Author | Cold Research Author Team - Ai Yang
Word count: 3520, Reading time: about 11 minutes
Editor's note: The Trojan War is the big IP of European history and legend, and since Homer's Epic, countless people have recreated this war in literature, painting, film and television. So what was the protagonist of this war, the ancient Greek Mycenaean warriors? Why did the famous hero Achilles kill all four sides? This article will continue to "World Military Atlas: The Earliest Ancient Greek Heavy Infantry, the Protagonist of the Trojan War with OEM Weapons, What Did the Mycenaean Army Look Like?" continues with an introduction to the Mycenaean armament and classes.
Mycenaeans
Mycenaean Military
Editor: Ai Yang
helmet
The Boar Tooth Helmet, also the iconic helmet of the Mycenaeans. It is difficult to say whether it inherited the Minoans, because there are claims that the helmet originated in Central Europe. In any case, this helmet is very popular, even mentioned in Homer's epic, and it is said that Odysseus got one, and it was sewn with a felt hat as a lining, presumably very comfortable to wear.
Wild boar tooth helmet according to the size and structure of the difference, the weight is generally between 1-2 kg, although the appearance is very high, but the defense is not easy to say, resist the stone and the sword should not be a problem, but whether it can block the direct shot of the bow and arrow and the sharp blade direct stab is questionable.
Reflections on the specific functions of the direction of the crown ornament
Uses of vertical wearing: General soldiers use vertical, the actual function may be in the queue, the vertical crown decoration is convenient for soldiers to confirm each other's position in the horizontal line.
Uses of horizontal wearing: General officers use horizontal, the actual function may be that the officer will lead the team in front of the phalanx or supervise the position in the rear, and the horizontal crown is convenient to see the officer's position from the direction of the soldier. To put it bluntly, it is a team flag on the head.
Armor
In 1960 a complete set of bronze armor was unearthed in Dendra near Medea Castle, dating back to around 1400 BC.
This copper plate defensive equipment demonstrates a superb level of metalworking and armor design. The whole set of armor is composed of a variety of parts, the breastplate, shoulder armor, skirt armor are connected to each other with belts, so that the parts can slide each other, providing the wearer with a certain range of motion.
It was also equipped with a neck guard, arm guard and shin armor, and fragments of wild boar tooth helmets with bronze cheek guards were found on the armor at the time of excavation. It can be said that this is a set of armor that is quite tightly protected from head to toe, and it is also intimately installed in response to the swordsman's habit of "stabbing the neck".
Dendera armor was an innovation in military equipment by the Mycenaeans, and was not alone, as the Mycenaeans used bronze to make armor for later years.
Range of motion of the Dendera armor
At first, it was thought that the Dendera armor was too bulky and should be used on a chariot and could not be used on foot. But after a sophisticated modern reconstruction, it was proved that the armor, despite its huge appearance, was flexible enough to fight on foot with swords and spears. This is also hinted at from the excavations, such as the fact that there are traces of a shield along with the armor, and there is only one arm, which may be because the left arm holds a shield, so there is no need for an arm guard. However, there are also views that they are all dressed like this, and there is no need to take a bulky shield anymore.
In short, it turns out that don't look like a lobster when worn, Dendera armor can be actually used in combat, not just as a display. The Mycenaeans did have a hand in armor making.
The "epic suit" of dendera armor was destined to be the equipment of a small number of elite warriors, in addition to which the Mycenaeans also developed many types of armor.
shield
The shield system of the Mycenaean era was more diverse, mainly large shields in the early days, and with the continuous improvement of armor, shields gradually developed toward miniaturization, and more bronze components were added.
Tower Shield
The most common large shield row. The square and flat shape is suitable for forming a shield wall. In the Iliad, the tall warrior Ajax has a huge shield made of seven layers of cowhide and covered with bronze plates, often described as a wall, tower or fortress.
Ajax's shield was simply unusable by ordinary warriors. Even the legendary hero Achilles said that with this shield, he would not be able to equip himself with any weapons. It is conceivable that it is huge and heavy.
Prototype binaural shield
It is a large shield, also made of several layers of cowhide with bronze reinforcement in the middle. Its shape is very similar to the shield used by the Hittites, considering that Troy was deeply influenced by the Hittites. Perhaps Hector used this shield. The Iliad once described Hector running as the edges of the black fur of his shield tapped his neck and ankles. From this, it can be imagined that the size of this shield is really not small.
Round shield
Circular shields of various sizes in the Aegean region began to appear around 1300 BC and were widely used in the late Mycenaean era. It was also during this period that the Mycenaean army began to transform into a lightweight, smaller shield, shorter spear, and more mobile way of fighting.
The round shield appears in many frescoes, reliefs, and paintings on pottery, and the Egyptians saw the marine people as warriors with round shields, and many evidence points to one of the important sources of the marine people in the Aegean region.
The shield of Achilles restored by foreign scholars according to the description in the Iliad is a magnificent round shield covered with relief bronze plates.
8 word shield
This shield and boar tooth helmet is entirely the signature equipment of the Aegean warriors.
The status of the 8-character shield in the Mycenaean world is also very high, it is a armor and a symbol of worship, some people say that it may symbolize a certain goddess, well... The shape is quite similar. There must have been some practical function in making this shape with such effort, the notches on both sides of the shield should be convenient for spear poking, and the early swords of the Aegean world were also produced for stabbing.
Alien Shield
In addition to the above, there are some other shapes of shields, such as this one with tassel decoration on the upper and lower levels, and the shape is very similar to a shield used by the Hittites. There is also this crescent-shaped shield on the A side of the "Warrior Clay Pot", which should be a common shield in the late Mycenaean era. It feels like this crescent-shaped shield is meant to be lightweight, remove excess, and just cover the shape of the torso part in a combat posture. It is also a shield that later generations of light infantry like to use.
chariot
The Mycenaeans began using chariots around the end of the sixteenth century BC, roughly the same time that the ancient Egyptians began using chariots. Contrary to most military techniques, chariots appear to have been brought to the island of Crete by the Mycenaeans, perhaps as a secret weapon for the conquerors?
The Mycenaeans did not seem to have used chariots on a large scale as in the Near East and Egypt, which may be related to the broken, rugged terrain of Greece, and the fact that the wheels of the chariots were stronger and thicker, and the hull of the vehicles was also added topped by an upper horizontal towbar, all of which suggested that the Mycenaean chariots faced much worse road conditions than their counterparts in the Near East and Egypt. The carriages are framed in hot-bent wood, wrapped in wicker and leather, and decorated with painted colours.
Mycenaeans preferred to use spears on chariots, and there were also images of bows and arrows, but they were generally hunting scenes, and were more likely to use spears, javelins, and swords for impact combat. However, chariots, like the army, gradually developed towards lightweight, and finally there were more chariots for transportation, such as railing chariots.
rider
In the late Mycenaean period, horse-riding warriors appeared, and the understanding of this class of soldiers was limited to a few pottery pieces, frescoes, and sculptures, but already recognizable, these warriors were equipped with helmets, breastplates, tiara, as well as short spears and swords.
Stirrups had not yet been invented, the saddle was just a mat, and the riders could only perform some reconnaissance tasks, and there was little direct evidence that they were involved in combat.
skirmisher
Scattered soldiers are the lightest infantry, without any protection, and some even go into battle naked, they are only equipped with long-range weapons such as bows and arrows and catapults, and they absolutely do not engage in hand-to-hand combat.
The scattered troops are generally arranged in loose formations in front of their own main front, and the task is to harass the opposing front with long-range firepower, in order to disrupt the opponent's formation before making contact with their own heavy infantry front. This practice was a conventional tactic in later ancient warfare.
Pylos light infantry
The image of a soldier in the Pylos frescoes dates from about the thirteenth century BC. The soldiers wore boar tooth helmets, a bare upper body, and a short leather-reinforced skirt with shin armor around the waist. Equip yourself with short swords and javelins and fight some "barbarians" dressed in animal skins. These light fighters may have been Pylos' rapid reaction units. It is recorded that in the late Mycenaean era, Pylos organized coastal patrols in response to attacks from the sea.
warship
The image of a typical Mycenaean warship is:
There are vertical columns at both ends of the head and tail, and there is a raised platform with railings, a mast and a sail in the middle of the ship, and a row of paddlers on each side. The Iliad described the Mycenaean ships as black, probably because their keels were tarred and the upper parts could be of any color, while Odysseus mentioned crimson ships.
The most famous event about the Mycenaean warships is the Trojan War. However, the war may not be as romantic as in Homer's epic. Simply put, around the thirteenth century BC, the Mycenaeans epitomized a series of military expansions on the west coast of Anatolia.
Located on the northwest coast of Anatolia, close to the Dardanelles Strait, Troy is located in an area known as Verusa and has long been a vassal state of the Hittite Empire. At this time, the Mycenaeans expanded to the west bank of Anatolia, plundering Miletus as a logistical and military center, threatening the Verusa region several times, and inciting rebellions in the land of the Seja River.
The Hittites called these Mycenaeans as Ahmedes and treated their kings on an equal footing with the rulers of Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria, and established diplomatic relations and maintained correspondence. It can be seen that the military strength of the Mycenaeans here at that time should not be underestimated, but the endless "tossing" of these people made the Hittite king intolerable and sent troops to destroy Miletus. This allowed the Mycenaeans to pause in Anatolia for a while while fighting among themselves.
At the end of the thirteenth century BC, the Hittite Empire was in crisis, and there was no time to look west, and the Mycenaeans took the opportunity to make a comeback and invade Verusa, besieging and destroying the city of Troy. So in reality, there is no old king immortal hero next door, some are just greed and plunder.
The decline of Mycenae
Beginning in the mid-fourteenth century BC, mycenaean city-states built walls of huge stones to defend their palace areas, whether to defend against foreign enemies or to show off their martial arts, and the storage rooms and hidden water sources in the fortresses showed that people were worried about the threat of a long siege. At the beginning of the twelfth century BC, the city-state palaces of the Mycenaean civilization were destroyed one after another, the specific reasons are unknown, there are internal contradictions, there are also maritime peoples' unrest, and there are Dorian invasion theories, in short, around 1100 BC, the mycenaean civilization collapsed, and Greece fell into a dark period that lasted for hundreds of years.
This article is the original manuscript of the Cold Weapons Research Institute, the original outline of the editor-in-chief, the text and pictures are drawn by Ai Yang, and any media or public account shall not be reproduced without written authorization, and the offender will be held legally responsible.