Section II: The Persians/Ancient Egyptians

Knowledge of how the Persians organized their armed forces is rather shadowy compared to our colourful view of the Greeks. This is because the ancient writers tended to romanticize the Greeks and to portray the Persian armies as immense, squabbling masses of a million soldiers, miraculously overcome by a small ragtag group of Greeks. Not that the Greeks weren't awesome. Often 'twas the case when a great Persian army, outnumbering the Greek hoplites at least 3:1, was defeated. Indeed, in the case of Thermopylae, the odds were as much as perhaps 300:1 in Persian favour on the third day. This is not to say that the Persians were evil; every conquering nation is seen in a different light. Simply being the aggressors in the Græco-Persian War leads people to believe the Persians were in the wrong. The Greeks certainly weren't, but assessing accountability in war is a shady business. Although, I suppose that in those rather undiplomatic times, if you invaded a country and won, you were seen as the heroic victors removing a malicious power. If your forces were defeated by the locals defending their homeland, you were seen as a heartless invader overcome by simple men with tremendous loyalty. But the point is moot. In the Græco-Persian War, it is generally accepted that, while being a grand and sophisticated nation, the Persians were the bad guys.

Note: The archer pictured above to the left is actually not Persian. He is Scythian. However, the similarites are enough for him to look the part.
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We neglected to address the ancient Egyptians earlier in the blog, and we decided that we'd just stick them in here because it is slightly more appropriate than after the Macedonian section. Granted, it is anachronistic by a fairly large margin, but you can't add posts below those you've already published. Anyway, there are almost no extensive excavations of Egyptian weapons. The artifacts are limited to various weapons lifted from tombs such as that of Tutankhamen. However, numerous steles and other carvings depict fairly uniform soldiers with surprising consistency.