The Coming of the Greeksdriver is accompanied by a fighter who seems about to hurl a
long spear. 15
From a later date, there survive many fragments of frescoes
that portrayed scenes of chariots and perhaps chariot warfare.
Schachermeyr concluded that at both Mycenae and Tiryns,
chariot scenes were the favorite subject of artists of the LH II
and ill periods. 16 In the LH III palace at Mycenae the megaron
was decorated with a great frieze—running for seventeen me-
ters on the north wall and part of the west wall—in which
chariots seem to have played a very prominent part. 17 In the
famous Boar Hunt Tableau at the Tiryns palace, dating to ca.
1300 B.C., the chariot is not the principal subject, but is still
important: one of the most famous of all LH fresco fragments
shows two ladies of the court setting out for the hunt in a char-
iot. Discoveries now being made indicate that a very similar
fresco decorated a palace at Orchomenos: here, too, a boar hunt
was the subject of the fresco, and chariots figured prominently
in the action. 18 And a military chariot appears in a poorly pre-
served wall painting at Pylos. 19
A wealth of other archaeological evidence, all of it now con-
veniently assembled in Crouwel's book, makes it quite clear
how central the horse-drawn chariot was to the society of My-
cenaean Greece. The skeletal evidence for horses is limited, but
growing. The most dramatic discoveries, although still not
well published, have been made in tholos tombs at Marathon
(dating ca. 1425 B.C.) and at Dendra: in the dromoi of these
- Ibid., 123 (G 3; plate n).
- Cf. Schachermeyr, "Streitwagen," 722: "Kein Zweifel, dass nun
die Streitwagenszenen bereits den Vorzug errungen haben vor fast alien an-
deren Darstellungsstoffen." - For discussion, see Crouwel, Chariots, 129—32 (Catalog W i—
12; plates 82-86). - Remains of a palace, apparently of LH IIIA date, were found at
Orchomenos in 1985; on the fresco fragments, see H. W. Catling's sum-
mary in AR 1984-83, 31. - Crouwel, Chariots, 132 (Catalog W 35).
162