Kopis/khopsh etc. - Egyptian swords

[tom hyle]

That's the Eurocentric/N Med-icentric/"great men" usual blah blah blah of it, and nationalistic Greeks claiming Macedon as their own (for myself, I see heavy steppes influence there to start with, which, geographically seems inevitable) are often happy to jump on that bandwagon, but the copis was used by many Indo-European peoples. Its origins are speculation, but I believe there is a certain amount of evidence to point for a Caucasian and/or steppes origin, and this is where the ancient Greeks imported a lot of their metal and a lot of their blades from. Remember that calling these people barbarians (babblers) only means they didn't speak Greek; it does not address their technical or social achievements; it does not imply that the flow of technology was one-way. I've gone into this in depth at least once on this or the old forum, and elucidated my arguments more eloquently and at greater length than I currently have the focus to do....I think the original subject of said thread was yatagan origins.
Not a fan of the "great men" theory of history; a careful study pretty always reveals them as little but credit-takers. Alexander did get his face half cut off though; gotta give him that, but the Macedonians, of course, not Alexander, did the conquering; he, like Hitler, Edison, Shaka Zulu, Thomas Jefferson, etc. etc. was more or less along for the ride, fulfilling a role demanded by his society; at least 9 times out of ten, if that demand is there, if the meme (new word to try to explain sociology.....) is in action, someone will fulfill it, and usually a close study of the situation will reveal multiple such candidates in place, vying to be the "great man" and take credit.
Social movements and change arise by and large out of sociological forces; not out of the usually selfish desires of the "great" men who take advantage of those forces to aggrandize themselves, however much that might be how histories are written; too many histories are written on this bogus idea, but what can you say in a culture of people who claim they think they're responsible for their own lives?....The idea of the "great man", and that one can become such a man, seems pretty central to EuroAmerican, and probably to European culture. To assault this idea is to assault the ego of every "successful" "self-made" American who doesn't want to acknowledge the role of his fellow man in his life, nor his responsibility to him, so it's very hard to penetrate.
Yeah, Conogre, the midribbed one is based on kopsh; the multifullered one on copis. I think falcatta is either a Latin or Iberian Celtic word, and I've read there's controversy/mystery about its origins/meaning. Note that the shaft aside, the actual curvature on the kopsh is back, while that on the copis is forward (with a recurve only in the cutting edge, and only at the tip, and only to the extent the brings it to a "dropped" point. Both have somewhat of a forward lean, but look at the actual curve, and look how it's achieved; the kopsh tends to have a pretty definite unsharp shaft that supports the blade; copis usually just has blade.