to Kanesh (the carcasses of) lions, leopards, wild boars and scores of other
animals. Such a feat would have been possible only if Anitta and a fair number
of archers went out on their hunt in chariots. More explicit, although including a
reading debated by Hittitologists, is the mention of forty chariot teams at
Šalatiwara, a city that apparently lay near the Sakarya (Sangarios) river in north -
western Anatolia. Erich Neu, adhering closely to the texts, regarded the 1400 men
on foot and the forty chariot teams as the force that the king of Šalatiwara had
left behind to defend his city.^19 Philo Houwink ten Cate disagreed, and conclu -
ded that the forty chariot teams were part of the booty that Anitta took out of
Šalatiwara. Although Houwink ten Cate acknowledged that the three copies
of the text seem to involve the chariot teams somehow in the siege of the city,
he believed that the copyists must have misunderstood the original inscription.
Houwink ten Cate came to this conclusion because he believed that in Anitta’s
day chariots were not yet used militarily.^20 That argument is no longer valid. What
has been found in the graves at Sintashta suggests that long before Anitta’s day
chariots on the steppe were used in combat. Gary Beckman reads the forty chariot
teams as part of the force that Anitta commanded in besieging the city. Because
Anitta’s hunting feat makes it fairly clear that he had chariots and chariot archers,
Beckman’s interpretation is probably correct. Although some of this remains
uncertain we must conclude that in Anitta’s part of Anatolia at least small
chariotries were apparently being used militarily already by the middle of the
eighteenth century BC.
By ca. 1650 BCchariot warfare was well under way in Anatolia and elsewhere
in the Near East. Cuneiform texts in Hittite and Akkadian show that Hattushili I,
the Great King of Hatti, had a large chariotry of his own and also confronted
chariots in battle.^21 Although the precise regnal dates of the Hittite kings are
uncertain, the approximate dates for Hattushili I are ca. 1640–1610 BC.^22 Hattushili
was the first to rule from Hattusha and is generally thought to have created the
Great Kingdom over which he ruled. As clearly stated in the “Proclamation of
Telepinu,” however, Hattushili was the second king in the dynasty, having been
preceded by a shadowy Labarna. Massimo Forlanini has brought some light to
the shadows, making a good argument that Labarna—not a title, but a proper
name—ruled from Kanesh, and that Hattushili was his nephew and his heir (and
as such brought “the language of Kanesh” to Hatti).^23 Forlanini’s reconstruction
would date most of Labarna’s reign at Kanesh to the second quarter of the
seventeenth century BC.
The texts say nothing about Labarna’s army, but they leave no doubt that
Hattushili employed military chariots, and evidently quite a lot of them. Richard
Beal has pointed out that two of Hattushili’s officers bore the title, “Overseer of
One Thousand Chariot fighters.”^24 That suggests that at a minimum Hattushili had
several hundred chariots at his disposal. If ca. 1750 BCAnitta had forty military
chariots, by ca. 1650 BCchariotries had grown tenfold.
A text pertinent to Hattushili’s chariotry is the Siege of Urshu.This text of about
seventy lines has been thoroughly analyzed and re-translated by Gary Beckman.^25
Most of the text is in Akkadian but two sentences are in Hittite. The original was
Chariot warfare and militarism 117