The infantry was, as we should expect, composed of troops of the line and light troops. The former wore either short wigs arranged in rows of curls, or a kind of padded cap by way of a helmet, thick enough to deaden blows; the breast and shoulders were undefended, but a short loin-cloth was wrapped round the hips, and the stomach and upper part of the thighs were protected by a sort of triangular apron, sometimes scalloped at the sides, and composed of leather thongs attached to a belt. A buckler of moderate dimensions had been substituted for the gigantic shield of the earlier Theban period; it was rounded at the top and often furnished with a solid metal boss, which the experienced soldiers always endeavoured to present to the enemy’s lances and javelins. Their weapons consisted of pikes about five feet long, with broad bronze or copper points, occasionally of flails, axes, daggers, short curved swords, and spears; the trumpeters were armed with daggers only, and the officers did not as a rule encumber themselves with either buckler or pike, but bore and axe and dagger, an occasionally a bow.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Naville.
The light infantry was composed chiefly of bowmen—pidâtû—the celebrated archers of Egypt, whose long bows and arrows, used with deadly skill, speedily became renowned throughout the East; the quiver, of the use of which their ancestors were ignorant, had been borrowed from the Asiatics, probably from the Hyksôs, and was carried hanging at the side or slung over the shoulder. Both spearmen and archers were for the most part pure-bred Egyptians, and were divided into regiments of unequal strength, each of which usually bore the name of some god—as, for example, the regiment of Ra or of Phtah, of Arnon or of Sûtkhû*—in which the feudal contingents, each commanded by its lord or his lieutenants, fought side by side with the king’s soldiers furnished from the royal domains. The effective force of the army was made up by auxiliaries taken from the tribes of the Sahara and from the negroes of the Upper Nile.**
* The army of Ramses II. at the battle of Qodshû comprised
four corps, which bore the names of Amon, Râ, Phtah, and
Sûtkhû. Other lesser corps were named the Tribe of
Pharaoh, the Tribe of the Beauty of the Solar dish. These, as far as I can judge, must have been troops raised
on the royal domains by a system of local recruiting, who
were united by certain common privileges and duties which
constituted them an hereditary militia, whence they were
called tribes.
** These Ethiopian recruits are occasionally represented in
the Theban tombs of the XVIIIth dynasty, among others in the
tomb of Pahsûkhîr.
These auxiliaries were but sparingly employed in early times, but their numbers were increased as wars became more frequent and necessitated more troops to carry them on. The tribes from which they were drawn supplied the Pharaohs with an inexhaustible reserve; they were courageous, active, indefatigable, and inured to hardships, and if it had not been for their turbulent nature, which incited them to continual internal dissensions, they might readily have shaken off the yoke of the Egyptians. Incorporated into the Egyptian army, and placed under the instruction of picked officers, who subjected them to rigorous discipline, and accustomed them to the evolutions of regular troops, they were transformed from disorganised hordes into tried and invincible battalions.*
* The armies of Hâtshopsîtû already included Libyan
auxiliaries, some of which are represented at Deîr el-
Baharî; others of Asiatic origin are found under Amenôthes
IV., but they are not represented on the monuments among the
regular troops until the reign of Ramses II., when the
Shardana appear for the first time among the king’s body-
guard.
