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The confinement has had a lot of serious consequences on the lives and death of a lot of us and of our relatives. As we were locked in, many thoughts came here and there, with ideas of such and such a topic to lean on as to think of and hope for better times. Musing on ancient Assyrian emergency medicine and sieges, topics too slightly touched so far by academic studies, rose up, as the activities of the Assyrian spies and scouts preparing for war or monitoring the home front. Other topics were finished, thanks to the compulsory time spent at home, the need to get some locked in exercice and the will to have fun among the whole lot of bad news most of us received during the first part of this epidemic period. Among those activities came the desire to weight the primary load of the soldiers in the Assyrian service while on campaign, like their armour and weapons, plus to provide a basic list of further first place equipment everybody would have carried along on the way, like a fire starter and a coat.
About the author
Dr. Fabrice De Backer is one of the leading authorities for ancient Near Eastern armors and weapons, military tactics and combat. Having already published quite a series of monographies and papers on those topics, he also has more than thirty years of experience in experimental archaeology, combat archaeology and battlefield archaeology.
