Other data comes from the excavations that for more than 30 years Hakob
Simonyan has been conducting at Nerkin Naver (“Lower Naver”) and Verin Naver
(“Upper Naver”), on the southern slopes of Mt. Aragats in Armenia. At the Navers
and at other sites many horse bones from both the Early and the Middle Bronze
periods have been found, showing again that the horse was an important food
animal, and Simonyan’s recent excavations show that for a person of high status
the funeral ritual in the third millennium BCincluded sacrifices of horses along
with bulls and sheep.^166 It is not clear, however, when horses were first tamed—
controlled, that is, by a bit—in southern Caucasia. In kurgan N3, which Simonyan
and zooarchaeologist Ninna Manaseryan date to the last quarter of the third
millennium BC, was found a polished black pot on which are incised six circles,
each with four “spokes,” that the authors interpret as chariot wheels.^167 Apparently
no organic cheekpieces have yet been found in excavations in southern Caucasia.^168
Simonyan reports that in excavating Kurgan N1 at Nerkin Naver, a kurgan that
has been carbon dated to the last quarter of the third millennium BC, he found a
jointed snaffle bit made of iron.^169 That would be not only the very earliest bit
found anywhere, but would also—as a control for a single horse—suggest riding
rather than driving, would precede all other jointed snaffles by 700 years, and would
precede all other iron bits by more than 1000. Perhaps the N1 bit will prove to
be an Iron Age intrusion in an Early Bronze Age kurgan, just as the complete
horse skeleton in N9—carbon dated to the first century BC—is intrusive in a kurgan
of the Middle Bronze Age.
More certain evidence for chariots in southern Caucasia comes from Verin Naver,
to which Simonyan has recently shifted his attention. In his excavations of a large
kurgan there in 2012, Simonyan reported coming upon a cremation burial that
had been robbed but contained traces of rich grave goods and also the inorganic
remains of a chariot.^170 Simonyan has dated this burial to the beginning of the
Late Bronze I period (ca. 1600–1400 BC). The burial apparently included Egyptian
faience and fragments of gold leaf from a mask. Of the chariot, only the bronze
fittings and appurtenances survive. Bronze hoops indicate that a large leather quiver
was mounted on the chariot, and arrowheads—some of red jasper and the others
of obsidian—show that sixty-two arrows had been packed into the quiver. That
is approximately the number of arrows carried on an Egyptian war chariot in the
New Kingdom.^171
As now interpreted, the archaeological evidence thus suggests that by ca. 1500
BCchariots were used in combat in southern Caucasia. Textual evidence takes us
further. Early in the reign of Hattushili I (who reigned, on the middle Meso potamian
chronology, ca. 1640–1610), several Near Eastern rulers were employing umman-
manda(“Manda-troops”). In his analysis of Section 54 of the Old Kingdom text
of the Hittite laws, Houwink ten Cate showed that the Manda-troops must have
been charioteers.^172 “Manda,” from which they came, seems to refer to a
mountainous land well to the east of Hatti, and to the northeast of Meso potamia.^173
We therefore have some reason to believe that by 1640 BCchariots were being
used in battle in south Caucasia. I suspect that there, as along the southern Urals,
chariots were so used already in the eighteenth century BC, but for that we have
Warfare in Western Eurasia 91