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SCYTHIAN-STYLE BOWS DISCOVERED IN XINJIANG
From the photographs and drawings of Stephen Selby.
By Bede Dwyer
Introduction.
This is written to give a historical context to the information that Stephen Selby brought back from the museum in Urumqi on some ancient bows. They have not been widely published in Chinese or English, but they are very significant for the study of archery history. Stephen supplied me with the descriptions, but my imagination supplied the reconstructions. I also redrew his sketches so any errors are mine.
The Location
Shanshan County, to the east of Urumqi, is on the Northern Route of the Silk Road, which splits in two to pass the extremely arid Takla Makan Desert. To the East is the Gobi Desert; to the west is the Tarim Basin, which drains the mountains to the north. Its watercourses eventually evaporate in the Takla Makan. Subeshi (Subeixi) is situated to the east of the famous Silk Road town of Turpan (Turfan). Since early exploitation by foreign archaeologists in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the area has continued to reveal amazing relicts of the past. Modern Chinese archaeologists have revealed more details of the ancient inhabitants and their ways of life. The unique dry conditions have preserved usually perishable artifacts and even the bodies of some of the people buried there.
What have surprised many in the West were the European features of some of the bodies. However, ancient Chinese historians had recorded the variety of races on their northwestern border as far back as the Han Dynasty. This area was both a trade route and the point of contact many people from different environments and cultures. People farmed and traded in the oases and nomads visited both for trade and warfare.
The Artifacts
Stephen Selby examined several bows in Urumqi that were of various designs and from several periods. One type of great significance to the history of archery was very similar to bows familiar in the West from Greek, Persian and Scythian [i] art. I will discuss why this is not so surprising below, but firstly I will describe one of the bows.
The bow in question possessed a feature that is no longer common in modern composite bows. It was thick and narrow in the cross-section of that part of the limb where it bends. Unlike later bows, with their broad lenticular or rectangular bending sections, this bow had a triangular section with the apex on the belly side of the limb. The back of the bow was slightly convex and formed the base of the triangle. At the centre of the bow, the limbs are 4 cm wide. For a greater part of the limb it had this unusual shape.
Another feature that was rare in more recent traditional composite bows was that the tips were smoothly recurved. The recurves had string grooves on their belly sides like modern target recurve bows. The cross-section of the recurve was more like a slightly flattened oval. For part of this there is a groove on one side as just mentioned. This feature is totally unlike the bow tips on later composite bows. The term we use for bow tips, “siyah”, is not really appropriate [ii].
In outline, the bow looks like the Classical Cupid’s bow of Greek and Roman art. This is not an accident. Despite being found in the modern confines of China, this bow represents a survival of the ancient Scythian bow, which was used from Italy in the west to the north of China in the east. Roman armies might have carried them even further west. Remains of later Roman archery equipment have been found in Britain, both grip scales and laths for the ears. However, the Scythian bow would leave no telltale laths in the archaeological records. Even in the heartland of the Scythians, modern Russia and the Ukraine, very few identifiable remains of bows remain.
http://www.atarn.org/chinese/scythian_bows.htm
Scythian bow from Urumqi
Ancient Greek statue with Scythian Bow
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