It is often speculated that the shield was developed for
mounted cavalry, and that its dimensions correlate to the approximate space between a horse's neck and its rider's thigh. The narrow bottom is seen to be protecting the rider's left leg, and the pronounced upper curve, the rider's shoulder and torso. In the
Bayeux Tapestry, most of the English are depicted on foot with kite shields, while a minority still use round shields. Aside from
Normandy, they also appeared early on in parts of
Spain and the
Holy Roman Empire. It is unclear from which of these three regions the design originated. A theory is that the kite shield was inherited by the Normans from their
Viking predecessors. However, no documentation or remains of kite shields from the
Viking era have been discovered, and they were not ideally suited to the Vikings' highly mobile light infantry. Kite shields were depicted primarily on eleventh century illustrations, largely in Western Europe and the
Byzantine Empire, but also in the
Caucasus, the
Fatimid Caliphate, and among the
Kievan Rus'. For example, an eleventh century silver engraving of
Saint George recovered from
Bochorma,
Georgia, depicts a kite shield, as do other isolated pieces of Georgian art dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Kite shields also appear on the
Bab al-Nasr in
Cairo, which was constructed around 1087. Arab historians usually described them as
tariqa or
januwiyya. Kite shields were introduced in large numbers to the Middle East by the
First Crusade, when Arab and Byzantine soldiers first observed the type being carried by Norman crusaders; these left such a favourable impression on Byzantium that they had entirely superseded round shields in the
Komnenian army by the mid twelfth century. Around the mid to late twelfth century, traditional kite shields were largely replaced by a variant in which the top was flat, rather than rounded. This change made it easier for a soldier to hold the shield upright without limiting his field of vision. Flat-topped kite shields were later phased out by most Western European armies in favour of much smaller, more compact
heater shields. However, they were still being carried by Byzantine infantry well into the thirteenth century. ==Construction==