Forget catapults. Bronze Age sieges were won with carpentry, cover and fire. Reliefs, seals and tablets show a practical toolkit that brought attackers right to the stone: rams on simple frames, wall-sized shields, picks for prising brick, and flames to finish the job. This guide explains how each tool worked at the wall, what the evidence really shows, and how the pieces fit together.
What counts as a siege weapon in the Bronze Age?
Two quick guardrails. The Bronze Age, roughly 3300–1200 BCE, predates torsion artillery, so no catapults. And there are no technical manuals, which means we rely on reliefs, glyptic seal images and narrative tablets, each with its own bias. For clarity, “siege weapons” here means purpose-built offensive kit that gets men to, into or through defences: rams and covered wagons, mobile shields and mantlets, sapping picks and other breaching tools, plus incendiaries. Ramps, ladders and shovels are essential engineering aids but are not the focus.
Early battering rams that actually worked
Old Hittite narratives already assume a ram. In the Akkadian tale of the siege of Uršu a king erupts when defenders break the battering ram, a throwaway line that presumes a stout beam, a trained crew and a target such as a gate or a weak wall joint. Archives from Mari and Syria, read alongside Early Bronze cylinder seals, strengthen the picture. Several seals show wheeled frames with a projecting beam striking a towered wall. Some scholars read these as ram-bearing wagons or low mobile towers rather than ordinary carts.
Mechanics were simple. A suspended beam, bound in rawhide and worked through a short arc, can damage gates, poorly bonded mudbrick and the toe of a wall. Wet hides resist flame; a roof of hurdles or planks gives basic cover for the crew. Rams had limits, especially against steep stone-faced glacis (a sloped revetment built to shed attacks) and carefully battered brickwork, which is why sapping and fire appear alongside them.
Mobile shields: how you survive the last 50 metres
The Dapur reliefs do more than celebrate ladder teams. They capture combined arms at the wall: archers pin the battlements while shield-bearers walk assault crews to the gate. Egyptian art is stylised, but when archers shoot from behind large portable screens we are looking at the ancestors of mantlets. A wooden model from Asyut in the early Middle Kingdom shows the type clearly, a broad rectangular shield made to serve as moving cover.
- They cut exposure to arrows and dropped stones during the final approach.
- They let archers set a suppression base close to the gate while breachers work.
- Overlapped, they form an improvised roof, the formation later called the testudo (shields overlapped like a roof).
Screens do not break walls. They keep the people who do alive long enough to work, which is a weapon-class effect in practice.
Covered wagons and proto-towers, explained
Did the Bronze Age use moving towers? Not on the grand Hellenistic scale, but there are early hints. Seal impressions from Tell Beydar show a wheeled, multi-storey frame with men in stacked compartments beside a building. Another scene pairs a wheeled tower with a ram striking a fort. Seal art is tiny and stylised, so caution is wise, yet the pattern across several pieces makes a functional reading plausible.
Egyptian scenes point the same way. First Intermediate and Middle Kingdom battle art shows large shielded arrays sheltering archers right under the walls. Some read these as proto-towers or covered galleries on wheels. The Dapur reliefs sit on the same spectrum: high shooting platforms, heavy shield arrays and crews working under cover to support escalade.
In practice a Bronze Age “tower” could be a high mantlet with a raised firing step, a covered gallery pushed to the gate to shelter a small ram, or a tilt-wagon carrying a projecting beam. All aim at the same two advantages attackers lack against parapets: height and cover.
Sapping kits: the quiet wall-killers
Where rams cannot bite, miners and sappers can. The key tool is not glamorous: a bronze pick, often of the Luristan type, used to prise stone and mudbrick at the wall’s toe or to undercut foundations for later burning and collapse. Picks are common finds in Bronze and early Iron Age contexts. In a siege they become offensive because they create a breach.
Sapping depends on screens to survive the approach and on fire to finish an undercut by damaging bonding and any timbers.
Fire: the cheapest breaching weapon
Incendiaries are thoroughly Bronze Age because bitumen, resin and oil were everywhere. Three reliable uses stand out:
- Gates. Attackers set timber leaves and lintels alight to weaken fastenings, especially where bronze axes struggle with seasoned wood. Defenders try the same against small rams and screens, which is why wet hides make sense as protection.
- Undercuts. After sappers hollow the base, a fire damages bonding and any timbers so the facing fails.
- Parapet denial. Firepots and burning bundles thrown onto the walkway force defenders off the merlons so archers and breachers can work.
Bows: the suppression that makes it all possible
Personal weapons are not usually classed as siege kit, but composite bows earn a mention. Their penetration and flat trajectory let archers suppress the battlements. Reliefs place archery teams at the centre of the assault, and seal scenes often show missiles coordinated with approach devices. Accurate fire is what buys your ram and your picks the few crucial minutes on target.
Putting it together: how a Bronze Age assault likely ran
- Missiles pin the parapet. Composite archers and slingers force defenders to keep their heads down.
- Mobile cover rolls forward. Large shields and screens create a protected work zone at the wall.
- Breaching begins. A covered beam works in short strokes at a postern or gate while sappers prise at the wall base elsewhere.
- Fire is applied. Crews burn gates or the undercut; wet hides protect engines from defender flames.
- Storming follows. Once the structure gives, the assault proper begins.
Parts of this choreography are visible at Dapur. Old Hittite narrative implies the rest. Early Bronze glyptic sketches the concepts. It is less spectacular than a Hellenistic tower, yet it is coherent and effective, and the sources let us see it.
Why this arsenal is easy to miss
- Evidence bias. Clay tablets, sealings and eroded wall paintings give glimpses, not manuals.
- Defensive scale. Middle Bronze builders favoured massive glacis and inset and offset walls. Against such earthworks, small engines look unimpressive, so artists often celebrated escalade and chariot victories instead.
- Iron Age glare. Assyrian reliefs of great rams and towers dominate modern imagination and eclipse earlier, subtler practice. The earlier texts and images show the tools already existed.
Key terms
Battering ram (early form). A suspended or hand-worked beam aimed at gates or the wall’s toe, often with simple overhead cover.
Mantlet or mobile shield. A portable screen or oversized rectangular shield that protects archers and workers near the wall.
Covered gallery or tilt-wagon. A wheeled frame that carries a small beam or provides a raised firing position.
Sapping. Undercutting the wall base with picks, often followed by fire to collapse the weakened section.
Common questions
Did the Bronze Age use catapults?
No. Torsion artillery appears later. Bronze Age sieges relied on archery, screens, rams, picks and fire.
Who first used battering rams?
No single inventor. Texts place a ram in use by the Old Hittite period, and seal imagery suggests wheeled rams or towers were imagined earlier in Syria and Mesopotamia.
Are the Dapur scenes reliable for technology?
They are royal art and stylised, but they consistently show combined-arms assault with close-range archery and shielded teams, which matches how workable siegecraft functions.
Sources and further reading
- Akkadian narrative of the siege of Uršu, Old Hittite context.
- Davide Nadali, studies on Early Bronze siege imagery and the interpretation of “tilt-wagons” and mobile towers in Syrian glyptic.
- Theban Ramesseum reliefs of the siege of Dapur, Late Bronze Age, for combined-arms assault and ladder work.
- Middle Kingdom models and reliefs from Asyut and related sites for large rectangular shields used as mobile cover.
- Assyrian palace reliefs (as later comparators) for the mature ram and tower tradition.
Notes on terminology: glacis means a steep, stone-faced slope built to defeat rams and ladders. Inset and offset walls are stepped faces that break up a flat surface. Testudo is the later Latin term for shields overlapped like a roof.
