The Coming of the GreeksSpare parts—wheels, axles, poles, and boxes—were carried
along on campaigns, and the Linear B tablets have shown how
large an inventory of these things a palace might keep on hand.
The Rigveda assigns a high status to the woodworker, from
whose skilled hand the chariot came: "he was carpenter, joiner,
wheelwright in one; and the fashioning of chariots is a frequent
source of metaphor, the poet comparing his own skill to that
of the wheelwright." 31 In the chariot corps at Nuzi and at Hat-
tusas, the "carpenters" seem to have enjoyed a status not much
below that of the charioteers. 32
The typical military chariot carried two men, a driver and a
fighter (Hittite chariots during the period of the Empire car-
ried three men: a driver, a shield-bearer, and a fighter). In
Egypt, the Fertile Crescent, and India the chariot fighter was
normally an archer (see Fig. 5), and one of the chariot's few
accessories was a quiver, attached diagonally to the right side
of the chariot. The chariot fighters of Egypt, about whom we
are best informed, were armed with the composite bow. This
weapon was far more deadly than the self bow, which was made
all of wood. Composite bows, made by inserting strips of horn
and sinew into grooved wood, were long (the published speci-
mens range, unstrung, from 1.15 to 1.45 meters, or from 44
to 57 inches, measured in a straight line from tip to tip), 33 and
difficult to string, but had a much greater range and effective-
ness than the self bow. Although most accurate at a range of
about 60 meters, the composite bow could shoot as far as 160
or even 175 meters. 34 When the composite bow was invented
- A. B. Keith, in Cambridge History of India (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge Univ. Press, 1922), "The Age of the Rigveda," i: 100. - Houwink ten Gate, "The History of Warfare according to Hit-
dee Sources," 56. - On the construction and measurements, see W. McLeod, "An
Unpublished Egyptian Composite Bow in the Brooklyn Museum," A/A 62
(1958): 397-401. - W. McLeod, "The Range of the Ancient Bow," Phoenix 19
(1965): 8.
86