So I was looking at some information on Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age Near Eastern bows recently (that's really how I became interested in archery and traditional bows) and I ran across two things that I thought more experienced bowyers and archers might be able to help me figure out. Not sure exactly where to put this, so my apologies if this is the wrong section of the forum.
First, the triangular bow:
These bows appear all over the place, especially in Egyptian tomb paintings and carvings. The bows appear to be strung, so I initially thought perhaps it had been reverse-strung for storage. However, there are several places where the Pharaoh is depicted charging into battle with a bow like this (they apparently bend quite normally, see below), but not drawn, and it's in this triangle shape. There's also a carving where several archers are shooting from a city wall with normal-looking drawn bows, but one of the archers has himself been shot, and he is tumbling to the ground with a triangular bow in one hand.
Second question: how does one make a bow like that?
And then there's the matter of the manner of shooting. There's a number of pretty detailed painting of the Pharaoh shooting a bow (it's one of the most important weapons of the time) and he's always doing this with his fingers (this picture is re-drawn for clarity):
I tried my best attempt at matching this drawing position and came close to both hurting myself and losing an arrow. Any ideas as to how he's pulling that arrow?