Images: The Palace Guard
 

Let's start a thread. :)

Indiana Jones snapped this when he was on holidays.

Say Rick ...
Is Goliath snoozing or looking down at David ? :confused:

Snoozing.
Jet lag from shopping at the Baltimore show. ;)

'I came,
I saw,
I emptied my purse.' ;)

The wrong side
 

How's this for an image ?


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THE FIRST PICTURE IS OF A HOMELESS TURKISH GENTLEMAN KICKED OUT BY HIS WIFE SO HE HAD TO TAKE HIS COLLECTION WITH HIM. ;)

The weapons load is not to exaggerated if these period illustrations can be believed.

'I came,
I saw,
I emptied my purse.'

What a true statement. LOL :o

I'm assuming the sheer number of edged weapons carried by these chaps in the etchings are for artistic license only. The firearms, on the other hand, may be accurate. Pirates liked to carry an assortment of guns stashed away in pockets, bandoliers, straps, belts, etc, for combat due to the pieces being a 'one shot deal'. :shrug:

There is a thread here of photographs of ethnic peoples and their weapons. I think you might be surprised. Ottoman warriors in particular seemed to like a sash full of tools.

I don't think Jean Leon Gerome strayed too far from reality in his paintings.

I think part of it might be to do with the expected useful "life" of a blade in serious combat. The Japanese have a saying about this, "one battle or a thousand years". This is actually the thinking behind Samurai carrying two swords, during the Sengoku Jidai and early Edo they are nearly the same length, later they devolve to a long sword plus a much shorter blade. Even in later years, when they decided to "really go for it" they carried two blades of nearly the same length.