Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.77

c14.77

Early in the second millennium similar chariots were in use in Asia Minor, but with two important modifications: they have light, spoked wheels and are drawn by a pair of horses. Such chariots also make their first appearance in the Aegean countries, significantly associated with Indo-European speakers, soon after this time: in Mainland Greece before 1500 (to survive, of course, to the Homeric period) and in Crete about 1450 B.C. A century or so later there is some evidence to suggest that young Achaean princes were on occasion sent to the Hittite capital to be trained in chariotry. In Egypt the earliest representation of such a chariot is of the time of Amenhotep I, about 1550, at the beginning of the campaigns of the Eighteenth Dynasty rulers against the Levant, whence chariot-warfare seems to have been introduced into the Egyptian army. By the end of the fifteenth century B.C. chariots were being exported to Egypt by the Mitanni themselves (Fig. 31).