The New Warfare
handful of chopped green grass, mixed together.
When they have eaten all up, they are to be pick-
eted. 43
Kikkuli went on to prescribe the daily agenda for the entire
seven-month regimen. Here, for example, are the instructions
for the fifth day:
Day 5. Pace two leagues, run twenty furlongs out
and thirty furlongs home. Put rugs on. After sweat-
ing, give one pail of salted water and one pail of
malt-water. Take to river and wash down. Swim
horses. Take to stable and give further pail of
malted water and pail of salted water. Wash and
swim again. Give handful grass. Wash and swim
again. Feed at night one bushel boiled grain with
chaff.
Obviously we are dealing here with professional grooms and
handlers. The expense and the trouble of all this was well
worth it for a king: by the end of the seven-month program,
the horses were capable of trotting long distances without tir-
ing, and of pulling a chariot at top speed for a distance of
slightly over a mile.
In the Late Bronze Age, chariot warfare was the norm
- Translation taken from A. A. Dent, The Horse through Fifty Cen-
turies of Civilization (New York: Phaidon, 1974), 57. For texts and com-
mentary, see A. Salonen, Hippologia Accadica (Helsinki, 1956), and Kam-
menhuber, Hippologia Hethitica. The first tablet of the text was published by
Hrozny, "L'entrainement des chevaux chez les anciens Indo-Europeens au
146 siecle av. J.C.," Archiv Orientalni 3 (1931): 431-61. A full text of all
the tablets then known, along with translation and commentary, was pre-
pared as a doctoral dissertation at Leipzig by H. A. Potratz, Der Pferdetext
aus dem Keilschrift-Archiv von Bogazkb'y, and the dissertation was subse-
quently published under the title Das Pferd in der Priihzeit (Rostock: Hin-
storff, 1938). Salonen's and Kammenhuber's editions include several tablets
and fragments that came to light after 1938.
