The New Warfarehorse and two-horse teams) and to their grooms. 62 Another
tablet of the same date, found in the archives at Mari, is a letter
from Shamshi-Adad I, the Great King of Ashur, to his lacka-
daisical son, lasmakh-Adad, petty king at Mari. In his letter,
Shamshi-Adad writes that for the New Year festival at Ashur,
which he has fixed for the sixteenth of the month Addar, he
wishes to have a team of horses and a chariot; lasmakh-Adad is
ordered to dispatch the animals and the vehicle to Ashur.&i It
is revealing that so great a king as Shamshi-Adad did not have
horses and a chariot in his own city. At a slightly later date,
but still within the first half of the eighteenth century B.C.,
Zimri-Lim (who had become Great King at Mari) sent a re-
quest for white chariot horses to Aplachanda, king of Carche-
mish (two hundred and fifty miles to the northwest). Aplachanda
replied with a letter explaining that although white chariot
horses were not available, he would see to it that some bays or
chestnuts would be secured for Zimri-Lim. 64
In short, early in the eighteenth century B.C., one could
occasionally see, in the northern tier of the Fertile Crescent,
horses trotting along a road from one city to another, drawing
a "chariot" (that is, a two-wheeled cart, the wheels being
spoked and the entire vehicle being of relatively light construc-
tion). But the scene was exceptional, and it is important to
appreciate the fact that at least in the Fertile Crescent the horse
and the chariot did not yet have any military value. The early
horse-drawn chariot may not have been quite as light as those
of the Late Bronze Age, but it was not for lack of speed that
- Gadd, "Tablets from Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak," 22ff. Cf. Sa-
lonen, Die Landfahrzeuge des alien Mesopotamia!, 46. - W. von Soden, "Das altbabylonische Briefarchiv von Mari," Die
Welt des Orients i (1948): 201-202. - E. Weidner, "Weisse Pferde im Alten Orient," Bibliotheca Orien-
talts 9 (1952): 157-59. The key phrase in the letter is sisu pishutum sha nar-
kabtim, which Weidner (p. 158) translates as "weisse Pferde fur den Streit-
wagen." The Akkadian narkabtim, however, need not have the military con-
notations of the German word.
99