Bronze Age Cyprus chariots - Enkomi etc

 Salvete Omnes,

Cyprus - Late Bronze Age - had a vibrant chariot culture. Cyprus polis were trading with Ugarit and other trade centers in the eastern Mediterranean. 

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Enkomi - British Museum - an article by Veronica Tatton-brown. 

Valete

Ugarit - Chariots and horses

 Salvete Omnes,

the subject of today's postingi is the late Bronze Age city of  Ugarit in northern Syria, the city most famous for the so called Ugarit texts - 

Urtenu's house (in French Ourtenou & numbered 18 on the map) excavations brought to life hundreds of clay tablets containing texts dealing with chariots and horses.  

royal fortress 

houses

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Ugarit had a force of chariots ( 2-horse chariots invented and brought to the Near east from Eurasian steppes) and their riders (  maryannu class, of Mitanni and other Indo-European chariot societies, functioning within the administration of polis at the top of the society),  warriors, including archers, and perhaps later on in the period also some horsemen .

horses appear in the Ugarit myths 

Ugarit was engaged in the horse trade with other states, like Cyprus, Mari, Karkemish & Hatti 

Many chariot parts - yoke saddle bosses and finials  have been found in Ugarit archaeological excavations (eg Caubet 1991), also bronze bits and fragmentary blinkers  - see linked article below.

arrow bronze points

horseman from Ugarit 

. they used armor - bronze

armor scales 

see this huge article on the chariots on Academia by  Caroline Sauvage & Mariann H. Feldman  - Object of Prestige? Chariots in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean.(2010)

diagram from the said article

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Metal bit - on the Zeravshan River in Bronze Age BMAC & steppe

 Salvete Omnes,

Tajikistan and Uzbekistan share a fine river, that  is known nowadays as the Zeravshan [Зарафшон] River  ( the Polytimeus River of the ancient Greeks, later also  the Sughd River) , which meaning in Persian is the 'spreader of gold,' 

flows from the Zeravshan  glacier of the  Zeravshan Mountains, passes between two mountain ranges, Zeravshan and Turkestan, and empties her waters into the irrigation projects  and sands of the Kizil-Kum (Kyzyl-Kum) desert before reaching the mighty Amur-Daria River.  

Near the famous Panjakent [in Tajik Панҷакент or in RussianПенджикент] in the Zeravshan Valley there is  this ancient BMAC site - Sarazm - that between  IV (Namazga I-II) through late III millennium BC(Namazgan V) was  residing on the edge of the world, between the vastness of Eurasian steppe and its Proto-Indoeuropean  inhabitants and the sedentary civilizations to the south, west and east. It was the center for tin and copper, turquoise trade. With the copper and tin mined in the steppe, processed there and shipped by the Sarazm traders to the Akkadina and Ur elites, to the Harappan, Mohnejo-Daro and Elam sites, as well in the Caucasus and further west.

About 30 km west of Sazam at Tugai, not far from today Samarkand, as Sarazm was being abandoned some Petrovka -Sintashta nomads moved east and settled at the end of III millennium and/or early II millennium (Namazga V) to practice copper smelting and smithing. They moved from the Ural-Ishim steppes with their wagons, cattle, sheep and goats, and chariot-pulling horses.*

Circa 1km from Sarazm there is a burial site at Zardcha-Khalifa. There a male was buried - his plentiful  grave gifts included two bronze bar bits with looped ends; two complete bone disc-shaped cheekpieces and two fragmented ones of the Sintashta type. The bar bits are the older known metal bits found. The arrangement suggests that was part of the chariot team equipment.* 

The grave also included the only known BMAC-made pin with the figure of a horse - perhaps this Zardcha-Khalifa chief was a horse dealer?*

Nota bene the ancient Middle Eastern tin, for bronze production, came from BMAC- Central Asia.

*you can read more about this site and this period in dr. Anthony's 'The Horse, the Wheeel and the Language.'* (chapter 16)

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Karpacka Troja

 Salvete  Omnes,

[in Polish]

 

Natrafiłem na ciekawa stronę o filmach robionych przez Zdzisław Cozac  - Archeo-Film
Tamże, wśród innych arcyciekawych produkcji, jest film pt Trzcinica - Karpacka Troja.
Dotyczy on skansenu archeologicznego w Trzcinicy kolo Jasła na Podkarpaciu, gdzie archeolodzy od lat prowadzą badania nad zabytkami pozostawionymi przez mieszkańców  tego miejsca żyjącymi na tamtym terenie od wczesnej epoki Brązu po epokę wczesnych Piastów (kiedy gród został zniszczony , domniemanie przez Piastów) , zaś pomysłodawcą stworzenia miejsca eksperymentalnej archeologii i żywej historii był Jan Gancarski (wideo z prezentacją tutaj).

Mnie zaciekawił pokazany w filmie zaprzęg kultury Epoki Brązu(21-22 minuta)  Ottomány-Füzesabony, a także zdjęcia z dioramy w skansenie, gdzie także pokazany jest wóz z Epoki Brązu  ciągnięty przez konia powożonego z ziemi przez idącego obok właściciela(? ).
Być może będę miał więcej informacji na temat rekonstrukcji tego zaprzęgu od badaczy ze skansenu, do których to zwróciłem się z prośbą o materiały etc.

na tym zdjęciu nieco widać te uprząż końska i sposób zaczepienia uprzęży do wozu

Rekonstrukcja domów przysłupowych 1650-1350 l. p.n.e. na terenie Skansenu Archeologicznego w Trzcinicy

 

artykuł o broni z epoki Brązu i wczesnej epoki Żelaza - academia.  Katalog zbiorów z epoki Brązu i Żelaza z muzeum w Sanoku.

Valete

Chariots of the Kingdom of Two Lands

Salvete Omnes,
Spring is here, Baroque horses and Polish winged hussars can wait for another day, so today we are traveling to the New Kingdom of Two Lands or Aegyptus ( the ancient Greek name for the kingdom of the Nile valley, used in Odyssey by Homer,  orAigyptos - Αἴγυπτος ).
these energetic ancient Hellenes had settled as traders and mercenary soldiers in Egypt in Late Bronze Age/early Iron Age, and eventually after the Macedonian conquest of the Achaemenid satrapy of Egypt they had ruled the land of the Nile for centuries  before the Octavian's Roman legions came and put an end to the Macedonian dynasty and ushered in 6 centuries of Roman rule, eventually the conversion to Christianity and the birth of Coptic  nation  ( presently in danger of being obliterated in post-1952  Republic of Egypt that is mostly Arabic and Islamic in culture and religion; nota bene I know quite of few Copts in the US and Canada and hear  their stories).
Just a little post to signal my interest (and hopefully yours, dear traveler) in the beauty of the chariot horse and the chariot itself, instruments of war from before.
so here below we have a few images of great warrior  pharaoh of the XIX Dynasty  Ramses II (who was a fair-haired or reddish-blond man, as his surviving mummy shows  ) war exploits and leadership,

always most resplendent and bellicose when riding in his chariot, with his trusted bows and arrows in hand, javelins and deadly  khopesh sword resting near.

also this beauty of sumptuous art, for it is a ring with chariot horses from Ramses II (held at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France)

enjoy
ps
all images are from Wiki Commons