The Coming of the Greeks
Level II at Kiiltepe (probably 1910-1840 B.C. on the high
chronology), 48 shows a team pulling a chariot in which rides a
single, unarmed occupant (see Fig. 6). 49 The second Anatolian
sealing again depicts one man in a chariot: he carries an ax in
one hand and in the other holds the lines attached to his horses'
nose rings (see Fig. y). 5 ° These Anatolian sealings suggest by
analogy that at least a few of the horses attested in the initial
stratum of Troy VI, dating to the nineteenth century B.C., were
also used as draft animals for "chariots."
Associated with the advent of the horse-drawn "chariot" in
the Near East was the introduction of the bit. As the Anatolian
sealings show, however, in the Near East the chariot preceded
the bit: each of the several horses on the nineteenth-century
sealings and cylinder seal is controlled by a single line attached
to a nose ring. The occasional representations of riders from the
eighteenth century B.C. also show the rider controlling his
horse with the nose-ring-and-line mechanism (the rider is also
equipped with a stick). 51 Although a rider, sitting astride his
mount, would have had little difficulty in controlling the ani-
mal's movements precisely, it is not known how a driver could
guide a team of draft horses without the assistance of the bit.
- For arguments supporting that dating, see H. Lewy, CAH I, 2:
- The date is correlated with the reign of Erishum I at Ashur. In the
chronological tables at the end of the same volume, the editors of the CAH
date Erishum I some forty years later than did Lewy.
- As J. Morel's drawing of the seal impression indicates, the an-
cient artist had difficulty representing the horses (which look like hooved
dogs) but clearly showed each animal managed by a single line attached to a
nose ring.
- On this sealing, which comes from an unpublished tablet in the
Metropolitan Museum in New York, cf. Littauer and Crouwel, Wheeled Ve-
hicles, 51 and fig. 29.
- Ibid., 65ff. The authors note (p. 66) that "the riders are always
male, often either naked or lightly clad, riding astride and bareback....
The rider is usually shown seated well back, sometimes with knees sharply
drawn up." Although King Zimri-Lim of Mari seems to have enjoyed rid-
ing a horse, his palace prefect criticized such behavior, either because it was
undignified or because it was dangerous (see ibid., 67-68).
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