recovered from Level II of the Kanesh Karum at Kültepe depicts a man standing
in his spoke-wheeled chariot and grasping two lines leading to the nose-rings of
the two animals drawing the chariot. The animals are presumably meant to be
horses, although the engraver was not very successful in rendering them. Level
II of the karumwas destroyed and deserted ca. 1835 BC, the terminus ante quem
for the sealing.^79 Another early sealing from Anatolia presents a similar scene, a
driver standing in a chariot and holding two lines attached to nose-rings of the
draft horses. Later illustrations of horses controlled by nose-rings have not been
found, and we may assume that by the end of the nineteenth century BCdrivers
of chariots in the Near East had replaced the nose-ring and single line with a bit
and reins.
Although in Mesopotamia and the Levant horses were not yet of any military
utility in the Age of Hammurabi (ruled 1792–1750, middle chronology) they were
prized possessions of royalty. Here their ritual role is doubtful: a non-traditional
animal in the Near East, the horse was not yet sacred to any of the Near Eastern
gods. Horses and chariots were apparently sought for racing and other recreation,
and for display. The prestige value of horses in the Age of Hammurabi is well
documented by Akkadian tablets found at Mari, on the middle Euphrates, and at
Chagar Bazar, in the northeastern corner of Syria. The Chagar Bazar tablets were
inscribed when Shamshi-Adad I ruled as Great King at Shubat-Enlil (1813–1781
BC) and his younger and somewhat incompetent son Yasmah-Adad was a petty
king of cities from Mari north to Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak on tributaries of the
upper Habur. The Mari tablets date during the reign of Zimri-Lim, who wrested
Mari away from Yasmah-Adad, but are no later than 1759 BC, when Mari was
destroyed by Hammurabi of Babylon. According to the tablets from Chagar
Bazar, for pulling chariots the palace owned twenty horses, grouped in two- or
three-horse teams. As summarized by Roger Moorey, the texts,
refer to harnessed teams of horses, to grooms and to trainers, but they do not
make the role of the horses explicit. About the same time at Mari the
information is fuller. Here, horses were prized animals. The royal family was
involved in breeding and training them; their management was controlled and
effective.^80During the Age of Hammurabi royalty in the Near East certainly sought horses
and chariots for display and promenade. In one of his letters Shamshi-Adad instructs
Yasmah-Adad to dispatch a team of horses and a chariot to Ashur, so that
Shamshi-Adad can parade in the chariot at the New Year’s festival. In an exchange
of letters with Aplahanda of Carchemish, Zimri-Lim at Mari requests a team of
white chariot horses, but must settle for bays.^81 In yet another letter Bahdi-Lim,
the major domo of the palace at Mari, urges Zimri-Lim to drive a chariot when
he visits the more sophisticated Akkadian cities to the south. To ride on the back
of a horse is not befitting the dignity of a king, Bahdi-Lim advises: if Zimri-Lim
is intent on riding rather than on driving, let him ride a mule rather than a horse,
but driving a chariot is best of all.^82
46 The Kurgan theory and taming of horses