Ancient Egypt. Martial Arts. B

The roots of martial arts extend to ancient Egypt ,long time  before to take its complete shape in China and the rest of Asia. Ancient Egypt,  always had a striking military forceand was the pioneer civilization  in inventing most of  weapons of the ancient world and in developing its fighting techniques. The ancient Egyptian invention for the training sword is a profound evidence on having an early martial art practice. Spotting such wooden training swords in the Egyptian museum may surprise many of us specially with the common believe that the use of such sword was always limited to China or Japan” .

F-1. King Tutankhamen wooden sword, 1400 B.C ,The Egyptian Museum. 

In fact taking a detailed look at battle scenes and the hieroglyphic carvings would help very much in tracing the starting of most of martial arts and for example in F-2  we can observe the ancient Egyptian way of holding and grasping a sword which does not differ from modern styles of sword fight as for kendo or  Aikido. As per F-4 which represents the modern style of sword fight, the right hand has to be the upper one while holding the sword and the other hand has to be the lower one which was  applied by the ancient Egyptian thousands of years before. 

F-2.   Carving of  hieroglyphic shows the way to hold a sword.

F-4. The modern style of holding swords in Kendo and Aikido.

 

F-2,3&4. Represent breaking the falling in Aikido ”Mae-Ukemi”

Another great example in history through the Hieroglyphic refers to the authenticity of martial art in ancient Egypt which is the hieroglyphic characters that represent the falling in fight. Aikido techniques for breaking falls by rolling the body see( F-2,3&4) or what is called the Mae-Ukemi techniques surprisingly were practiced by ancient Egyptians.( F-5) shows one of the carvings of an Egyptian Mae-Ukemi! The Mae-Ukemi starts by bending the body while standing, then stepping with the right foot forward then extending the right arm forward while bending the left arm inwards then falling on the ground while bending head  towards the left side .  

F-5.A carvings of an Egyptian Mae-Ukemi

 

By Yasser Kamel” Aikido practitioner

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