Ancient Egyptian Martial Arts 1 by Brian Burgin Originally Published in: November 18, 1998 When discussing the

history of a martial art, the art is almost always associated with a region of origin and individuals or founders of the art. While one can assume that the founders lived in the region of origin, one can only assume that they did at the time of the art's creation. In practice, an art is not tied to the region but to its students and instructors. Just as the passage of people to other regions is frequent, so too is the passage of an art to other regions. Arts have traveled to other lands throughout history by way of invasions, evictions, wars, skirmishes, and trade. Through travel, an art is demonstrated to the people of different regions who then either incorporate knowledge from the art into their arts and/or create new techniques or arts to counter the art. In this way, the stimulus of a visiting art helped to hinder the stagnation of local arts and create new arts. Further, because of this situation and because of its frequency, many of the arts throughout history have likenesses to each other and to a certain level share the same lineage. Commonly, martial arts today are traced back to a lesser level, thus masking the commonality of lineage. This is not without reason, though. For, there exist many problems in tracing back the lineage of even one art. The main problem lies in the communication of arts. Word of mouth has been and will most likely continue to be how arts are taught. Word of mouth is the easiest, most effective, and time-honored method. However, it leaves open the possibility for human error in memory and loss of information through death. Countless arts have undoubtedly been lost because their practitioners have simply died out. Before modern times, lineage was commonly held as secondary to the art itself. If the art worked, that was good enough for its practitioners. Thus, early martial artists cared much less about lineage than we do today - either that, or they cared much less about writing it down than we do today. Because little was written down and less seems to have been written down as one traces back in time, tracing lineage becomes more difficult the farther one looks back. Nonetheless, there does exist some evidence of common martial arts lineages or trails of influence throughout the world. One of importance to our art is the trail from Egypt to China. The progression seems to have occurred gradually and geographically. Traced back, China seems to have been influenced by India, India by Greece, and Greece by Egypt. Of course, the level of influence is varied and low, but historically valid. This article will deal with evidence of martial arts in Egypt. Information on Greece, India, and China itself are left for later articles or as a research activity for the reader. Ancient Egypt had three known combat arts - wrestling, boxing, and stick fighting. When compared to modern arts, these arts can be seen as primitive since their conceptual scope is small. However, the arts may well have been the building blocks for many other later arts. As building blocks, they represent only a portion of the arts of the modern day. Therefore, it is easy to see how one would view them as simple. Contrary to their apparent simplicity, the arts did evolve through time and became complex in their own respect, with practitioners becoming extremely good at them and many techniques proliferating from their small scopes. Egyptian martial arts, in particular, were able to develop for thousands of years due to the longevity of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Of Egypt's arts, wrestling was the most popular, with stick fighting and boxing practiced to a lesser degree. The ancient wrestling looked much like modern wrestling with numerous holds and throws. Stick fighting in Egypt involved wooden sticks with which one struck at certain targets on an opponent. Boxing was rarely practiced and only a glimpse of evidence for it has been found. The popularity of the three arts has been based on the amount and breadth of time of archaeological evidence found depicting them. Evidence shows that wrestling was practiced as early as the unification of the kingdoms, around 3000 BC. Stick fighting, however, arose later and became popular at the time of the New Kingdom (around 1500 BC). The evidence of wrestling from the time of unification was depicted in a palette or breast plate. Here, a pair of wrestlers was used as a hieroglyph. Later, further evidence is shown from the Old

Kingdom within the tomb of Ptahhotep. Dated around 2500 BC (5th Dynasty), a wall painting shows Ptahhotep's young son wrestling another boy. Bold swings and throws are shown here and are surprising when considering the date of the painting. Evidence of such concepts occurring as early as the Old Kingdom shows that Egyptian wrestling held systematic characteristics even at this time. As deemed from the painting, the rules of the time allowed seizing any part of the body. However, the rules changed over time, since a later painting depicts a referee calling an illegal choke hold. The majority of Egyptian wrestling scenes come from the Middle Kingdom (20401785 BC), specifically from the wall paintings of the tomb at Beni Hasan (see Fig. 1). Figure 1: The Tomb of Beni Hasan The tomb was carved out of a rock formation near the modern village of Beni Hasan. Within, the tomb encompasses 30 graves, of which four hold paintings of wrestlers. The paintings depict wrestling matches as a modern kata does, with each move drawn in succession and such as to give an overall impression of a battle. Hundreds of wrestling pairs have been drawn on the walls with moves proceeding from left to right in a row and continuing on with the further rows below. One painting differentiated the opponents from each other by using color (see Fig. 2). Figure 2: A Painting from the Tomb of Beni Hasan With one opponent a dark color and the other a light color, archaeologists were able to make better sense of the complex grips and entanglements of the body shown in the painting. One scene depicted a match from the beginning, where the opponents first put on their belts. Belts were all that were worn until the time of the New Kingdom. The association and importance of belts in martial arts could be attributed to these early Egyptian practitioners. While this idea is difficult to prove, there are clearly parallels between the concepts. After placing their belts, the wrestlers in the painting initiated exploratory moves, where they set up for their first attempts at holds. In many cases, an offensive wrestler was shown attempting to secure not only the opponent's head or shoulder but also his legs. Swings and throws followed. Control of both the head or shoulder and the legs allowed the wrestler to perform a throw adequate to result in a decisive fall. If the fall was not decisive, the opponents continued on the ground using leg holds. A leg hold involved controlling the opponent's legs with one's legs. Using this type of technique, a wrestler's arms and hands were free to address an opponent's neck or arms. This concept in controlling the opponent can be easily related to the modern concepts of opponent control within contemporary martial arts. The painting continued its depiction of the match with the pair alternating in positions as each wrestler struggled in attempt to gain advantage over the other. In the end, one opponent was pinned to the ground, signaling a loss and the end of the match. These accounts of movement within the paintings hold remarkable similarities to modern wrestling. The wrestlers are depicted as highly skilled, agile, and experts at parrying. One painting showed a kneeling wrestler twisting his opponent over his back using a head lock and lifting the opponent's hips into the air with his other hand. While wrestling as a simple concept undoubtedly existed in prehistoric times, wrestling as a system including positions, holds, swings, throws, parrying techniques, and rules occurring as far back as 4000 years ago is quite remarkable. Stick fighting is mentioned as early as the Old Kingdom within its Pyramid Texts (dated around 2300 BC). The earliest evidence, however, of stick fighting in ancient Egypt is from the New Kingdom tomb of El Amarna, dated around 1450 BC. The paintings on its walls depict a contest before Pharaoh with the combatants using papyrus stalks as weapons. This account is very basic. However, stick fighting soon became popular and advanced quickly. About a century later in another painting, some fighters wear a shield on the left arm and use a stick with one end having a knob and the other a wrist strap. In other paintings, other equipment is shown being used including head and chin guards. While the concept of stick fighting is simple, one can see

the advancement of the art through the growing use of such devices and the growth in the skill of its practitioners. Other variations on the basic concept of stick fighting have been found. In one painting, a stick fighter is shown paired against a wrestler. In another, a stick fighter uses two sticks. These accounts involve added complexity and mark another facet of advancement in the art. The condition of winning a stick fighting match is difficult to make out, but there is some evidence of a point system from a painting showing hits along with certain movements. A point system further depicts the relative complexity of the ancient arts. The martial arts of ancient Egypt were not just practiced in private. Evidence of the arts has been found in relation to both military and religious practices as well. Stick fighting had a role in the cults of ancient Egypt. The cult of the dead (the cult of Osiris), specifically, has been described as having priests who fought ritually with sticks before its temples. The first references to the cult are dated from the Old Kingdom around 2500 BC. Buddhism and Taoism are just two "modern" religions that have strong ties to martial arts. Like these, Egyptian religion worked in unison with the martial arts toward a common purpose. The purpose was to provide a means toward enlightenment and self embetterment. Egyptian ideas about the centers of the body and the structure of life were very similar to those of India . In fact, the ancient Egyptian concept of Maat could well be mistaken for the Chinese concept of the Tao. Both are described as everything and as unchanging. Further, texts from both periods tell of the need to attain a reunion with the Maat or Tao. Thus, Egypt most likely influenced not only later external arts but also internal arts and religions of the world, including those of India. Martial arts, of course, had a militaristic purpose in ancient Egypt. The arts of wrestling and stick fighting were part of a soldier's regime. Evidence of this was shown in many paintings where both wrestling and stick fighting scenes were drawn alongside military battle scenes. The military influence on these arts is obvious. What is not obvious is which came first. While the answer to this problem is lost to prehistory, the two most likely formed separately and melded together. The line between the two was created and then blurred when martial skills led to wars and wars led to martial skills. As ancient Egypt was one of the earliest human civilizations, it is not surprising how much influence it had on later cultures. Aside from religion and martial arts, many of Egypt's basic concepts and some of their language ended up in other parts of the world. The Chinese concept of the dragon for instance, which has martial connections, was based on an Egyptian concept. If one traces back the word dragon, one will find that it comes from the Greek word drakon, meaning "serpent". Thus to the Greeks and everyone following them, the dragon and the serpent were synonymous. The two were synonymous in ancient Egypt as well. However, the Egyptians' "dragon" was the crocodile. The crocodile, a sacred animal, was the symbol for time, renewal, and life in ancient Egypt. More importantly, it was the symbol for intelligence and wisdom. The Egyptian crocodile god, Sebek, who predated Ra was the patron of warriors. So, the crocodile (or dragon) of Egypt symbolized wisdom and was the warrior's patron. This description matches the Chinese dragon exactly. The Chinese dragon's association with stealth is paralleled in Egypt's dragon. The Egyptians have said that the crocodile is the only animal living in water with a film covering its eyes - a film so thin that it can see without others seeing it. The god Sebek was said to have represented four gods: Ra of Fire, Shu of Air, Geb of Earth, and Osiris of Water. This plural and elemental nature is consistent with that of the Chinese dragon as well. This article, I hope, has provided an introduction to the martial arts of ancient Egypt and Egypt's influences on modern martial arts. Strangely, my path toward the dragon connection has left me at a beginning, not an end. The path was certainly enjoyable and represented a profound learning experience. However, I am that much more eager to continue the research with a deeper look into the dragon connection in hopes of understanding it better and finding other parallels. I encourage the reader to perform research in this area, if interested. I will advise those interested, though, to not give up when trouble arises; for, as I have found, the information is there, however so hidden. References

Image References: Figure 1: Friedrich Alexander University, Institute for Classical Archaeology Webpage Figure 2: Olympics Through Time Webpage Other References Decker, Wolfgang. Sports and Games of Ancient Egypt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World, Yale University Press, 1987, fig. 7 & 11. Various webpages