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curved it is (lemmy.world)
submitted 13 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 13 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Sword but very curved and yet not very famous (Ethiopian shotel)

[-] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

Pretty famous among FromSoft fans.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 50 minutes ago

Dex build rejoice

[-] [email protected] 0 points 4 hours ago

Well i'm not one of them.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

This looks more like a scythe that doubles as a weapon to me

[-] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

It was probably inspired by Egyptian khopesh since it was used in Ethiopia even before the kingdom of Axum. Thing is, the blade is sharp on both sides. So you could either use its inner side as big sickle to reach around enemy shield and try for the weak spots like neck, face or armpits, or if the enemy didn't had a shield you could turn it to outer side and in this case it was similar to Persian shamshir in being excellent weapon against unarmored opponents.

Two more interesting thing about it was 1: the designs varies greatly, most were shorter and wider, the curvature also varied; and 2: it apparently worked quite well considering it has been in use for possibly over 2500 years and some Ethiopian emperors even organised special elite units wielding it.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Isn't a khopesh sharp on the other side of the curve from a shotel, though? It seems like sharpening the inside was the big innovation that makes shotels distinctive

[-] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

Just how long is that? I struggle to calculate it from what I see.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago

Blade is around 1 meter long.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)
[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago

It do looks longer than it is because of proportions. It's very thin and the handle is pretty short compared to European blades because the blade is also very light so it don't need much counterweight.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Probably the round thing (a shield?) fooled us both. For me it looked like a two-hander.

this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
419 points (96.9% liked)

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