Orlat Battle Plaque\'s Importance

[Alanus]

It seems to me that the Chinese iconography shows a bow with smooth recurved limbs, almost "Skythian", compared to the Orlat bows "broken" curvature produced by the attached ears as with "Hunnic bows. They are very different.

The Orlat style quiver is certainly a joy to use. I use the two tubes for differing weights of war arrows, all with bodkin heads.

Nice photo of the quiver, John!

The Chinese picture is very stylized, but shows a bow much longer than the Scythian model. Early Chinese bows had long siyahs but they were attached at lesser an angle than the standard "Hunnic." The bows are still made.

My best argument for the early date of mid-2nd century BC, are the blatantly obvious long sword grips, only found during the early Han period. Here are 3rd century AD Sarmatian swords as pictured in Brzezinski and Mielczarek:
[attachment=487]swordbowdrawings002.JPG[/attachment]

The grips of these swords are far shorter than those on the Orlat plaque. And notice the disk pommel (a carryover from the earlier Warring States to Han period) and the big rock center-pinned to the pommel. This style of construction goes right back to the sword I pictured in detail on the original post. I examined several of these later swords at the Archaeological Museum in Odessa, almost identical with deteriorated pinned construction.

I don't think we can ever have definitive dating the plaque, and the proposals offered in the past vary over a period of 500 years. But none of this devalues the importance of the plaque itself. It is a priceless artifact and a wonderful link between historical cavalries of East and West.:grin: