The Coming of the GreeksThere is also reason to believe, it seems, that chariots played
an important role in the battles and raids of Hattusilis I in the
second half of the seventeenth century. The skeleton of a stal-
lion has been found at Osmankayasi, near Hattusas, in a sev-
enteenth- or sixteenth-century context. 79 It is true that chariots
are rarely mentioned in the better known documents of the
Hittite Old Kingdom (they do not appear at all, for example,
in the Edict of Telipinus). According to Houwink ten Gate's
survey, however, the expression " 'foot-soldiers and chari-
oteers'... occurs rather often in the Old Hittite fragmentary
historical texts." 80 And in the Old Kingdom, the expression
for "army" (the Sumerogram ERIN.MESH) seems to have stood
for "a complete army... consisting of both infantry and char-
iotry." The chariot forces of the earliest Great Kings at Hat-
tusas were undoubtedly small when judged by later standards.
For example, Tudhaliyas II, who reigned during the second
half of the fifteenth century B.C. , reports without much fanfare
that after a victorious campaign he brought back to Hattusas,
and settled there, "10,000 infantrymen and 600 chariot-
teams, together with their drivers and masters." 81 By ca. 1440
col. A. A very few Egyptologists believe that the Egyptians already had the
chariot by the time of the hyksos's arrival, and that the various hyksos intrud-
ers learned of chariotry from the Egyptians. Such a reconstruction is based
on presumptions rather than on evidence, whether textual or archaeological.
From the ample documents of the Middle Kingdom, it is clear that when
the Second Intermediate Period began, the horse-drawn chariot was still
unknown in Egypt, and it is also clear that at the end of that period chari-
otry was established. King Ahmose evidently had chariots of his own, for
even before he attacks the byksos capital at Avaris, he rides in a chariot (see
the tomb inscription of Ahmose the crew commander, tr. Wilson, ANET,
233 col. B).
- Littauer and Crouwel, Wheeled Vehicles, 56. This stallion resem-
bled the Buhen stallion both in size and in type; both horses were small by
today's standards (they stood 1.45 and 1.50 m. at the withers; today 1.47
m. is the upper limit for a "large pony"), but "they are rather big by an-
cient criteria" (ibid., 57). - "The History of Warfare according to Hittite Sources," 57.
- For this excerpt from the "Tudhaliyas Annals," see Neu, Der
Anitta-Text, 18.
104