The Coming of the Greeks. Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East

The Coming of the Greeks

whom about one quarter of the hymns are ad-

dressed, and he is the apotheosis of the Aryan bat-

tle-leader: strong-armed, colossal, tawny-bearded,

and potbellied from drinking, he wields the thun-

derbolt in his more godlike moments, but fights

like a hero with bow-and-arrows from his char-

iot.... He is a cattle-raider, and above all he is

the destroyer of the strongholds of the enemy. 36

Piggott goes on to quote from the Rigveda (1.53) a hymn that

may show us the ethos of the Proto-Indo-European charioteer

in the middle of the second millennium B.C.:

With all-outstripping chariot wheel, O Indra, thou

far-famed, hast overthrown the twice ten kings of men

With sixty thousand nine and ninety followers...

Thou goest on from fight to fight intrepidly,

destroying castle after castle here with strength. 37

So much detail does the Rigveda provide about chariots, Pig-

gott noted, that "a modern coach-builder could probably turn

out a passable replica of Indra's vehicle."' 8

We may end this chapter by placing the PIE speakers' take-
overs into the chronological sequence set up in Chapter Five.
The earliest of the takeovers seems to have followed by a few
decades the apparent use of chariots by Hattusilis I in Hatti
and by the hyksos in Egypt in their acquisition of Great King-
ships. I would suggest that the example of Hattusilis, and of
the amurru and Hurrian princes who established their hyksos
regimes in Egypt, may have inspired the charioteering peoples
of eastern Anatolia to think new and ambitious thoughts. A
community that had seen a number of its maryannu enlist to

36. S. Piggott, Prehistoric India (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950),


37. 
    


38. Ibid., 261.


39. Ibid., 258.

156