Just found this picture of a wall painting on the wall of the tomb of an Egyptian Official, Baqet III, from the 21st Century BCE.

It's known as Beni Hasan tomb no.15 and depicts on the East wall various wrestling moves (which is interesting in itself) and a siege scene with Egyptian forces defending against a mixed Egyptian, Nubian and Libyan army that was most likely commanded by Thebes (Baqet III allied himself to Thebes during a civil war).

There are three Libyans, left of centre on the third row from the bottom wielding slings. The furthest left seems to be in the process of slinging, however it's not clear if it's a sling or actually some other weapon in his hand. The other two slingers are standing ready and holding their slings in exactly the way I have held slings before which is why I wanted to post this really. The scene was painted so incredibly long ago, and yet is so recognisable to me. It really shows what I love about recreating and practicing such an incredibly old technology and skill.

Wall Painting:
https://wellcomecollection.org/works/f8qm8vjv/items

Wiki page for Baqet III:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baqet_III

Kick! You're alive!

xud9a - call me zud 👍 wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2025 at 4:34pm:


What's interesting is the rest of the walls have a lot of other scenes from daily life like farming, hunting and craftspeople so I do think that is a valid interpretation. It's unknown but considering how prominent the wrestling moves are, I guess Baqet must have been a pretty avid wrestler.

Wikipedia describes it as "the world's oldest known artistic representation of an organised fighting system" which is actually how I came to find it (my thesis is based around safety in martial arts), which is really interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_martial_arts#:~:text=Detail%20of%20the%
20wrestling%20fresco,of%20an%20organised%20fighting%20system.

I've done more digging around and apparently the wrestling and siege pictures aren't unique to Baqet's tomb. In tomb 17, the tomb of Kehty, there is a very similar painting. It's been suggested that Kehty was the son of Baqet so that could explain it.

I'm only on the Bachelor thesis so far  I'm looking at how safety is designed in martial arts and combat sports training. Basically, how do these groups go about teaching potentially incredibly dangerous stuff in a way where people don't get hurt (usually). These tomb paintings came up as the oldest evidence for an organised system of fighting so I'm including it in the background research.