Ancient Life: Greek Fire

In the early 670s A.D. the Umayyad Caliphate, centered in Damascus, sent an armada around the Anatolian coast to conquer the Byzantine capital.The Umayyad ships sailed up the Aegean, across the Sea of Marmara and into the Bosphorus, where they laid siege to Constantinople. The Arab invaders were met and turned back by the Byzantine navy, however, which unleashed a terrifying weapon invented only a few years earlier: Greek Fire.

The Byzantine sailors ignited a secret mixture of oil-based liquids and pumped them onto the Umayyad ships. They poured the liquid into cartridges, lit them and catapulted them onto the enemy’s ships. They also sprayed the briny waters with burning liquid, creating a sea of fire.

The use of Greek Fire is shown above in an illumination from a 13th- or 14th-century history of the Byzantine Empire, called the Scylitzes Manuscript, now in the National Library in Madrid, Spain. The manuscript was written by John Scylitzes, who may have worked at the imperial library at the Norman court in Sicily.