"Help with New Kingdom Egyptian shield color!!!" Topic

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Could somone help with me New Kingdom Egyptian shield color!!! I found plenty of pics where warriors have:
blue shields
cow skin texture shields
just yellow drab shields

So does each company, regiment or something had individual shield colours or warriors can have whatether shields they want???

Red, white, green or blue with bronze rims for the regulars and plain and mixed hide colours for levy's and irregulars.

Even though this is very complex all encompassing question requiring books to answer I'll try it.

No one knows. Most shield colors for various regiments are shown in cow hide pattern of various colors and shapes. Very few are painted. Up to you. Just like Tarantella said color shields on elite regiments and cow hide on less elite would work just fine on a wargaming table.

I don't have a PHD in Egyptian shieldology but I actually spent the whole day in Metropolitan museum of Art studying skin colors, shields and clothes before painting my Egyptians.

SirFjodin, at least you have narrowed it down a bit compared to some (not like someone I could talk about )

Looking up New Kingdom Egyptian art on Google image search leads to this page (be careful, Blue-Nosed Brigade – some paintings contain exposed boobies!):

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What I like to do is look at the colors the artists used in the New Kingdom. This lets me know what colors would be available to use on shields. Also, if I can find an image of soldiers, it shows me at least what the artist thought could be the color of the troop's equipment. That may not be accurate, but it should give an idea of what one might see.

Given these examples:

(And BTW, that one is from an excellent resource – link

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we can see that the Egyptians had blues, browns, reds easily available to them. There seems to be very little green used in Egyptian art, which is strange since blue is used a lot. Cowhide comes in black and white and brown and white primarily. What green is in Egyptian art is almost always the result of copper aging.

When I went to paint my New Kingdom Egyptian army, I used the book Egyptian Life by Miriam Stead to see what colors would be available. There are a lot of wargaming books on the subject, but I like sources where I can see the original art of New Kingdom Egypt.

Based on that, my Egyptians wear a lot of white, with some blue, brown and red stripes. Green is rarely used and I leave most shields covered in the original cow hide with a wooden or copper rim.

Hope that helps!

There's a guide to what colours were available to Egyptians here: link

Thanx! Thank you very much for provided information!!!

My approach was to look at what other people were doing then make something up that didn't look unrealistic.

Always best to go to original sources.

Of course, model soldier collectors in ancient Egypt might have been using artistic licence too

I think Connard's pics may be Old or Middle Kingdom.
New Kingdom pics seem to have used painted shields more often – though IIRC there are finds of shields painted to look like hide!

Swampster, Ancient Egypt was a very tradition-bound society. Look at clothing and hairstyles in Old and Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom. There is very little difference between them, despite thousands of years and innumerable foreign influences, so to see a unit like the one Connard Sage posted in a New Kingdom army would not surprise me. And it would also not surprise me if some units painted their shields to resemble cow hide, since cow hide was (AFAIK) the traditional covering for shields.

My only real question about the toy soldiers in the picture above is what rules are they based to?

On the whole I agree, but even Egypt could change. The art of the New Kingdom does display differences as time goes on – some subtle such as length of kilt or the size of the bit at the front of the kilt (which may have developed into some kind of protection). Others are more noticeable such as the appearance of headwear and then armour.
It's the shape of the shields which makes me think these are Old Kingdom.
The shape of the shields change from the OK to the NK with -these have a pointed top whereas NK seem to be a rounded top and often tapering lower part. Earlier shields are a wooden frame with hide stretched over whereas later shields were wooden, sometimes with a hide covering. The tradition of hide covered shields is likely, as you say, to explain why they would bother painting a shield that way..
This thread has some 19th century copies of NKE paintings showing painted shields. Lower down is a picture with a probable hide covered shield.
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Since this shows different coloured shields side by side, going back to the OP, it could be that shield colours were mixed, or the artists likes the different colours together or he is representing different regiments. Personally, I like single colour shield regiments.

As for the rules the figures are based for, they'd have played De Bellis Modernis (or whatever the equivalent abbreviation and translation would be in hieratic :) )

The problem is that you are not specific enough about the period you asking about. Are you asking about the reign of Imhotep III or Amenhotep IV? Also, what part of Egypt are we talking about, Upper, Middle or Lower Egypt. What do you mean by the word "shield" and what is the meaning of the word "cow"?

Just received my degree in Egyptian shieldology reading the comments :)

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Thanx again for helping. What do you thinks about this 15mm peter pig New Kingdom Egyptian spearman painted by me hour ago.

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Nicely done.