Quote Originally Posted by MeinPanzer
This is wrong. Livy explicitly mentions Nabataean archers riding dromedary camels in the battle of Magnesia in 190 BC.



This is a bizarre statement to make, considering that we actually have a sizeable corpus of information from pre-Islamic southern Arabia, including accounts of warfare. We may have extremely limited historiographical sources related to pre-Islamic southern Arabia, but the epigraphical and lyric sources we have are quite extensive. To say that there is "little to nothing known about wars within southern Arabia," let alone "what we know about southern Arabia is what cultures surrounded them" is ridiculous.



We in fact know quite a bit about pre-Islamic Arabian warfare due to epigraphy relating to war and a rich lyric tradition which often celebrated the heroic achievements of warriors. We know from late pre-Islamic poetry that the camel was only used in warfare in tandem with cavalrymen, and it is no surprise therefore that we find a depiction of a cavalryman with an unarmed camelrider fighting with an infantryman with a shield on a 3rd or 2nd C. BC bowl from Mleiha. Taken directly from D.T. Potts' article "Some issues in the study of the pre-Islamic weaponry of southeastern Arabia:"





Simply put, your impression of ancient Arabia and its archaeology is inaccurate. The EB Sabaeans have drawn from a lot of direct archaeological evidence which is not at all insignificant in relating to this culture in the last centuries BC.
Thanks for correcting me. I was maybe a bit stuck on the historiographical side of the sources. As for the archeological discoveies. Point me in the right direction please. The arabian peninsula has always been a fascination of mine. My knowledge of islamic arabia is however far more extensive. I read quite a lot of literature about this area, but even the more recent historical authors, seem to think that there is very little known about the place. This could of course be one of those things, where historians and archeologists don't work well together (as strangely often seems to be the case) I'm all for learning more about it. So do please tell. As for the camels. They were obviously used (according to your sources, which I assume to be correct), although not for charging into an enemy as such. this might be a bit dificult to put into game terms. The mounted archers sound more promising.