horse-transport.^133 Less dubious is a painting in Paheri’s tomb at El Kab, which
shows a ship carrying, among other things, a team of horses and—unhitched—a
chariot.^134 Tantalizing pieces of evidence from New Kingdom Egypt are a few
texts indicating that armies were transported on ships. When Kamose attacked the
hyksoskings at Avaris he brought his army—based on chariots—down the Nile
on ships.^135 Hatshepsut claimed to have taken an army down the Red Sea to Punt.
And Thutmose III, campaigning in his thirtieth year, went by ship to Syria, where
he sacked Kadesh.^136 Already in the Old Kingdom an Egyptian army—obviously
without chariots—occasionally went by ship into the Levant, undoubtedly to avoid
the long march through the waterless Sinai.^137
Finally, some literary evidence assumes the use of horse-transports in the
Bronze Age. Homer imagined his Achaean heroes bringing their horses and
chariots along to Troy. More pertinent is the Song of Miriam (Exodus 15: 1–18),
which dates from the end of the Bronze Age.^138 The song exults in the drowning
of Pharaoh’s horses and chariots in the yam suph. Later generations in Israel
mythicized the song and the event, imagining that Yahweh first miraculously parted
the sea so that the Israelites could cross on dry land, and that he then brought the
walls of water back down upon 600 Egyptian chariots. The song itself, unlike the
prose narrative, has long been seen to refer to a storm at sea, in which one or more
Egyptian horse-transports went down.^139 “Let me sing to Yahweh, for he is highly
exalted,” sings the poet, “Horse and chariotry he has cast into the sea.” “They
sank in the depths like a stone,” the poet continues, “They sank like a lead weight
beneath the dreadful waters.”^140
Summary
What, then, can be said about the militarizing of the Greek mainland? Toward the
end of the MH period, at about the same time that Troy VI was built, an armed
force seems to have arrived on the eastern coast of the Greek mainland, necessarily
on ships, and to have taken control of several harbors. Most important seem to
have been the harbor at Marathon, accessible from the copper and silver mines at
Laurion, and the harbors of Nafplio and Asine on the Argolic gulf. Soon after
these takeovers, the intruders apparently took over harbors on the southwestern
coast of the Peloponnesos. Among these were Pylos, on the Bay of Navarino, and
Peristeria. Both places were probably involved in the importing of amber that was
brought south from the Baltic and North Sea to the top of the Adriatic.
The newcomers had horses and chariots, and they carried composite bows. They
also had spears with socketed spearheads. Probably they were also girded with
Type A rapiers. Whether they brought a triple-riveted Type A with them, or whether
they imitated the Type A riveting that the Cretans displayed, they soon devised
the less elegant but much more serviceable Type B. They had no metal armor,
but probably wore leather corselets and carried leather shields. Whether they also
wore boar’s-tusk helmets, or whether they learned about the boar’s-tusk helmet
from their Cretan adversaries, is uncertain. In any case, by the LH I period they
had made the boar’s-tusk helmet their own.
Militarism in Greece 205