Arms and Armour of the Jewish War

[Anonymous]

Hi all, I am looking for information, and mainly pictures or illustrations of the Roman and Jewish soldier's arms and armor during the Jewish War, as well as the basic clothing of this time period i.e. A.D. 70-74<br>
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Any info will be appricated. <p></p><i></i>

[Carlton Bach]

Your first point of access should be Yigael Yadin's excavations. He ran the digs on Masada and En Gedi. The En Gedi finds (variously known under En Gedi, Cave of Letters or Nahal Hever), include significant amounts of (well-published) clothing and textiles as well as other domestic articles (leather, basketry, woodwork, pottery and bronze). Masada is less useful for that field, but some military supplies also survive. IIRC there were also excavations at Machaerus and Herodion, but I don't recall any details.<br>
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Arms and armour are harder than you might think, it seems. The Roman troops in the East are very similar to the western ones, though you usually see more scale and mail than segmentata in reconstructions. The units involved in the fighting were mostly drawn from Syria and Egypt, though IIRC the X Fretensis (by far and wide the most popular Eastern legion for some reason) was not in the area prior to the war. For the local frces, we can assume a good deal of Hellenistic equipment still floating around. Some reconstructions draw on Palmyrene and Petran reliefs showing thorax-style lamellar armours and various Greek helmet shapes. I suspect many local auxiliaries (especially the Ituraeans that Josephus tells such horror stories about) looked a good deal more barbaric than this, though.<br>
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Yigael Yadin assumes that the Jewish insurgents used mostly bows and believes they had very little arms and armour of any kind, but I'd expect a good deal of older equipment to have survived from the pre-Herodian 'troubles' and Herod's regional power aspirations. We know that in Roman Egypt, a good deal of policing manpower was drawn from local militias, and something similar may well have existed in Judaea (all the neighbouring auxiliaries must have come from somewhere, for one thing). I haven't looked into later archelology yet, though. Something is liable to have come up. They're digging up Israel like few other areas on earth.<br>
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It's a real pity Peter Connolly's 'The Holy Land' doesn't come with a bibliography. It is certainly the best and most accessible introduction to the period from a re-enactor's point of view. <p></p><i></i>

[Paullus]

I don't know much about the Jewish forces, but I believe I read somewhere on the net that they were quite fond of a curved dagger and javelins as well. Plus their shield seems to have been similar to the thueros or a small Celtic scutum. Josephus mentions something about crouching down behind them and being fairly well protected IIRC. Armor would be most likely scale or lamellar, albeit extremely rare.<br>
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Again, I know almost nothing about Jewish armaments and if this information is true, but that might give you a place to start. <p></p><i></i>

[Daniel S Peterson]

Jason,<br>
We have one site from the "Great Jewish Revolt" that has yielded a fair amount of Roman equipment, and may give us a picture of the legionaries operating there.<br>
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Gamala, in Galillee was destroyed by Vespasian in the early stages of the war. I think it was in 1981 or 2 that I want to see it, and joined in the excavation for a couple of weeks. It was headed by Shamyra Guttmann, rthe right hand man of Yagael Yadin and first modern archaeologist to investigate Masada. He told me that some parts of a helmet had been found, but already transfered to the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. He gave me permission to study these and anything else. The dig itself was great, and everyone could keep a ballista ball if they liked. There seemed to be hundreds. I took a small one because I was still backpacking around Israel another few weeks, but at the point of impact it was impregnated with house plaster.<br>
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At the Rockefeller museum was stored a tinned bronze cheekpiece virtually identical to the Coolus C. From what was probably the same helmet was a brow reinforcement of sheet bronze in an "L" form. Additionally, there were many arrow and scorpion bolt heads, an iron dagger handle scale of typical form, and a relatively simple gladius scabbard chape of Pompeii type. There was also a small carton of heavily rusted fragments which upon examination, I immediately recognized as a Corbridge style Lorica Segmentata! Fortunately, they had a copy of Robinson in the library, so the museum people were quite excited too! I explained that this was the farthest point East in the Roman Empire that this type of armor was ever discovered. I contacted Peter Connolly about it, but his book ancient Judea had already been published. Still he used my slides in some later lectures.<br>
I have since heard on RAT that the Gamala Segmentata had used some sliding rivets, much like medieval armor. Maybe Mike B. can shed some light on this. From the fragments I remember, I thing it was the remains of one shoulder half, from the surviving cupric alloy hardware.<br>
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The significance of this find is that Roman soldiers were fairly uniformly equipped from one end of the empire to the other.<br>
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As for Jewish equipment, the skeleton of one Jewish fighter at Masada was wearing ribbed bronze scale armor which had been tin plated. Fragments of shields were also definately found at Masada, reported from the "casemate walls",but I have heard very little about them.<br>
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Perhaps more Roman military finds have been made at Gamala since I was there, for that was over twenty years ago. I am sure Shamyra Guttmann has passed away by now, for he was very old back then.<br>
I would love to go there and do a metal detector survey of the likely Roman camp sites there. I am sure there is much more to be found.<br>
<br>
Dan<br>
<p></p><i></i>

[Lucius Aurelius Metellus]

Hi Dan,<br>
The scale armour that the Jewish skeleton was wearing sounds very interesting. Do you think that it might have been "confiscated" from the Romans, or could it have been made by the Jewish soldiers? <p>Lucius Aurelius Metellus, draconarius, Secunda Brittanica</p><i></i>

[Quintius Clavus]

The Jewish rebels had access to a number of sources of armor. They had massacred the Roman auxiliary garrison of Jerusalem, after forcing them to disarm, as part of the "surrender" agreement. They also captured a good portion of Cestius Gallus' baggage train, when they attacked and routed his retreating army. Of course, they would have any Roman dead to plunder, since I don't think the retreating Romans were able to haul out their dead once the pursuit was in earnest.<br>
Let's not forget the capture of Masada, and the store of arms and armor laid in there by Herod the Great. I am sure some of that was distributed, but I am equally sure that some stayed at Masada.<br>
I would expect a more "eastern" appearance to the armor in storage at Masada, likely plenty of scale armor/or mail, since the Parthians had it, though mail is more labor intensive to make than scale armors.<br>
Still and all, most of the armor would have gone to the leaders, and not to the ordinary Jewish fighters. Shields are easy enough to manufacture, for many Jews that may have been the way to contribute to the fight.<br>
The Romans of that period, especially in the East, used locally manufactured armaments. Craftsmen would have had the necessary skills to make things. Supply of the raw materials would have become a problem once the Roman "noose" starting tightening around the country. <br>
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Marcus Quintius Clavus/Quinton <p></p><i></i>

[Gregg]

Connolly says about 400 scales were found at Masada, which according to him had the remains of tinning on them. They're strange looking scales, definitely not Roman standard. They had between two and four holes, but only at the top and none on the sides. All had midribs, and some had a raised outline along the sides. They almost look cast. They were also pretty large; the four he illustrates are between 1" and 1 1/2" from top to bottom. I don't see much difference between the Masada scales and ancient Assyrian or Egyptian scales.<br>
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One surviving arrow found at En Gedi looked like a relatively tiny tanged trilobate head stuck into an arrow shaft that was much too large for it. The arrow shaft looks to be about 1/4" thick and doesn't look barreled, there's no wrapping at the top to keep the shaft from splintering on impact, but the arrow head is so small there's no way the arrow would sink any deeper into its target than the head anyway. One gets the impression of desperate lack of ammunition, or a fundamental ignorance of archery.<br>
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Gregg <p></p><i></i>

[Daniel S Peterson]

I would agree that the Masada scales are not of Roman manufacture for I know of no parallel anywhere. The most curious thing about them is not only are they ribbed in the center, but also around the outer edge! I believe this trait can be seen in much earlier scale armor from the middle east, such as Egypt and Assyria. Because the warrior wearing the armor was entombed beneath a large pile of building rubble, I believe his armor only consisted of the 400 scales excavated with his skeleton, which strongly suggests it was a Greek style linen "thorax" with scale reinforcement only around the waist exactly as seen in so many ancient Greek sources. In all liklihood, this armor was part of Herod's arsenal, which was probably heavily influenced by Greek armaments as to be expected.<br>
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But back to Gamala, there was nothing of supposed "Eastern influence" in any of the Roman equipment found there. The helmet parts were identical to a helmet found in Switzerland, and the alloy hardware from the segmentatae looked virtually identical to that found at Corbridge and in the Rhineland. The only curious feature about the segmentatae, and something I did not notice during my examination, was the rumor I heard later, that it employed "sliding rivets" in part of its construction. I am still waiting for Mike Bishop to comment on this.<br>
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Dan <p></p><i></i>

[Nectanebo]

...The units involved in the fighting were mostly drawn from Syria and Egypt, though IIRC the X Fretensis (by far and wide the most popular Eastern legion for some reason) was not in the area prior to the war. For the local frces, we can assume a good deal of Hellenistic equipment still floating around. Some reconstructions draw on Palmyrene and Petran reliefs showing thorax-style lamellar armours and various Greek helmet shapes. I suspect many local auxiliaries (especially the Ituraeans that Josephus tells such horror stories about) looked a good deal more barbaric than this, though...

When you say the units were drawn from Syria and Egypt, does that mean that those legionaries were just stationed in Egypt and Syria, or were they actually recruited from the local population? i.e. were these legionaries Egyptians and Syrians?

Thanks.

[Carlton Bach]

When you say the units were drawn from Syria and Egypt, does that mean that those legionaries were just stationed in Egypt and Syria, or were they actually recruited from the local population? i.e. were these legionaries Egyptians and Syrians?

I doubt many legionaries were Egyptians or Syrians at this point, given the relative scarcity of Roman citizenship especially in Egypt. They would be 'Romans' - Italic, or Western, anyway, with a scattering of local veterans' sons. The auxiliaries, on the other hand, would often be locals, in the case of some Syrians and Anatolians even still recognisably units raised by client kings absorbed into the Roman army, or contingents from technically sovereign client states. I suspect (and it isn't more than suspect) these troops to have looked rather different from the 'properly Roman' legions and Western auxiliaries. And I am not at all sure their style didn't rub off locally.

[mcbishop]

I am still waiting for Mike Bishop to comment on this.

Can't think why ;-)

The sliding rivets replace the internal leathers on the backplates of the Corbridge-type cuirass from Gamala, thus doing away with the tendency for the plates to overlap the wrong way. Clever, but the only time I have seen this modification (and it was not clear whether this was a repair or a new build); ultimately resolved on the Newstead type by using only one backplate on either side.

Guy Stiebel hopes to publish all the Roman military equipment from Israel in the future... well, all except those catapult missiles that have gone walkabout...

Mike Bishop

[sicarii sam]

I have read a book recently called ' Apocalypse' by neil faulkner that goes indepth on the jewish side of the revolt as well. Worth the read. So much uncovered territory in that war.

[Carus Andiae]

I produced a reconstruction of a Heroidan soldier last year, but unfortunately I've no way of transferring it to on-screen (and I can't be 100% sure of its accuracy in any case). His equipment was largely based on inconography and archaeological finds from the regions bordering Judea, since there was much from the province itself. Basically he wore a sleevless scale cuirass which reached down about mid-thigh level (based partly on finds at Masada) over a 'skirt' of pteruges to knee-level. This over a short tunic. He had a bronze, 'Syrian-style' conical helmet. His shield was circular and dished, with a central circular iron boss. He carried a fairly short sword and a spear. It seems reasonable to suppose that few of the rebels would have been as well equipped as that.

I also have a picture of a Jewish archer, again based on finds at Massada, who wears a waist-length scale cuirass and carries a short, presumably compound bow.

It's worth noting that several Roman auxilliary units were destroyed during the Revolt, so no doubt captured equipment was used.