10 Chapter One
but sturdy two-wheeled vehicles that could dash about the field of
battle behind a team of galloping horses without upsetting or breaking
down. The critical improvement that made chariots supreme instru
ments of war was the invention of the spoked wheel with a friction-
reducing hub-and-axle design. Manufacturing hubbed wheels from
wood, making them accurately circular and dynamically balanced so
that rapid motion while carrying several hundredweight would not
rack them to pieces was no easy task and required specialized wheel
wrights’ skills. The compound bow—short but strong—was a scarcely
less important part of the charioteers’ equipment, and its construction
also required a high level of craftsmanship.^11
When chariot design was perfected, a skilled archer standing beside
the driver could shower arrows on opposing infantry forces while
enjoying comparative impunity, owing to the rapidity of the chariot’s
motion. On open ground, fast-moving chariots could easily bypass
infantry, or cut them off from their supply base. Nothing could stop
them—at least in the early years when chariots were new—although
rough ground or steep slopes always offered a secure refuge from
chariot-warriors. But since all major centers of civilized life were lo
cated on flat ground at the time the chariot style of warfare was intro
duced, this limitation was not critically important. What was critical
was access to horseflesh, along with the skills of wheelwrights and
bowmakers. Bronze metallurgy also remained important, for char
ioteers carried swords and spears and protected themselves with
metallic armor, as civilized warriors had long been accustomed to
doing.
The population best able to take advantage of the possibilities of
chariot warfare were steppe dwellers, whose way of life assured an
easy access to horses. Accordingly, waves of barbarian conquerors
equipped with chariots overran all the civilized lands of the Middle
East between 1800 and 1500 B.C. The newcomers established a series
- Whether compound bows, which get extra power by facing wood with expansible
sinew on one side and by compressible horn on the other, were new with the
charioteers or had been known earlier is a disputed point. Yigael Yadin, The Art of
Warfare in Biblical Lands in the Light of Archaeological Study, 2 vols. (New York, 1963),
1:57, says that these bows were invented by the Akkadians of Sargon’s era. The basis for
this view is a stele representing Naram Sin, Sargon’s grandson and successor, with a bow
whose shape resembles that of later compound bows. But how to interpret the curve of
a bow recorded in stone is obviously indecisive. On the compound bow and its
capacities see W. F. Paterson, “The Archers of Islam, "Journal of the Economic and Social
History of the Orient 9 (1966):69–87; Ralph W. F. Payne-Gallwey, The Crossbow,
Medieval and Modern, Military and Sporting: Its Construction, History, and Management
(London, 1903), appendix.
