Zvezda [Ptolemaic and Seleucid] War Elephants

Recently got these in and, well, they're just lovely! Really cool figures, Successor Elephants, just the bees knees. So I scanned a box, and, well, here they are. Some of the scans are a bit dark, sorry about that, and this first box shot is a touch over crunched, but, well, for what they're worth...

(Box art, reproduced it must be said, without permission...)

(Sprues scanned @ 72dpi/~100%)

So here's a close up of the Indian [Seleucid] elephant (well, according to the box anyway...I thought the Indians were the bigger elephants that were able to carry all the bells and whistles...)...

...note the pikeman - now this is a clever idea. So that he could be moulded holding the pike in front of his face, and yet not as part of his face, he's been done in two parts, front and back. Put him together and presto. The pike is in two parts with a silly (bulky) sleeve in the middle, but, with a bit of carful blade work, it could be replaced with a nice length of brass rod...

And so onto the [Ptolemaic] African Forest elephant on the second sprue. Well, that's how it's been labelled...

Obviously much more heavily armoured, crew included. Again, I thought only the Indian elephant was big enough to carry this lot - I think these lables should be switched around, with the top one being more appropriate for a Ptolemaic army and this one being more a Seleucid beastie.

I asked Chris Brantley from the DBA Resource Page to double check my conclusions about the 'nationalities' of these elephants (he being a bit of a whiz 'n all!), and this was his very helpful reply...

According to the DBM army lists, Seleucid elephants would be Indian/Asiatic elephants until Rome killed them off around 162 BC. They were briefly replaced by African elephants circa 145 AD, for about 20 years. The Ptolemies would have had access to African Forest Elephants. Indian elephants are generally larger than the African variety (at similar ages), and the heavy body armour and the style of the decoration (including the brass rings around the legs) seems more appropriate for a larger eastern (Indian) elephant than an African elephant, so I think you called it right in suggesting the labels are switched on the box.

Another way of looking at it, however, is that they could be used for either Asian or African (depending on the army you are building) but that one is early Successor (when elephants were more plentiful) and one is later Successor when elephants were more rare and valuable, and hence additional body armor was added to help protect them. The two models don't seem that dissimilar in size, which helps support this theory.

The image depicted on the box as the Seleucid Successor [the un-armoured one] is close to the depiction of a Successor elephant on the cover (and page 95) of John Warry's Warfare in the Classical World. Warry suggests that it is typical of a Successor elephant in the period 280-200 BC, but doesn't specify Seleucid or Ptolemaic. In the shot, however, the driver is clearly Indian, which suggests Seleucid. Warry also notes that Ptolemaics used smaller African elephants.

Chris

Upon looking again at the scans in light of what Chris said, it just occured to me...the ears, look at the ears! The ears on an African elephant are 'sposed to be bigger than those on an Indian elephant aren't they? Well, I guess that's why these models are labelled as they are...they've just dressed the elephants in the wrong gear!

(August 2003)

No, the Zvezda elephants aren't mislabelled, and they aren't dressed in the wrong gear.

The armoured one is based on the reconstruction in Nick Sekunda's Montvert Seleucid book of an armoured ex-Ptolemaic African elephant in Seleucid service in the 140s. This is in turn based on a broken fragment of bronze statuette showing an armoured elephant, which S identifies as African based (I think) on the shape of its ears. The unarmoured Indian one is based, probably as Chris Brantley says via the Warry picture, on a Graeco-Bactrian silver disc. Both the Warry and the original are online at http://joseph_berrigan.tripod.com/ancientbabylon/id36.html - though you can't see the detail very well on the photo of the disc.

As for the Indian elephant, the first Ptolemaic elephants were captured Indian ones, but after that they settled down to using Africans. Since the Indian one is primarily based on a Graeco-Bactrian source, it shouldn't really be fighting the Seleucid African - yes Seleucids and Bactrians did fight each other, but not by the time the Seleucids started using African elephants, the Parthians were in the way by then. I imagine they're fighting each other because it looks pretty.

Cheers,

Duncan Head

All in all, these elephants are just great! Add them to a pack each of HaT's Alexander's Army Box (perhaps throwing in a few Persians to morph the Macedonians into Successor armies - assimilation and all that) and away you go!

Back to Reviews

This page hosted by Get your own Free Homepage