Angela Sutherland – AncientPages.com – Among many ancient weapons, we find their most unusual shapes.
One such weapon is the bronze khopesh, a sickle-shaped sword, usually described as a kind of sword-ax, widely used among warriors in the ancient Near East from 3000 BC to about 1300 BC.
The khopesh weapon was very popular among Babylonians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, and many other ancient cultures. There is “a remarkable similarity of a type of sword from Benin in West Africa,” and the khopesh sword. 1
The khopesh is mainly known from Egypt and for the first time, is in the sources of the XVII dynasty as the weapon of Pharaoh Kamose, the last king of the 17th dynasty (c. 1630–1540 BC). It is believed that the manufacture of this weapon the Egyptians learned from the Canaanites or took it directly from the invading Hyksos along with other military innovations.