8023 War Elephants

Dated: December 31, 1999, updated February 26, 2000.

6 elephants per box. Scanned at 100 DPI 200%




Approx. actual size of elephant on 15" screen.

3 crew per elephant. Scanned at 100 DPI 300%




Figure approx. actual size on 15" screen.

Small figures scanned at 100 DPI 65%

Editor's notes: All texts that I've read on the North African forest elephant Loxodonta africana cyclotis say that it is extinct. There can be no doubt that these elephants are not in North Africa. Therefore I was somewhat surprised to find in the new issue (Feb. '99) of the National Geographic magazine that the Loxodonta africana cyclotis or African forest elephant is alive and kicking in Central Africa. Though no dimensions are given for these elephants, they are apparently the same as the ones that Carthage used. About 200,00 of them (to 400,000 of the large African elephants) are still around, though like their North African kin, they are threatened by extinction, not as people movers this time, but for their tusks.

Elephantine, jumbo, mammoth, anyway you look at it, elephants are big, from the Africanus to the Indicus, well, actually except for ours. The Carthaginians used the North African Forest elephant Loxodonta africana cyclotis now extinct (probably due to homo sapiens). These guys only stood about 7-8 ft tall at the shoulder. Sources show the elephants either with a tower or without. With a tower the modus operandi was obvious, you speared or shot at your enemies from a moving hill. Without the tower, the elephants' purpose would be trampling or just breaking up enemy formations by sheer bulk. Ancient writers have noted that horses, if confronted by elephants for the first time, were prone to panic due to the strange smell. However, elephants themselves were easily panicked, and battles have been lost by panicking or turning the elephants against their own soldiers.

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