these were found at Mycenae (one from the House of Shields, and one from a
chamber tomb), and another in Tholos A at Kakovatos (LH IIIA). To these should
now be added the two perforated ivory Scheibenknebel that Vassilis Aravantinos
found in the Hoplothekeon the Theban Kadmeia.^50 Similar in shape to the organic
Scheibenknebel is a terracotta cheekpiece found at Mycenae.
The fine decoration of three of the four bone cheekpieces from Shaft Grave IV
make clear that from the very beginning of the LH period the men who rode
in chariots were eager to display their status and their wealth. As indicated in
Chapter 5, by ca. 1500 BCcharioteers in the Carpathian basin were beginning
to control their draft teams with Stangenknebel rather than Scheibenknebel. The
find from Mitrou now shows that by the end of the LH I period at least a few
Stangenknebel were being used in Greece.
Their representations in LH art, now assembled by Feldman and Sauvage, show
the high value of horses and chariots in Mycenaean Greece. The earliest
representational evidence of course comes from the stelai that stood on Grave
Circles A and B at Mycenae: reliefs on five of the thirteen sculpted stelai (one of
the two from Circle B, and four of the eleven from Circle A) display chariots.^51
John Younger concluded that at least two of the stelai depicted horses and chariots
in military settings.^52 The great majority of chariot representations in Mycenaean
art are on vessels dating to the LH IIIA and IIIB periods, the fourteenth and
thirteenth centuries BC, and in these representations the chariot is never depicted
either in action or prepared for action on the battlefield. The “dual chariots” painted
on scores of kraters are regularly in a ceremonial setting, aptly described by
Sauvage:
The representations on chariot kraters are processional: the horses are walking
at a slow pace and are generally seen in overlapping profile.... The crew of
the chariot, as a rule, consists of two persons, the first a driver, the second
an official or high-ranking person sometimes shaded by a parasol attached to
the box.^53It is likely that the kraters were painted—often in a very perfunctory way—for
a specialized clientele, and had a specialized function. Of the 277 chariot vases
catalogued by Sauvage, a third come from tombs at Enkomi and other sites on
Cyprus, and another sixty were found at Ugarit, some of them in the homes of
men associated with the maryannu.^54 Possibly the chariot krater was intended to
provide the chariot crewman, alive or dead, with an apotropaic charm: a scene in
which the chariot crew was clearly out of harm’s way. A parallel may be the
thousands of “cavalier” figurines, which Roger Moorey persuasively argued were
votive objects meant to keep riders safe.^55
War and peace in Mycenaean Greece
Linear B tablets indicate that the palaces maintained large chariotries. The palace
at Pylos must have counted on well over 200 chariots, and Driessen has calculated
Militarism in Greece 185