the Levant and Egypt it had not yet been used against men. Because the initial
role of the military chariot in the Near East is not described, we will have to imagine
it. When Hammurabi or one of his contemporaries decided to besiege a city that
had rejected his ultimatum, he assembled an ÉRIN.MEŠand sent it out against
the recalcitrant city. Proceeding some 15 miles a day, it would slowly have made
its way toward the target city. The king of the threatened city could try to thwart
or at least delay the long column by setting an ambush at a place where the terrain
offered concealment. Once the concealed archers and slingers had exhausted their
missiles, however, they were themselves in danger, as the spearmen included in
the ÉRIN.MEŠrushed toward them. The ambushers would have been a long way
from the safety of their city gate.
Chariots will have changed all of this. Instead of setting an ambush the king
of a threatened city could send out his chariots, ordering the archers continually
to harass the ÉRIN.MEŠas it lumbered along. Shooting their arrows from a distance
of well over 100 m, the archers—in no danger themselves—would have killed
some and injured many more of the men in the siege train. If the ÉRIN.MEŠ
nevertheless reached its destination and the siege commenced, the chariots would
have continued to harass the besiegers encamped around the walls and would also
have disrupted the supply trains bringing rations and material for the thousands
of laborers erecting the siege tower and siege ramp.
In order to deal with the defenders’ chariots a king intent on conducting a siege
would have needed chariots of his own. In addition to fending off enemy chariots
en route, they would have been used—once the siege began—for patrolling the
wall and chasing down messengers who escaped from postern gates or were let
down from the wall. Because chariots were so useful both for the besieged and the
besiegers, within a short time after their military introduction every king in the Near
East must have acquired at least a small chariot force. When chariots clashed they
necessarily did so out in the open, away from the wall of a city and the siege ramp
raised against it. So began battlefield warfare between Near Eastern kingdoms.
The new kind of warfare was followed by improvement in weaponry and by
employment of defensive armor. In the Age of Hammurabi the composite bow, which
had twice the range of a self bow, had been known for at least a millennium. Because
it was expensive, however, its manufacture was uncommon. That changed with
chariot warfare. The cost of a chariot and a team of horses trained to pull the chariot,
to say nothing of the value of the chariot’s two crewmen, persuaded some kings
that provision of composite bows for their chariot archers was a prudent investment.
Other kings necessarily followed suit. To protect themselves against the more lethal
arrows, the chariot crews found it necessary to wear heavy armor: leather helmets
and corselets, with hundreds of bronze scales sewn to the leather.^15 The corselet
(the sariamin Hurrian) was typically a tunic reaching to the lower leg.
The beginnings of chariot warfare in Anatolia
Although in Egypt, the Levant and Mesopotamia the military use of chariots does
not seem to have begun until later, we have reason to think that in Anatolia it may
Chariot warfare and militarism 115