Aerial Insults: The Historical and Archaeological Value of Inscribed Leaden Sling-Bullets

Brandon R. Olson (Penn State University)

Typically, when one ponders the use of the sling in antiquity, the first image that comes to mind is the story of how David slew Goliath. The exact origins of the sling, however, are not precisely known. Classical authors such as Strabo, Vegetius, Thucydides, and Pliny attribute the invention of the sling to several groups including the Aetolians, Baleares, Acarnanians, and Phoenicians. The most renowned slingers attested to in the ancient Mediterranean include those from Acarnania, Aetolia, Thessaly, the Balearic Islands, and Rhodes. Based on the historical and archaeological evidence, it appears that the sling became a popular weapon as early as the Neolithic period. It functioned throughout antiquity and was particularly popular beginning in the late Bronze Age through the Roman periods.

One interesting phenomenon regarding the use of the sling in antiquity concerns the presence of inscriptions on sling-bullets. These inscriptions, in relief rather than incised, offer a unique vantage point into ancient warfare and history. The problem with this material, however, concerns access. Archaeological reports mentioning sling-bullets rarely offer any type interpretation. Synthetic investigations, with a few exceptions, rarely go beyond providing measurements and a basic translation of the inscriptions. Few works ponder how, why, and who would inscribe something as seemingly insignificant as a sling-bullet or how it functioned in society. This work attempts to bridge this historiographic and archaeological gap. By examining the historical sources, both ancient and secondary, and the archaeological material from the ancient Mediterranean, this work intends to contextualize and examine the nature of inscribed leaden sling-bullets from a multi-component site in southern Cyprus and the greater Mediterranean. A thorough examination of this material will provide insight into the role of inscribed leaden bullets in ancient warfare, as well as illustrate what types of information about the past sling-bullets may provide scholars.

One of the central functions of inscribed sling-bullets was to communicate information. Based on the available evidence, five categories of inscription types emerge: commands and exclamations, name of a city or people, personal names, deities, and symbols. These categories reveal useful information for historians and archaeologists. Personal names and group names on sling-bullets reflect issues such as ethnic identity, mobility, and individual manufacturers. The two synthetic investigations that have investigated sling-bullets in any detail have coupled the spatial provenience of the bullets with ancient references to their respective sites to link various names attested to on sling-bullets to known historical figures and events. Exclamations such as “take it,” “ouch,” “appear,” “victory,” and “bit it in vain” represent an early form of psychological warfare. By creating a framework for the study of inscribed sling-bullets based on the historical and archaeological evidence, this work intends to use this framework to contextualize the inscribed sling-bullets from a Hellenistic site in southern Cyprus. The primary goal of this work is to demonstrate the historical value of an understudied epigraphic source from the ancient world.