Hittites and iron weapons

[Deleted User]

Literally, the last Hittites I’ll ever paint are a general’s chariot for my tidy 850 point Hittite army.

The chariot, driver, chariot runner & princeling are from Newline and will replace the stop gap use of an NKE chariot to represent the third leader of the force.

The general-Prince is wearing a coat of scales, a helmet & carrying a spear. Is it plausible that some of these armaments might be of iron?

This won’t change any gaming stats; it’s just for the look of the thing. I know the Hittites may have been producing some iron objects at this time & Tutankhamen has an iron dagger amongst his tomb accoutrements. So, yes? No? I don’t want the other cool, Bronze Age gamers to laugh at me.

 

donald

[Geof Downton]

It is possible that the Hittites may have had some iron weapons, but, contrary to the long-held (and still promoted in corners of the interweb) there is no evidence that they developed smelting technology, and the iron used by both the Hittites and Egyptians was meteoritic in origin. This made iron rare, and possibly a “gift from the gods” so if it was used for weapons it was for ceremonial/ritual/high status things, like Tut’s meteorite-iron dagger.

Some rather dull reading!

https://www.sciencealert.com/bronze-age-artefacts-have-meteorite-iron

https://www.academia.edu/3587734/Metals_and_Metallurgy_in_Hittite_Anatolia._co-author_with_J._Siegelova_

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24887872

 

So the simple answer is that the “cool Bronze Age gamers” (whoever they are!) will have to swallow it if your general is important enough!

One who puts on his armour should not boast like one who takes it off.
Ahab, King of Israel; 1 Kings 20:11

[Deleted User]

Geoff, I could not find your “dull reading”: I read such articles with a lively interest. Thank you for the links.

I take it from the articles that Late Bronze Age Hatti produced tools & weapons made of iron in appreciable, if small, amounts. No doubt this was mostly soft iron, not much better if at all to bronze.

Some was meteoric but it seems, given the quantities, that some was smelted. Regardless, my chariot prince, no doubt a favourite of the Storm god, will carry an iron tipped spear.

donald

 

“the “cool Bronze Age gamers” (whoever they are!)”……aren’t all BA gamers cool by definition?

[Geof Downton]

Deleted User wrote:

I could not find your “dull reading”: I read such articles with a lively interest.

So do I, ‘though not always with understanding!

My interest comes from the (historically dubious) claim of the Bible (somewhere, I think, in I Samuel) that the Israelites of Saul’s day had no iron weapons and had to get the Philistines to repair/sharpen their iron tools because they (the Philistines) had a monopoly. The Philistines certainly seem to have used iron more than the Israelites, as did the by then Neo-Hittite successors to your gents (there are some 9th century iron tools in the British Museum),  but those-who-think-they-know continue to argue about where and when they first made rock hot enough…

As your post has informed me of the existence of not-plastic 20mm Biblical types I have this morning ordered the Goliath family and some Anakim/Nephilim to go with my 15mm Biblical folk, so thanks for that!

 

Deleted User wrote:

aren’t all BA gamers cool by definition?

They should be, but I guess it depends who you ask…

 

Geof

 

One who puts on his armour should not boast like one who takes it off.
Ahab, King of Israel; 1 Kings 20:11

[Deleted User]

Plastic AND metal:

 

 

 

Caesar plastics are pretty good. It’s a pity they stopped doing Bronze Age to concentrate exclusively on WW2 Nazis.

 

donald

[Mike Headden]

Interesting discussion, like those links, and some lovely visuals.

As to iron weapon wielding Hittites, dare any doubters to prove you wrong and remember “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

2500BCE to 225BCE, the first 50% of military history.

I love the smell of Bronze Age in the morning! 🙂

But …. Hittites? …. well, I suppose someone has to do moderns 🙂

Ithoriel (aka Eannatum, Lugal of Lagash)

 

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Deleted User]

Could we move to arrow heads? I would think the only reason for using bronze ones is the relative ease that accompanies casting.

A well knapped flint or obsidian arrow head would be lighter & potentially sharper than bronze…..but much longer to produce.

Mike: I’m assuming your Sumerians make full use of stone & bone in their weapons?

 

donald

[Hafen von Schlockenberg]

Fragile, too — once the edge chips, there’s no sharpening it — time for a new one.

Where would the Sumerians be getting all this stone, I wonder?

[Gustav]

Hafen

My guess would be the more mountaineous proto-Elamite kingdom along with the bronze.

[Mike Headden]

Fortunately, in 6mm, my Early Bronze Age stuff rarely has cast arrows so I can gloss over the material with which they are tipped.

That said, the few references to arrows that I’m aware of in the Sumerian literature talks of single or perhaps double digits of arrows tipped with bronze. Which suggests to me that either military archery was incredibly rare (in which case what were those big shields for?) or arrows tipped with bronze were for “those and such as those” while the rank and file oiks used more mundane materials.

Chipped flint arrow heads can be retouched if a solid head is being used but it is possible that micro-blades set in grooves in the shaft were used, in which case remove the chipped one, dab on a spot of tree resin and pop in a new blade.

Flint, obsidian and bone were certainly used by the Sumerians for the points of hunting weapons and flint drills were used to work stone.

The patented Cut-me-own-throat-with-a-flint-knife DIB.LA Rock-Onna-Stick (aka the stone headed mace) worked exceptionally well as a weapon for some considerable time.

I imagine Hittite use of iron would, initially at least, be similarly restricted.

 

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Sane Max]

Geof Downton wrote:

It is possible that the Hittites may have had some iron weapons, but, contrary to the long-held (and still promoted in corners of the interweb) there is no evidence that they developed smelting technology

 

I was not even aware of that theory, so luckily my Hittites all use Bronze.

 

is there a good way of knowing who used arsenic bronze rather than the normal sort? I am aware they are meant to be quite different looking things.

[Not Connard Sage]

Sane Max wrote:

is there a good way of knowing who used arsenic bronze rather than the normal sort? I am aware they are meant to be quite different looking things.

 

Arsenical bronze was used all around the Eastern Med, Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent.

So the answer is yes. Probably.

Good luck finding silvery-bronze paint 🙂

 

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Deleted User]

Not Connard Sage wrote:

Good luck finding silvery-bronze paint 🙂

I can’t find any but luckily Vallejo or someone makes bronzey-silver paint.

 

donald

[Author]

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