Siege Towers and Battering Rams

Timeline

1. c. -2500–-500Mesopotamia and the Levant · MesopotamiaEmpires such as Assyria and Babylon used hide-covered battering rams, mobile siege towers, and scaling ladders in sieges; reliefs from Nineveh vividly depict rams and towers advancing, showing fairly systematic engine manufacture and engineering cover tactics of the time.
2. c. -500–500Eastern Mediterranean (Greco-Roman world) · GreeceGiant siege towers appeared in the Hellenistic era (such as Demetrius's nine-storey helepolis); the Roman legions standardized battering rams and siege towers, advancing with fieldworks (testudo, shelters); Vitruvius, Josephus, and other texts record their structure and use.
3. c. 500–1300Eurasia (China, Islamic world, Europe) · ChinaRecords of combined use of siege towers (watchtowers), battering rams, and traction trebuchets appear around China's Song dynasty; the Islamic world used manjaniq and mobile wooden towers during the Crusades; in medieval European castle sieges, rams, counterweight trebuchets, and wooden towers remained the mainstay until the arrival of gunpowder weapons.
4. c. 1300–1500Western Europe (battlefields of the Franco-Italian wars) · ItalyCannons could bombard walls from a distance, and bastion design made approaching walls far harder; traditional rams and towering siege towers saw their survival rate plummet under open fields of fire. By the early 16th century, major European sieges relied chiefly on artillery and parallel trenches, with rams and mobile towers relegated to secondary or ceremonial use.