reported recently there are findings of Scythian horn- bows done in the usual way: horn-belly, wooden core, sinew backing........much easier to do........ The Yanghai bows are done according to the totemic meaning of the ibex- animal to the Yanghai-Scythians.

There are some more construction principles of Scythian bows. There is the Arzan- bow, the Olon kurin gol- bow...........some more will be excavated. I guess the term Scythian is as multifaceted as the term Native American.

Adam, any f/d?s, fps? I guess this bow is shooting by far worther than an Ottoman bow, cause the limbs have to go a longer way.

Michael

Michael

I have nothing else on the bow, sorry. The bow represents one particular style of the Scythian bow and once other types are replicated, we will know more about these bows. A replica with no vertical horn should be easy to make, as well as the wood laminates.

BTW, the bow stacks - rapidly gains weight in the last inches of draw (not quite expected in a hornbow of this length). So the weight at 28 inches will be over 100lb.

Adam

JJ; There is complete information on only several of the Egyptian bows and a single piece grip section is not reported. A short riser strip was added to two bows and this is what I did. Because of a weakness in the grip, I twice also added a horn riser over the horn splice. The butt joint on the horn is not so effective because of the angle.

Keep in mind that there is no standardization of Egyptian manufacture, none at all. By Tut's time, in his collection, the familiar (more or less) layering of sinew wood and horn was the most common but others are radically different. You can see 'schools" of techniques. It has been one hundred years since anyone was allowed to handle these.

If there are five bends in a Scythian bow, then only three of them conform to the natural bends in Ibex. The design is a reaction to its Near Eastern ancestor. We can do this, you can't. We do this because this is who we are.

Michael; Scythians ARE like A. Indians. Superficially they resemble eachother but up close the differences are rich. I can imagine that Scythians main enemies were.........themselves.

JJ wrote:

I highlighted the spot that confused me on Stephen?s drawing:
[external image]

There?s vertical horn indicated in the cross section of the apex of the central curvature, but maybe it was in an early stage of inspecting the bow and later revised in the cross sections beneath the handle detail.
JJ

Let me try to clarify. First, please understand that I inspected many of these bows, and while the construction is generally the same, there is a certain degree of variation. In particular, the length and splicing positions of different fillets of wood and horn vary from bow to bow; although not too significantly.

Perhaps what you can't see clearly is that these bows, on the main working part of the limbs, have both a horn core and a horn belly. The horn belly is both narrower and more triangular in cross-section than we see on other varieties of horn bow.

Make sure you check out this set of drawings, too. They are clearer:

http://www.atarn.org/chinese/Yanghai/yanghai.htm

redhawk wrote:

Thanks for sharing, well done........
but Stephen has reported recently there are findings of Scythian horn- bows done in the usual way: horn-belly, wooden core, sinew backing........much easier to do........
Michael

At my most recent visit (May 2010), my attention was drawn to a number of bows from Yanghai which partially featured the sinuous profile of the Scythian bows but were simpler in construction (indeed, some were self bows.) It was put to me that these represented an 'earlier stage'; but I could not find out on what basis that view was reached. (The staff who were talking to me were museum staff, not archaeologists.) I don't believe that any reliable C14 tests had been carried out on the different horizons at Yanghai. The variations could have been caused by co-habitation with a different cultural group or by non-working bows made for symbolic purposes. For this reason, I have held back from publishing details of the bows.

"If there are five bends in a Scythian bow, then only three of them conform to the natural bends in Ibex. The design is a reaction to its Near Eastern ancestor..."

Jack, I am not sure what you are trying to say. There is no question hornbows resemble animal horns and it may as well happened that this is how it all started. If that was ibex as the shape to follow in the case of Egyptians - that may be, but there are other horned animals with gently curved horns, not only ibex to serve as the "totemic" example. In the Scythian bow here, the entire bow was made on the base of the ibex horn (I am talking about the vertical strip inside). This points to a direct connection. If that is indeed a "reaction" to something earlier is a matter of speculation.

The association of curly horn with the shape of the bows is nothing particularly new. In Slavic languages the recurved ends of bows are called "roghi" - meaning "horns"...

Adam

Adam; I was just being rhetorical, that is all.

But the Egyptian bows were made from Ibex, it seems certain. Ageans are shown bringing Ibex horns as tribute. These horns are shown being sawed in the Royal bowmaking workshop. The complete horn strip conforms to the shape of the angular bow. (only 3/5 to the Scythian) It also seems most likely that the horn core was worked out earlier in the Near East.

Strangely, Herodotus sees Egypt as ancestral to Greek culture.

That the Scythians liked the iconography also would not be a surprise. They seem to enjoy the extreme shape of their bow as a cultural identifier.

I am not saying you are wrong about the Egyptian bow. However...

"The complete horn strip conforms to the shape of the angular bow. (only 3/5 to the Scythian)"

Does the thickness of horn (belly to back) in the Egyptian bow is as great as the vertical strip in the Scythian? Is it as narrow (side-to-side)? Did the strip have to come from the side walls of the horn, so the shape of the ibex horns had to be followed exactly?

I was under the impression the belly slat of horn in the Egyptian bow is still attached to a wooden core above (and the two side strips of wood). Plus, the horn slat was wider (side to side). Then it was sawn off the horn from its belly as a flat (however thick) strip. It would mean the horn could come from other animals and not necessarily had any particular association with ibex (or other). Basically, a bow which follows the shape of a (generic) horn. I am not saying the Egyptians did not use ibex, only that they could use other horns and were not necessasrily so infatuated with ibex as Scythians.

If the Egyptian bow was made with a side strip(s) of horn, as the Scythian, then the connection could be valid.

Adam

Adam,
I think Jack may have a point. The belly strip of many Egyptian angular bows are set in a groove, albeit produced by the belly side extentions of the side strips. And there are some bows where the central wooden core is missing entirely. It could be that it was eaten by insects, but why were the side strips intact.

I refer to the bow in Fig. 8b in Wallace E. McLeod's An Unpublished Egyptian Composite Bow in the Brooklyn Museum.

Since the centre strip of wood could be different in species to the side strips, it is possible some insect found it more attractive than the sides. The horn strips were sometimes destroyed by reaction to the damp in the tombs leaving hollows. If this happened in this case, it might indicate a similar design approach to the later Scythians. There is also the occurance of bows where the centre strip of wood was enclosed on the back and belly by horn and the strange case with alternating strips of horn and wood in the core in one of Tutankhamun's bows.

I am not a complete convert of the idea than bow shape was influenced by horn shape, but I can see constructional similarites between angular bows and Scythian bows.

On an aside about the use of side strips of horn, I wonder if those areas, where multiple strips were being used (as in Iran in recent centuries), were not trying to maximise the number of bellies that could be built from a fixed number of horns. I relate this to the importation of horns. If they are rare, they are probably valuable.

Bede,

My source of he Egyptian construction was McLeod's "Egyptian composite bows in New York". In all these bows the side strips were of wood, added to the sides of the normal horn/wood laminations. In some cases the horn lath was also laminated on top of the wood lath (at the back of bow). In one case there are two laminations of horn on the belly. These are all flat strips.

The horn laths were all around 2cm wide (side to side) and less than 1cm thick. Such strips can easily be taken from any horn available. Moreover, some of the bows had several butt-jointed horn strips - so, no "horn shape" there.

If you have a picture with a description of the Brooklyn bow with the side strips of horn of substantial thickness (more than 1 - 1.5 cm back to belly) and narrow at 0.5cm or less, please post them. However, in the absence of the inner strip, one will never know what it was. It could even be several, flat horizontal lams of horn (which the Egyptians obviously used as well). One can not make the case on the lack of evidence.

Adam

I think the cross sections of Egyptian composite bows given by Mcleod are in some cases "difficult" to interpret... Some of them were made after sketches of Howard Carter, another one after a description in an article. These should be used with caution. Other sections seem to be more reliable. Does somebody know something about the background of the author Wallace Mcleod?

I saw two egyptian composites in an exhibition in Hamburg and took some photos. They are of different construction and datation. Both were found in Theben. The first one, Museum of Berlin, must be the one of which Mcleod gives the section in Plate XIV, G. It can clearly be seen that a central vertical hollow section is present, that should have been the place for the - in this case gone - vertical hornstrip. The other bow, from New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, has a normal wooden core without a central groove with a flat, keeled horn strip on the belly. Wooden side strips are glued on. On it?s back the sinew layer is still present.

[external image]

[external image]

The bow with the vertical groove is opposed to what I would expect the YOUNGER one of them. Berlin Bow: 1292 - 1186 BC, New York Bow : 1650 - 1500 BC.

[external image]

JJ

Thanks JJ, this is much more interesting than the usual ones. It seems from the picture that a little bit of the horn material is left in the central groove (it may be my imagination). Then one could examine the remains to see if the horn was indeed in one vert. strip or laminated as well. The construction of these ancient bows is so complicated. Is that sinew or more wood over the groove?

A friend of mine who is an antiquity professor did his PhD under McLeod. So, McLeod had to have an academic background.

Adam

For me is a mystery why the Scythian bow have so complicated construction, since the Egyptian composite bows have developed the much simple construction with flat core/horn and a very good design.
Making Egyptian bow should be far easier to build than Scythian bow and also looks more efficient.
Scythian bow looks like an technologically involution (same shape can be made with flat core/horn, like the one Lucas Novotni made).

[external image]

There is something on the belly of the Berlin bow, that I thought of as a leftover of the belly horn strip, but when lightening it up with photoshop it seems to me that it is a piece of wood of the core that has gotten loose and shifted a little. I don?t see any horn in the central groove.


[external image]

On the back there is the birch bark covering with lots of holes in it. I think that insects have eaten through it and that indeed all of the horn was eaten away. The grey substance between the wooden core and the bark can be the sinew/glue layer.

[external image]

On the back of the New York bow I first thought to see a darkened sinew layer because of the irregular ridges in the surface, but again, looking closer, now I think it is a second hornstrip with grooves for better adhesion of the sinew layer.

Bede?s idea that the use of a smaller vertical horn strip in bow construction could have the reason of a certain shortage of horn material I find interesting. Maybe there was a tendency to make this kind of bow in addition to the "flat belly horn strip" construction as to use the ressource more effectively.

JJ

McLeod was a professor of Classics as I remember it in Canada and a member of the Society of Archer-Antiquaries. He had access to both literary material in Greek and Latin as well as knowing many practising archers and possibly some bowyers too. Judging from his publications, he was a keen observer. I used the past tense without justification. He may still be alive.

Adam,
JJ has supplied pictures of the bow I was thinking of. My access to the article was through an academic institution which doesn't encourage copying and redistribution.

I wonder at the vertical strips in Scythian type bows being necessarily from the sides of the horn. Surely cutting them from the front of the horn was just as easy (or hard). I think that as much of the horn as possible would have been used in the circumstances and it would only be limited by the cutting method.

I take your point about the Egyptians usually using flat strips, but I am not sure if that is restrictive. At least one bow had alternating strips that were arranged vertically.

I can not comment on your suggestion about cutting the vertical strips from the front of the horn. It may be so, but probably at the cost of more work. The sides could easily provide enough material, possibly enough for the whole bow. In both cases, the horn would yield similarly shaped strips.

I find it very interesting the oldest bows have horn in the core (however arranged), interspersed with wood. One explanation, as already put forward, would be the lack of good horn. There are other possibilities worth exploring.

Adam

Well Adam; I think it was you who suggested the practicality of using side wall horn for standing slats. The jump from Scythian to Angular is a natural given the construction similarities of some of those. Given this lead it is most natural to see the shape of a horn more clearly in the older of the two, the angular.

Also consider that there were angular bows more than one thousand years older than the Egyptian ones we have. Still there are ancient holdover techniques among those bows at hand.

I would like to turn to cult use of Ibex. In Tut's tomb there is a boat with two Ibex, can I say, figureheads. I understand there may be another of these out there. The cult association is not now known.

But among the Scythians there is something else of interest. In the Silk Road exhibit at the HMNS there was a bronze mirror with an Ibex handle. Turn the mirror around to see the Ibex and he is standing on the mirror.

There is also a post cap or such from the Black sea area with an Ibex standing on a kind of ball. What I see is that there is a reference to an Ibex with the moon. There are other examples.

Comments?

There are plenty of examples of Ibex totem art, for example in the Arthur M Sackler collections. Even I have several examples in my collection.

Sorry, I mixed up with the age of the two bows in my post. The bow with the vertical horn groove - the Berlin bow - strangely is in fact the YOUNGER and not the older one (I just corrected it in my previous post).

I don?t understand that discussion on "totems". Sure there were animal divinities, but what has that to do with the bows? There are dozens, possibly hundreds of animal gods, why should the bow represent just the ibex one. On scythian objects a lot of animal species are depicted, lions, red deer, horses and so on and so on. I think that is a bit of an exaggerated discussion. Besides, other horns are also curved, not just the one of the ibex. In fact I never saw much of a difference in ibex horns with the exception of the knobs.

JJ

Jack, I think we are confusing two things in the discussion. One is whether the ibex has significance for Egyptians. Two is whether the bow in question (posted by JJ - are there any other?) proves the vertical side slats of horn were used in the Egyptian bows.

I can not comment on the first, since this is far beyond my "expertise" and I'd rather leave the question for the academics. I am sure there is plenty of literature on these subjects.

As to the second - I understand how you feel, but honestly I do not see this to be obvious at all. Firstly, the groove is empty and we can only speculate what was there before. Given the fondness of the Egyptians to use flat slats in other bows, I would not be surprised to see something like that in the bow as well, maybe even in combination with wood. These bows were rather thin, and when the belly horn slat (now lost, but had to be present as in other bows) is subtracted from the total, the core is prob no more than 1cm thick if that (back to belly).

Now, even assuming they used the vert. slat in the bows, the shape of the finished bow is a gentle curve. The curve is so common for horns used in bowyery everywhere that I just can not see the ibex there. Of course it could be, but maybe not. Now we need to get someone to do the analysis for us and I would reserve the judgement as to the species until the presence of ibex is proven. I recall an antelope was mentioned as a source of horns in McLeod. I see a lot of unanswered questions here and a fruitful field to research.

Note I am absolutely not questioning what you say. I do not share your enthusiasm (yet! 8^)), that is all.

You also mention a connection between the Egyptian and earlier bows and the Scythian. I see it too, but not necessarily in conjuntion with the vertical slats.

Adam

Adam,
I take your points as valid.

Rereading McLeod, it is clear that bow 29, which is the one that I remembered as having alternating vertical strips of horn and wood is more problematic than I thought. There is room for argument about what the vertical laminations were.

Another point you made was about the work involved. Using handsaws and tying the horn to a post in lieu of a clamp suggest to me that whatever method used to extract strips of horn was going to be laborious. I suppose the absence of TV and the internet made it more tolerable.

Regarding bows that had two horn strips, one above (thinner) and one below the wooden core, makes me wonder if the bowyer was trying to duplicate a solid horn core with less weight.

I do not suggest the side strips were other than wood. In the bows with absent cores, it is possible that a three layer core had its two horn components hydrolysed or eaten by insects and the wooden part simply fell out for lack of support.

I wanted to demonstrate that what we are seeing as horn in Egyptian bows is Ibex. I copy the reply from the author; Hi Jack,

This comes from my book Aegeans in the Theban Tombs. I am copying below links to the chapters related to this, which also includes the bibliography, as well as the plates.

In Chapters 1-2, see particularly pp. 12-25, but for full understanding of the complexity of understanding the scenes of bowyers workshops one should read all of chapter 2.

Chapters 1-2 click--> http://files.me.com/wachsmann/zt0lz7

Chapter 5--> http://files.me.com/wachsmann/z6ldli

Plates--> http://files.me.com/wachsmann/deed6i

You can just cut and paste the links to ATARN.

Hope this helps.

Shelley

The link with the plates does not work.

This is very interesting and it may be the horns were indeed ibex, although the evidence is circumstantial (as she writes in the book). Anyway, I would look into a couple of details:

One, the two types of horn: more curved and less curved, presumably coming from young and old animals. Perhaps the horn are actually taken from different animals?

Two, why the horns were painted white (if painted)? The horns in the bows are black. It maybe it is of no importance, since the colours were mindlesly copied from a "pattern book" or an earlier painting, but maybe not.

Again, I do not think it matters whether Egyptians used ibex or not.

Adam

Are the horn core laminates in the Scythian so thick that they can only be obtained from the sides of the ibex horns?

Edit: the Plates-link does not work here either. All I get is a "File does not exist".

Adam; The link to the plates does work. There are 70 illustrations so let it have a minute or two.

Though Nubian Ibex horns are light colored on the animal (look to your illustration of the Siberian variety) Nubian is black inside. If a modern Mongolian bow can be used as an example, the Siberian version has a light yellow-grey color inside. Each of the many species of Ibex has different horns. The immature and the females have a different shape to mature males.

Ageans were bringing Agrimi Ibex from Crete.

Shelly is a man and I think he visited a weak and aged McLeod in the UK last year.

Will investigate the illustrations download for you all. Might happen next week.

You are both making some good points here, but isn't the unbraced shape of the egyptian bow more of a bi-effect of the braced profile? The main symbol of the egyptian bow seems to be that of the triangle, or pyramid.

Now that does not prohibit any symbolic attachment to the ibex, however.

I will just delete this message which has a pro Apple tinge.

Jack,
I think it is the last one causing problems.
https://files.me.com/wachsmann/deed6
It says file not available. The other two work and have done so for a while. You might notice that it changes to a https: address when you paste it. I will try again another way and see what happens.

This is the message:
This file is no longer available.
The file you are looking for is no longer being shared at this address. The link has either expired or the owner of the account has decided to stop sharing the file.
If you still need to access this file, please contact the owner of this MobileMe account.

Ok guys; the original link is now changed, is up and working. Let me know.

It's working now.

Working. Thanks Jack. Beatiful pics -all article !

I've red article. But I don't understand about inside horn core.
1) Grip has not inside horn core?
2) Section A&B has one piece of inside horn core?

Muzzler; Which article are you referring to, Scythian or Egyptian?

Scythian

This is Stephen and Adam's article . But I think the answer is yes to both.

1) Grip has not inside horn core.
2) Section A&B has one piece of inside horn core.

You can see the original bows and plans here:

http://atarn.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1245