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Fig. 13.—Ancient Egyptians Throwing Knives.

In more civilised times the knife, as a missile, would take the place of the stone. We find that the ancient Egyptians[54] practised at a wooden block, and the German Helden (champions), seated on settles, duelled by casting three knives each, to be parried with the shield. The modern Spaniards begin to learn when children the art of throwing the facon[55], cuchillo or clasp-knife. The reapers of the Roman Campagna, mere barbarians once civilised, also ‘chuck’ the sickle with a surprising precision.

THE BOW.

The habit of stone-throwing would presently lead to the invention of the sling, which Meyrick considers,[56] strange to say, the ‘earliest and simplest weapon of antiquity.’ The rudest form of this pastoral weapon used only on open plains, a ball and cord, was followed by the various complications of string- or thong-sling, cup-sling, and stick-sling. The latter, a split stick which held the stone till the moment of discharge, may have been the primitive arm: Lepsius shows an Egyptian using such a sling and provided with a reserve heap of pebbles. Nilsson suggests that David was thus weaponed when Goliath addressed him, ‘Am I a dog that thou comest to me with staves?’—that is, with the shepherd’s staff turned into a sling. And this form survived longest in the Roman ‘fustibulus,’ which the moderns corrupted to ‘fustibale’[57]: the latter, with its wooden handle, was used in Europe during the twelfth century, and was employed in delivering hand-grenades till the sixteenth. The primitive ball-and-cord, known to the ancient Egyptians, is still preserved in the Bolas of the South American Gaucho. A simultaneously invented missile would be the hurling or throwing-stick and its modification, the Boomerang, of which I have still to speak. The application of elasticity and resilience being now well known, would suggest the rudest form of the bow[58] and arrow. This invention, next in importance (though longo intervallo) to fire-making and fire-feeding, is the first crucial evidence of the distinction between the human weapon and the bestial arm. Nilsson and many others hold the invention to have been instinctive and common to all peoples; and we cannot wonder that it was made the invention of demi-gods—Nimrod, Scythes[59] the son of Jupiter, or Perses son of Perseus.[60] The missile arm at once showed man and beast separated by an extensive difference of degree, if not of kind, and it has played the most notable part, perhaps, of all weapons in the annals of humanity or inhumanity. It led to the Greek gastrapheta, the Roman arcubalista (crossbow[61]); to the palintonon or balista, and the arblast (an enlarged species of the arcus, intended for throwing darts of giant size); to the Belagerungs-balister, a fixed form; to the catapult, enthytonon, tormentum, scorpion or onager,[62] and to other formidable forms of classical artillery which preceded the ‘cheap and nasty’ invention of chemical explosives.