Salvete Omnes,
from the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies (2026) comes this article:
On Stallions and Mares: Gendering of War Horses used in Ancient Egypt. by Uros Matic & Loneke Delpeut. - so perhaps you may find this approach to horse history of interest
Article is nicely illustrated too.
enjoy
Valete
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
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 -
royal fortress
houses
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 .
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| horses appear in the Ugarit myths |
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| Ugarit was engaged in the horse trade with other states, like Cyprus, Mari, Karkemish & Hatti |
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| arrow bronze points |
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| 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)
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| diagram from the said article |
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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.*
Valete
Salvete omnes,
a quick lope to ancient Egypt, New Kingdom period, the rule of Amenhotep IV/ Akhenaten(Echnaton), the 10th pharaoh of the XVIII Dynasty.
On Archive world library there is a collection of archaeological reports from the famous site El Amarna - the short-lived capital of sun-worshiping Akhenaten and his empire.
Nota bene German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt discovered the famous bust of hemet-nesut-aat meretef Nefertiti, the grand or main wife of the pharaoh, at the ruins of el Amarna, nowadays stored at the State Museum in Berlin .
The reports - by a husband and wife team Norman de Garis Daves & Nina M. Davies ( jointly as N. de G. Davies) with Seymour de Ricci - contain hundreds of drawings from the rock tombs at Tell el Amarna.
I decided to pick some drawings up for a chariot display for this blog - these are horses and chariots of the royal couple and their family, of the court officials and administrators.
the chief of the Medjay - the paramilitary force guarding the pharaoh and his capital
Valete
