casian chariot originated in Syria and Mesopotamia, that it did not arrive in
southern Caucasia until ca. 1400 BC, and that chariot warfare—far from beginning
in southern Caucasia—was negligible there.
164 On which see Piggott 1983, pp. 66–78.
165 Bendukidze 2010, p. 267. For the dating of the lower stratum at Jinisi see
Narimanishvili and Amiranishvili 2010, p. 232.
166 On the “large quantities” of horse bones from Early and Middle Bronze contexts in
Armenia see Manaseryan and Mirzoyan 2013, pp. 136–137. Simonyan and
Manaseryan 2013 detail the evidence for horse sacrifices in the “royal” kurgans in
the period 2250–1750 BC.
167 Simonyan and Manaseryan 2013, p. 187, with Fig. 12. I do not see a nave in the
“wheel” that is visible in Fig. 12.
168 Personal correspondence, August 28, 2015, from Hakob Simonyan.
169 Simonyan and Manaseryan 2013, p. 187 with Fig. 13; on the dating of N1 see their
p. 183.
170 The chariot burial is described by Simonyan in his “New Discoveries at Verin Naver,
Armenia,” pp. 110–113 of Backdirt: Annual Review of the Cotsen Institute of
Archaeology at UCLA2012. Other presentations, of varying quality, are available
on the Internet.
171 Drews 1993a, p. 120.
172 Houwink ten Cate 1984, p. 56.
173 I discussed the Manda-troops in Drews 1988, pp. 227–229. A thorough analysis of
the term, dealing as much with the 2nd millennium BCas with the first, has recently
been published by Selim Ferruh Adalı (see Adalı 2011). Adalı leaves no doubt that
umman, the first word in the compound umman-manda, is to be understood as
“troops”: in later sources the compound is sometimes written with the Sumerogram
ÉRIN-mandaor ÉRIN.MEŠ-manda. The referent of the second word, manda, remains
elusive but in Old and Middle Babylonian and Assyrian usage the word is a toponym,
applied to a land in or near the mountains to the northeast of Mesopotamia. In the
1st millennium BC, under the influence of “The Kuthaean Legend of Naram-Sin,”
the word came to be used indiscriminately as an ethnonym for “barbarians.”
174 The earliest by far, anywhere in the world, are nine short swords found at Arslantepe
in southeastern Turkey. These nine specimens were made of copper, with a slight
alloy of arsenic, and three were inlaid with silver. The ceramic context of the nine
swords, along with carbon dating on associated organic material, places them toward
the end of the Uruk period, and no later than ca. 3000 BC. On these see Schulz 2005,
p. 217 (“Älteste Schwerter in Vorderasien und Ägais”). See also his Abb. 1. These
Vollgriffschwerten (with hilt and blade cast as a single piece of metal) measure
between 45 and 60 cm. Next earliest of all known swords—some 600 or 700 years
later than those from Arslantepe—are those found at Alaca Höyük, in central Anatolia.
See Schulz 2005, Abb. 2. See also Sandars 1961, pp. 18–19 and plate 15, nos. 3–5.
The Alaca Höyük swords are made of arsenical bronze, and were obviously highly
treasured. Along with much gold and other luxury items, including a silver dagger
with gold rivets, they were found in the “royal graves” at Alaca and date from the
third quarter of the 3rd millennium BC.
175 Although Schulz 2005, p. 217, describes the 3rd-millennium BCswords at Arslantepe
and at Alaca Hüyük he believes that despite these early harbingers the use of swords
in battle did not begin until the 18th and 17th centuries BC.
176 Déchelette 1910. At p. 429, Fig. 3, Déchelette provided a drawing of one Mycenaean
rapier and of the four Lankaran rapiers “derives de ce prototype.”
177 Schaeffer had written his Stratigraphie comparée et chronologie de l’Asie occidentale
(IIIeet IIemillénaires)in Britain during the Second World War and published it
there (London: Oxford University Press, 1948). On the rapiers see pp. 418–427, and
Warfare in Western Eurasia 107