The Indo-European (and Hurrian) connection
As we have seen in Chapter 3, the new militarism seems to have arisen north and
south of the Caucasus, in lands where horses were common. How much of the
“horse country” was home to Indo-European languages we do not know, since
illiterate societies left no clue. It is quite clear, however, that Indo-European
speakers made up a large part—although only a part—of the new military class.
Our best evidence for that comes from India and Greece: in both places the entire
military class seems to have consisted of men who spoke an Indo-European
language. Other evidence comes from the Near East, where many but not all of
the early chariot crews were recruited from Indo-Iranian communities.
In the armies of the Hittite and the “Hyksos” kings at least some of the chariot
crews were home-grown. Hittite texts describe the training of archers who rode
on the chariots of Hattushili I. In Egypt, many of the chariot crews of the early
Fifteenth Dynasty presumably spoke the Northwest Semitic language of the
Levant. Other crews and trainers in the Near East, however, came from lands where
an Indo-European language was spoken. The chariot force that Hattushili met at
Aleppo consisted of “Manda” troops, and Manda seems to have been the mountain -
ous country of southern Caucasia. The Indo-Iranian technical terms in the horse-
training treatise of Kikkuli are well known. Less well known is that the Akkadian
tablets at Nuzi (like those from Kassite Babylon) included Indo-Iranian terms for
the colors and ages of horses.^9
Still more important are the warriors—attested from Anatolia to Egypt—known
as maryannu. This word attaches a Hurrian suffix to the base márya(“hero,” or
“young warrior”), which is either an Indo-Aryan or—more likely—a Proto-Indo-
Iranian word.^10 Hanoch Reviv, in his study of the term maryannu, stated the
generally accepted view, with which he agreed:
[T]he maryannu were a class of warriors whose expertise in handling chariots
and caring for horses was an ancestral tradition which made them the nobility
of this region. The privileges and advantages of this class and the role it played
were rewards for their ability to use chariots in battle, something which had
been previously unknown in this area. The military heritage and social distinc -
tion of this class are strongly emphasized in Egyptian and Hittite sources.^11The high status of the maryannu was an important novelty, as they were the
first recognizable warrior class in the civilized world. No such social distinction
had been attached to the slingers, spearmen and archers hired by kings in and before
the Age of Hammurabi. The term’s derivation suggests that in the early years of
their employment in the Near East many of the maryannucame from Indo-Iranian
communities.
Many other maryannu, however, presumably did not speak an Indo-European
language. Instead, as the suffix of the term suggests, their native language was
probably Hurrian. The Hurrian language—unrelated to Indo-European—was
spoken throughout the drainage area of the Khabur river and also along the upper
Chariot warfare and militarism 113