The Coming of the Greeksappears to have had two quivers, each containing thirty to forty
arrows. A whip and a shield were standard issue for a Nuzi
chariot. In addition, either the charioteer or the chariot fighter
was issued a sword, and possibly a lance. The defensive uni-
form consisted of a helmet and corselet, both of which were
made of leather and covered with bronze scales (the helmet
alone bearing from 140 to 200 scales). Presumably both the
driver and the fighter wore these ponderous pieces of defensive
armor (the helmet weighed about 1.85 kilograms, or 4
pounds, and the corselet more than 5 kilograms). The corselet,
or breastplate, seems to have been designed specifically for
chariot warfare. Although the Hittite crews seem to have in-
cluded a shield-bearer, in much of the Near East the chariot
driver and fighter would have had to depend entirely on body
armor for protection. The corselet had the same name (sariam
or sharyari) in Egyptian, Hittite, Akkadian, Hebrew, and
Ugaritic, all of which languages borrowed the Hurrian "shar-
yan." 37
The chariot fighters of the Hittite kings may have fought
with the thrusting spear rather than with the bow. How this
was managed, and especially how the warrior retracted his
spear after hitting his target, is not easy to visualize. Possibly,
as Oliver Gurney has suggested, the Hittite chariot fighter
used both the bow and the spear.' 8 At any rate, most of our
evidence on Hittite weaponry is fairly late, and there are a few
indications that during the Old Kingdom, the Hittite chariot
on the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and the Humans in Honor of Ernest R,
Lacheman, ed. M. A. Morrison and D. I. Owen (WinonaLake, Ind.: Eisen-
brauns, 1981), 201-31.
- R. de Vaux, "Hurrites de 1'histoire et Horites de la Bible," Re-
vue Biblique 74 (1967): 485. - Gurney, The Hittites, 106. The more widespread opinion, based
largely on the Ramessid reliefs depicting the Battle of Kadesh, is that the
Hittite chariot fighter used only the spear. Cf., for example, Hancar, Das
Pferd, 490, or P.A.L. Greenhalgh, Early Greek Warfare: Horsemen and Char-
iots in the Homeric and Archaic Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1973). 9-"-