Mycenaean vessel with prickly pears

Hammered conical silver vessel with gilded rim, known as the "Siege rhyton". Mycenaean, c. 1550 BC. Find from the tomb IV in Grave Circle A, Mycenae. Currently in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

It depicts the siege of the coastal city. Defenders have left the walls and are getting ready to engage the enemy. 

Women wave their hands on the walls, supporting them with shouts and gestures...

On the very right of the scene we can see two infantry soldiers with shields and spears. In front of them are three archers firing arrows at the enemy...And in front of them all are three slingers in a process of firing sling shots...

Was this the normal position for the slingers? Ahead of the other troops? I presume they would need a good view of the enemy and enough space to swing the sling...

Sling was a deadly weapon...

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus wrote that "Soldiers, notwithstanding their defensive armor, fear more the round bullets from the sling than all the arrows of the enemy"...The most common lead bullets among both Greeks and Romans were acorn-shaped. 

They were cast in two-part molds and measuring about 35mm X 25mm and weighing about 28 grams. In ancient Rome they were known as "glandes plumbeae" (lead acorns)...

Some of these molds were made to impart symbols on the sling shot. I am not sure, but I think this is a thunderbolt, a quite an appropriate symbol to put on a sling shot which strikes and kills from a distance like a thunderbolt...

But most of them had inscriptions like these: "This is for dessert", "Here’s a sugar plum for you", "Crack your teeth", "Catch" and several variations of "up [insert the enemy king name here] arse!"...

PS: is this the plant depicted in the background? The so called "prickly pear"?

No, it can not be, even if it is now very common in the Mediterranean. Opuntia is a cactus, like all cactus it is from America undiscovered at the time...But I don't know any other plant, native to Mediterranean, that looks like the plants depicted on this Mycenaean vessel...

Something crazy just occurred to me...Could this vessel be a modern forgery, made well after the introduction of the cactus into the Mediterranean, by someone, who like me, didn't know that this cactus was introduced from America? Ta Ta Taaaaaaaa! 🙂 Mystery...