[William P]

ok. heres a querie i have.. regarding egyptian weapons,

the idea (not sure which) is that maces fell out of favour when increased amounts of armour became more common, helmets more widely used or something to that effect.. i honestly cannot remember the exact wording as i heard it a long time ago


what would be the source of this idea, was there a decline at all? or was it due not to more armour but improved metallurgy allowing more swords and axes?

it seems odd from a weapons standpoint, seeing as how precussive weapons are seen as being specialised in compromising armour is this perhaps due to the armours available in the period?

[Dan Howard]

There is an argument that metal helmets drove the mace from the Bronze Age battlefield. There does seem to be a corrollation between the increased prevalence of helmets and decreased prevalence of maces.

[Geoff Wood]

If Egyptian maces were more often stone (which I don't know, just working/guessing from limited recollections), perhaps that material didn't fare so well against metal armour as did the metal maces used in later ages (maybe more fragile, and/or not able to form such sharp points, flanges as is the case with metal). Just a WAG.

Geoff

[Matthew Amt]

It could be simpler than that. With metal you can make edged weapons that will do damage to the human body much more easily than a mace. The mace depends on heavy force or a square hit at speed, whereas a light slap or quick jab with a blade will lay flesh wide open. And there simply wasn't enough armor around at that point to tip the balance back to maces or hammers--still plenty of targets for edges and points.

Matthew

[William P]

[Philip Dyer]

I agree with Matt, being to lobbs of a limb of an armored opponent allows attacks to be faster and with less effort, axe heads can hook shield, weapons can be made lighter and with the same or more because metal can bend deform under stress and can hammered or refored back into same and stone crackes and break under stress, Dan, their rule of logic that just because something corelates with sonething else, doesn't mean it the cause. The falling out of favof maces at the same period of use of metal could just that weapon makers were more used to working with metal, show by the ability to shape small domed helmets and left stone working to the architects,

[Ronald M]

[Dan Howard]