The New Warfarechariot warfare, whether in the middle of the second millen-
nium B.C. or at a later date. Horses were, of course, important
in warfare on the steppe, but the typical steppe warrior was the
mounted archer. 119 In Asia Minor, on the other hand, as early
as ca. 1800 B.C., Anittas of Kushshara may have encountered
chariots on the battlefield when he fought against the king of
Salatiwara, which seems to have lain somewhere to the east of
Kiiltepe. The earliest certain references to war chariots ascribe
them to Hattusilis I and Mursilis I, the first Great Kings of
Hatti, and to the cities of Hurri against whom these Great
Kings fought.
In the sixteenth century, by which time chariot warfare had
matured, the practitioners of the new art seem to have come
mainly from the lands north of Assyria. The Hurrians, whose
association with chariotry has been remarked by many scholars,
were originally at home somewhere in the mountainous coun-
try just above Mitanni, and the Kassites seem to have come to
Mesopotamia from the northern Zagros. The Aryans we shall
look at in detail in the next chapter. Here it is sufficient to note
that whether their original "home" was in Armenia, or
whether they merely passed through Armenia as a stage in a
Volkswanderung, they emerged from eastern Anatolia as ex-
pert chariot warriors.
The period in which effective chariot warfare began, the sev-
enteenth century B.C., is unfortunately so poorly documented
that one can do little more than speculate about the role eastern
Anatolia may have played in that historic episode. We have
seen that Hattusilis I seems to have employed a small but ef-
fective chariotry, and one can hardly avoid the conclusion that
both his chariots and his charioteers came from somewhere in
eastern Anatolia (there is no reason to think that the vehicles
and their crews, any more than the horses, could have come
from Mesopotamia or Syria).
- On the mounted archers of the steppe, for which archaeologi-
cal evidence is available from the late second millennium onward, see Han-
car, Das Pferd, 551-63.
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