50. EARLY ARTILLERY 210 51. EARLY HAND-GUNS 228 THE DEFENSIVE ARMOUR AND THE WEAPONS AND ENGINES OF WAR OF MEDIÆVAL TIMES, AND OF THE “RENAISSANCE.” _SECTION I._ DEFENSIVE ARMOUR. PART I. INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. The phrases, “the Stone,” “Bronze,” and “Iron Ages” are mere generalizations fast losing their significance, and the purposes of this volume will not permit of any special disquisition on the weapons of these mixed and merging classifications of periods, or even those recorded of the Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, and Eastern peoples; beyond what, in some instances, may seem necessary for showing any prototypes or analogies of arms or armour in use during the “Middle Ages” and the “Renaissance.” The more remote ages of Egypt would have been a blank to us but for the character of the tombs, which preserved so wonderfully the papyri and frescoes we find so valuable, and, above all, the inscriptions and bas-reliefs on stone, affording infinite information concerning the arms of this ancient people and their martial achievements; indeed, we really know more of the weapons of the ancient Egyptians, and even those of the times of Hesiod, Homer, and Cambyses, than we do of those of the Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Ancient Britons during the centuries immediately following on the final evacuation of Britain by the Roman legions. The vigorous races that had been vanquished by imperial Rome, and those that in their turn had invaded and conquered Italy, inherited much from the earlier Roman wars and domination, more than has been thoroughly understood by historians of the nebulous centuries partly preceding and closely following on the final overthrow of the Western Empire; and the Romans had already gathered together many of the forms of the nations and empires that had preceded them, to say nothing of adaptations from the armament of contemporary tribes and peoples; still, in the main, the Romans had imposed their own methods and civilisation on all the nations they conquered. On a monument recently brought to light by M. de Morgan at Susa, erected by Naram-Sin about B.C. 3750, is a figure of the king wearing a horned helm, and armed with an arrow in his right hand and a bow in his left; a dagger is thrust into his girdle.