We will use this conclusion to support our reconstruction of the combative techniques and submission wrestling found in further chapters; this reconstruction is based on an archaeological record collected from many lands over a time scale encompassing millennia. The time scale involved is not a fallacy, for the simple reason that the techniques and methods of individual close-quarter combat did not change over the period described by the archaeological record presented in this text.
Figure 1.7. Double-edged sword of the Bronze Age. The shape and style of these swords was the same from Iran to England and from Egypt to Sweden during this period, a by-product of the cultural interaction caused by the global trade in copper and tin. This particular blade is from Hungary, from the Hadjúsámson area, and dates to the sixteenth century BCE. (Drawing based on a museum photograph.)
For personal reasons, we would like to emphasize a position that will displease those Greeks with ethnocentric tendencies: the double-edged sword did not constitute a prerogative or creation of the Mycenaean Greeks. Rather, it was a product of all the ancient cultures of the Bronze Age in general. Though it is clear that the Mycenaeans used amber from Britain and tin from Afghanistan, the belief that they were the center of civilization and trade, and the fathers of the sciences of their time, is wishful thinking. Accordingly, in an attempt to maintain rationalism, we would dissuade the reader from thinking of these swords as “Mycenaean” despite the fact that this has been a longstanding tendency in Greece and in Greco-centric circles.
In essence, “The history of the sword is the history of humanity.” This dynamic phrase was used by the great British explorer, archaeologist, and warrior Sir Richard Francis Burton in 1884, in the prologue to his classic work, The Book of the Sword. His observation is not without a considerable quantity of truth. Despite our transition to an age of technological warfare, this phrase continues to be timely: the romantic image of the sword has not faded in its appeal. In times of war, for instance, the defeated general will give up his sword to the victor even today. The kings and nobility of Europe and the East, though they no longer have their old political power, still maintain considerable social influence, and the sword continues to support their symbolic role. The queen of England continues to knight those she deems worthy with her sword.
The etymology of the word sword is lost in the depths of time. Most likely, however, the word derives from the Egyptian S-F-T , which was pronounced seft or sfet. In Mesopotamia, the sword was called sibiru (which may well be related to the Greek xiphos, pronounced kseefos),5 as well as sapara and sapata. The reader may, therefore, using a little imagination, readily find the root of most words that identify the sword (the ancient Greek πάη, spáthi, the Latin spatha, the Arabic sayf, the German schwert, the English words sword and saber, and so on) in the Egyptian S-F-T and its Mesopotamian equivalents. This etymology has a special meaning, for it determines the dissemination of the sword as a weapon of choice, which must also be related to its manner of use.
The development and diffusion of the sword in its various forms testifies to the existence of the combative arts in all of the lands where the sword was found, for the simple reason that it would be pointless for expensive dueling weapons of this sort to exist without a strategic and precise method of use. And since, in the seventeenth century BCE, the same weapons were in use from Iran to England and from Egypt to Sweden, we can surmise that the movements and the techniques of their martial arts were similar or identical. This conclusion is supported by our study of ancient depictions, which demonstrate that the martial art of the elite Bronze Age warriors was worldwide in its distribution, and was extremely similar to today’s Eastern martial arts that were developed on the basis of combat in armor, such as the art of jujutsu that has become known worldwide today and was cultivated by the samurai warrior class of medieval Japan.
In summary, heroes, warriors, and “great kings” existed from one end of the ancient world to the other. The widespread trade in bronze and tin during the Bronze Age, and the similarity of armor and weapons ranging from Britain to faraway Luristan, tell us that a common culture, combative and otherwise, had been established through the ancient world, and that the martial arts—pammachon—were central to this culture’s dissemination.
After conducting our research—during which we examined ancient depictions of martial arts from the Mediterranean—we thought it would be of interest to compare the same techniques with those displayed in surviving medieval European close-quarter combat manuals from different countries. We found that the depictions of techniques in the Flos Duellatorum by the Italian Fiore de Liberi (1409), Fechtbuch aus dem Jahre 1467 by the German Hans Talhoffer, and Codex Wallerstein (circa 1470) were identical with the ancient depictions, going back all the way to the third millennium BCE. They confirm that the demands and movements of pammachon, for all the peoples of the earth, have not changed since roughly the third millennium BCE, and hence, its practice remains timeless.
2
FROM COMBAT TO COMPETITION
Pammachon to Pankration
Depictions found at the Egyptian graves of Beni Hasan, most of which date to 2000 BCE, allow us a glimpse into some basic truths regarding the martial arts. On the one hand, these frescoes differentiate ritual athletic competition (combat “sports”) from actual warfare: they display a broad range of submission wrestling techniques, drawn in parallel to, yet distinctly separate from, scenes of battle. On the other hand, they make it relatively clear that the best way for warriors to train for conditions of real combat was through the combat sports. The frescoes at Beni Hasan portray athletic combat sports thirteen hundred years before the Olympic games were established in Greece. It is highly likely then that, in addition to the martial arts, the practice of bloodless ritual dueling—through combat sports such as boxing and wrestling—was widespread throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East beginning from the Neolithic Age.
This distinction between the techniques of actual combat—martial arts—and athletic competition is an essential one. We mentioned that the words máche (combat) and máchaera (blade) stem from the same concept—conflict between two or more combatants with deadly, close-quarter weapons: knives, hatchets, swords, or spears. Naturally, the martial arts of the period should have taught the use of and defense against these weapons, otherwise what would have been the reason for their existence? The term pammachon was officially used before the enactment of the Olympic games in 776 BCE.1 We may conclude that pammachon was the way fighters fought, whether armed or unarmed. We can also suggest that pammachon was a training method for fighters in the framework of their preparation for armed battle in actual battlefields.
Over time the martial arts underwent a transformation in which a more technical, regulated form of combat sports evolved. This was perhaps related to the role played by the martial arts in religious worship from ancient times. In chapter 3 we will study the pediments from the Parthenon (the chief temple of Athena in Athens) and the temple of Apollo at Vasses, which today can be found in the British Museum, and we will see that they almost exclusively depict scenes of pammachon. Similarly, the scenes of submission grappling and combat sports that come from the graves of Beni Hasan in Egypt have a clear religious foundation. Then again, we should not ignore the fact that all athletic competitions in ancient Greece were in essence religious festivals in honor of a given god—the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games, and so forth. The exact correlation, in the context of historical development, between athletic activity and religious ritual is something that bears study in detail.
Yet—beyond gratifying whatever psychological and philosophical need for releasing social stress that ancient societies may have had— combat sports were a solution to an obvious problem (while at the same time giving people the chance to honor their gods). This is the challenge of safely training martial arts practitioners, with the goal of developing strength, reflexes, flexibility, precision, and stamina. It is impossible to practice ge
nuine martial arts without instituting regulations. By establishing rules in the contests, the ancients were able to minimize the dangers that are inherent to both the use of weapons and blows with the bare hand to vital points. At the same time they were able to help their warriors train physically, emotionally, and mentally for combat. In contrast with us today, however, the ancients never forgot the difference between a combat sport and a martial art, probably because close-quarter combat was a matter of life and death for almost every one of their citizens.
This distinction is expressed by the use of a different term to refer to the combat sport: pankration. Pankration is a compound word coming from pan and kratos, meaning: “he who holds everything,” one with absolute power or authority. The ancient Greeks attributed the characterization of pan + kratos to special cases such as heroes, semi-gods, and gods. Pankrates is he who holds everything, according to a commentator on Sophocles. A commentator on Aeschylus wrote that Zeus is called pankrateus because he dominates, conquers, and reigns over everybody. Aristophanes in Thesmophoriasouses calls Athena pankrates kore (omnipotent daughter) of Zeus. They said of Hercules that he had a powerful heart. Later, these titles—pankrates and pantokrator—were used by the Church, denoting the power of God and Christ.
Within the framework of sports jargon we can say that pankration is a “battle for submission,” a contest where each athlete aims to subdue his opponent. In fact, in addition to meaning “strength” and “power,” the word kratos also means “control” and “submission.”2 By example, Ares—the god of war whose totem was the vulture—was followed into battle by Kratos (domination/control/power) and Bia (violence).
Pankration was a combat sport introduced in the Thirty-third Olympiad in 648 BCE with clearly defined rules and restrictions. As such, it differed substantially from the techniques used in combat on battlefields, shown by the literal meaning of the word pammachon: “I fight in any manner.” In any manner! We cannot say this about pankration athletes, because the way they fought in wrestling grounds was predetermined and controlled by a set of rules. In fact, the sport of pankration—unarmed combat between two people, during which they exchange blows and perform holds in order to subdue their opponent within an athletic game’s framework—was not much different from the submission wrestling and submission fighting that enjoys worldwide popularity today, beginning with with “no-holds-barred” and “ultimate fighting championship” competitions in the 1990s.
The techniques of this sporting contest were totally different from the technique of the martial art of pammachon, which was based on blows to vital points that directly incapacitated an enemy, or locks and throws that controlled him in such a manner that he no longer presented a threat and could be quickly executed. In pammachon, the methodology and execution of defensive (or offensive) techniques also took into account the possibility that the enemy was armed, either openly or carrying concealed weapons, and that there could be more than one opponent involved in the battle. The kinesiology of the pammachon practitioner was also the same, whether he was armed or unarmed, wearing armor or unarmored.
For example, pammachon included training with wooden and, subsequently, real weapons. We have seen that the Egyptians practiced ritual stick-fighting in preparation for the sword duel (in fact, Alexander the Great spoke highly of this), and we also know that Roman soldiers trained with wooden weapons. For the classical Greeks, there is no archaeological evidence of this practice (though we could say that lack of evidence does not necessarily mean that wooden weapons were not used for training). We know that the Bronze Age Greeks practiced ritual dueling with weapons (hoplomachia), but we are not quite sure how it was done, and what the rules were, if any—usually it was carried out in religious festivals and funeral games. But it seems that the classical Greeks did not have equivalent practices in their athletic competitions, raising the question of why and how they were discontinued.
Plato in his Laws recommends the introduction of hoplomachia to the gymnasium, as necessary for the training of citizens and warriors. But it is not until the third century BCE that the historical record tells us that “fencing” was reintroduced to southwestern Greece (and even then, not to the famed cities of Athens or Sparta). Participants used a short wooden sword, a wooden spear, full metal helmet and shin guards, a wooden shield, and a leather chest protector. Perhaps, following Alexander’s conquests, they had evaluated, and were worried about, the military techniques used by other nations of the ancient world.
HISTORICAL REFERENCES AND TERMINOLOGY
There has been some confusion regarding the distinction between these two terms, in part because the founders of the Olympic games initially gave the name pammachon to the new combat sport (actually pankration) before realizing that they should make a clear distinction between the combat sport and the martial art.3 It was not long, however, before the official name of the combat sport was changed to pankration. The clear difference between it and the pammachon of the battlefield is reflected by ancient texts.
Aristotle, in Rhetorics, mentions that a “wrestler is he who can arrest and hold the other man tightly, a boxer is he who inflicts injuries with blows, and he who fights using both these methods is a pankration athlete.” A commentator on Plato gives the following definition of pankration: “This is a contest consisting partially of wrestling and partially of boxing.” Plutarch mentions that “pankration is a mixture of wrestling and boxing.” According to Philostratos, wrestling, boxing, and pankration were included in the Olympic games for their usefulness in battle, since in Marathon and Thermopylae “after their swords and spears were broken, they achieved a great deal with bare hands; wrestling and pankration proved useful in actual battle.” Plutarch confirms this: “All these are not just games, they are also useful in real battle.”4 Philostratos also points out that it is the best Olympic game: “In Olympia and the Olympic games, the best contest for men is pankration.”
In ancient Greece all games were believed to have originated from the gods. According to Plutarch, the ancient Greeks believed that pankration was created by the hero Theseus, who beat the Minotaur using a pankration technique. A commentator on Pindar reports: “Theseus the Athenian, in the Labyrinth, much weaker in strength than the Minotaur, fought with him and won using pankration, as he had no knife.” According to Pausanias, pankration was created by the semi-divine hero Hercules. Pindar’s commentator mentions that according to Aristotle, the game of pankration was more technical than its previous form and that Leukaros the Akarnanian was considered to be its transformer. Aristotle said that, “Leukaros the Akarnanian was the first to transform pankration into a technical game.”
As mentioned earlier, for a martial art to be effective on the battlefield, it must use the same class of movement, whether the fighter is armed or unarmed, either wearing armor or not, whether facing one or multiple opponents. In the Olympic sport of pankration, however, unarmored athletes ended up rolling on the ground 99 percent of the time (the same thing occurs in mixed martial arts contests today). This is the natural outcome of a scuffle between two combatants who are fighting with conventions imposed for their safety, without weapons, and in a restricted space. However, it is clear that it was not feasible for an armored warrior to fight on the ground, due to the weight of the armor and its rigidity, and due to the danger of being struck by an unseen opponent in the melee!
Therefore, it is obvious to serious hoplologists that the true martial art of the ancient Greeks and the sport of pankration were not one and the same. It would be like comparing yoroi kumiuchi, the battlefield martial art of the medieval samurai of Japan, with competitive judo today—the two are only superficially similar. The boundaries and the goals of one differ from those of the other. However one may look at them, combat sports are by their nature one thing, and martial arts another.
This is clearly demonstrated by a closer look at technique. The series of movements that is depicted in the photographs (A–H) show the classic mounted position used
in submission grappling today. In combat sports, it is undoubtedly a position that allows for control and ready submission of the opponent, and if we refer to the archeological record we will see that it has always been this way.
In combat, however, where the possibility of bladed weapons being used is present, this position is especially vulnerable, as we can see (A–F). The abdominal area and the combatant’s leg are straightforward targets for the knife (A–C). The defender cannot easily control the knife, as in doing so, he would expose his eyes to gouging—a catch-22 situation (D–F). In addition, as we can see (G–H) even if there is no knife, this position potentially allows the opponent to seize the defender’s genitals.
In arts clearly developed for battle, the main objective is to eliminate one’s own weak points in every movement, while taking advantage of the opponent’s. The adversary is typically controlled in a face-down position, for example, in which the defender does not expose vulnerable areas to attack. When, in fact, the opponent is detained in a face-up position, the “hold down,” made popular by combat sports since ancient times, is indeed important for battlefield conditions. The point of holding your adversary down is, sadly, to retain him in an immobile position long enough for one of your own to come along and thrust something sharp and nasty into a vital point, or until you can do so yourself. Thus, combat sports, since ancient times, did indeed reflect training for conditions of combat (though please note that the “hold down” does not necessarily have to do with forcing an opponent to submission as in mixed martial arts today).
It has also become accepted today, even by the most ardent supporters of submission fighting and mixed martial arts, that that these arts are designed for applications in situations of individual contests, one on one. If you are dealing with more than one adversary, it is not a very good strategy to go to the ground with the intention of defeating the first opponenet, as you will most likely expose yourself to the attacks of the others. In addition, there are circumstances, such as when the adversary is carrying a weapon, when the techniques of a combat sport must be completely modified to insure the safety of the defender.
The Martial Arts of Ancient Greece Page 3