the Sc tablets were found in the “Room of the Chariot Tablets” at Knossos, and
because many of them are inscribed with ideograms for both a corselet and a chariot,
it is clear enough that the corselet was worn by someone in the chariot. The Dendra
corselet, with its shoulder guards, would have been too constricting for a chariot
archer (the Linear B ideograms depict corselets without shoulder guards) but would
have protected a chariot driver while permitting him to handle the reins.
The corselets from Mycenaean Greece are earlier than any of the twenty-six
found in temperate Europe. Here the earliest are seven from various hoards or
river finds in the Carpathian basin, all of which have been dated to the Bz D or
Ha A periods (roughly 1200–1000 BC). Next come fourteen corselets found in
two votive deposits in eastern France, perhaps dating ca. 1000 BC.^119 The vest-
like corselets from temperate Europe consisted of a breastplate and a backplate,
providing protection from the base of the neck to the waist while allowing free
movement of the arms and legs. We may assume that these were worn by men
who fought on foot.
It could very well be that Mycenaean chariot crews began wearing bronze
corselets in the conquest of Crete. There must have been major battles in eastern
Crete ca. 1450 BC, resulting in the destruction of the palaces at Phaistos, Mallia,
and Kato Zakro, and of the town at Hagia Triada. In the aftermath the Mycenaeans
took control of Crete, and the inhabitants of the island began the long process of
Hellenization.
The shipping of horses
This chapter has argued that shortly before 1600 BCa military force arrived in
Greece, equipped certainly with chariots, bows and spears, and probably with Type
A rapiers. That argument rests on the premise that in the second millennium BC
horses and chariots could be carried on ships, in some cases over long distances.
Ships are underrepresented in archaeological research, except when George Bass
and Cemal Pulak emerged from the waters off Uluburun in southwestern Turkey
with sensational cargo from a ship that was wrecked ca. 1300 BC. Although no
comparable shipwreck has been discovered from an earlier period, we may assume
that ships played as large and vital a role ca. 1600 BCas they did 300 years later.
Important new evidence for ships and ship building during the early second
millennium BChas been found at the Red Sea ports of Ayn Sokhna and Mersa
Gawasis.^120 Excavations there “revealed complete and reworked ship timbers as
well as thousands of wood fragments. These fragments were created when ancient
workers disassembled ships whose shipworm-riddled timbers suggest substantial
sea journeys.”^121 Most of the wood is cedar, brought to Egypt from Lebanon and
then hauled across the desert to Ayn Sokhna and Mersa Gawasis. Ship building
and reassembling began there very early in the second millennium BC. Venturing
into experimental archaeology, a team led by Cheryl Ward built—with mortise
and tenon joins—a ship based closely on the findings at the Red Sea sites and on
Hatshepsut’s temple reliefs portraying the queen’s voyage to Punt. The experi -
mental ship, christened the Min of the Desert, is driven by a square sail and a
202 Militarism in Greece