The young pharaoh had spent his first four years in power securing territory to the north of Egypt, making expeditions into Canaan to ensure that his vassals would stay loyal. He worried that the Hittites — who ruled a dynamic empire centered in Asia Minor — were encroaching on lands that he considered to be his own. In the fifth year of his reign, he tired of these Hittite incursions and decided to settle the matter once and for all.
Thus it came to pass that, in 1275 BCE, Ramses II advanced into modern-day Lebanon to face off against Muwatalli II, the Hittite ruler. Both men commanded tens of thousands of men, armies that were massive by the standards of the day. And, perhaps more importantly, each side possessed thousands of the most sophisticated military weapons of the age — chariots.
Ramses made a terrible mistake at the outset of the battle. Riding in his royal chariot, he led an advance guard ahead of the main body of his army. The Egyptians encountered some Hittite deserters who told them that the main Hittite army was far away and that Ramses’ target, the city of Kadesh, was relatively undefended. So Ramses attacked without his full force, only to find out that the deserters had been enemy agents. His royal guard of 20,000 men met a waiting Hittite army twice its size.
The three-horse Hittite chariots — three thousand of them — were bigger and heavier than the Egyptian ones. They battered the smaller Egyptian force, intimidating Ramses’ infantry and sending his smaller chariots to flight. But then it was Muwatalli’s turn to make a mistake. Assuming the battle was over, he ordered his men to pick through the wreckage of the battle, taking what they could use from the Egyptian dead.
But the Egyptians weren’t beaten, not yet. Ramses reorganized his remaining forces and rendezvoused with the rest of his army. He then returned to the battlefield, surprising the Hittites. This time, the heavy Hittite chariots turned out to be a liability; the faster, more agile Egyptian vehicles caught up with and outmaneuvered them. Mutawalli’s soldiers abandoned their vehicles and tried to swim across the Orontes River to escape the onslaught; many drowned.
In the end, the Battle of Kadesh was, like a lot of battles, a pointless waste of life. Both sides claimed victory, but not much changed. The Egyptians and Hittites kept fighting over the same territory for more than a decade before finally signing a peace treaty — the first in world history. But the Battle of Kadesh is significant for at least one reason: it was the biggest showcase for one of the ancient world’s most transformative technologies: the chariot.
Did you know that, as far as historians can tell, humans developed chariots before we started riding on the backs of horses? This may have been because ancient horses were smaller and weaker than today’s carefully-bred animals, better suited for pulling a vehicle than carrying a whole human being on their back.
The chariot was nothing less than an ancient super-weapon. A typical chariot would have two occupants, a driver and a fighter. The fighter would be armed with spears and a composite bow that could hit targets several hundred meters away. Some chariots, like the Hittites’, were designed as battering rams that could smash into enemy formations. The Persians put blades on their wheels that would slice through any infantryman who came too close. Other chariots were made to be light and fast, a platform that could launch countless arrows at an enemy without ever being caught.
The earliest chariot-like vehicle that we see represented in art appears on the Standard of Ur, made in Sumeria around 2600 BCE. On the bottom panel of its “War” side (there’s also a “Peace” side), there are four-wheeled war-carts pulled by onagers, a kind of wild donkey.
These Sumerian carts differ from true chariots in a couple of ways. They were slower, both because of the animals that pulled them and because they were heavier. It wasn’t until horses and composite bows (from the steppes of central Asia), along with spoked wheels (invented in Asia Minor) were introduced that chariots became a truly dangerous weapon.
Compare the carts above with the chariot of Ramses II, from a temple carving glorifying his “victory” at Kadesh:
Ramses’ chariot is smaller, nimbler, and harnessed to his horse in a much less awkward way. The thing just looks fast; his horses, here decked out with some kind of headdress to make them look more intimidating, are almost flying.
Here’s another image of chariots in battle, from an Assyrian relief dating to the 800s BCE. It communicates something about the way that massed chariots might have intimidated an enemy — it would not have been encouraging to see a wall of horses thundering toward you. We can see their defeated, beheaded foes lying next to them:
Chariots weren’t just used for battle. They were also used for hunting, but not just any hunting — they were used for the prestigious kind, the kind undertaken by nobles and kings.
Sometimes, the chariot was a form of defense, especially when a ruler was going after dangerous prey like lions. The chariot would keep the hunter from having to face the animal on equal ground. Here we see the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal killing lions in a ritual hunt in the 600s BCE (if you missed it, I wrote a whole post about ancient lion hunts a while back):
I really like this Egyptian hunting scene, as well — look at how the deer and rabbits scatter before the horses.
Sometimes, rich people just rode around town in chariots, which were as reliable a symbol of wealth and status as the Mercedes in your boss’ parking spot. There are a lot of ancient depictions of chariot processions of the high and mighty, like this one showing Egyptian noblewomen from around 1300 BCE:
I really like this little fifth-century Cypriot figurine of two people riding in a chariot. They seem so serene:
This sarcophagus, also from fifth-century Cyprus, shows a parade of chariots. Check out the little parasol over the head of the most important person, and the traces of 2,400-year-old paint that still remain:
The person entombed in the sarcophagus above was buried with an image of a chariot, but chariots were so important to ancient life that some people were buried with their actual vehicle.
French archaeologists have found Iron Age burials like this one at La Gorge-Meillet (the drawing dates to the 1870s). The driver is buried on the top layer, while the prince is buried with his possessions, in his chariot:
Chariot burials were quite common in China, too. Royal tombs from the Shang Dynasty of the 1000s BCE often contained multiple chariots, complete with the skeletons of horses and drivers. The drivers were likely human sacrifices:
While some chariots were utilitarian vehicles, others were literal works of art. I’ll leave you with two of the most stunning.
Here’s one of the bronze chariots that was buried with Qin Shi Huang, the ruler of China who reunified the empire (behind a terrifying army whose primary weapon was the chariot) after hundreds of years of disunity. In addition to thousands of terracotta warriors, he had life-size replicas like this (probably a chariot the emperor might have used to inspect his troops) prepared for his mausoleum:
And check out this remarkable Etruscan ceremonial chariot, found by a farmer in the early 1900s. It’s remarkably intact and quite detailed, inlaid with ivory detail. Its panels show scenes from the life of Achilles:
Chariots were the superweapon of the ancient world for a thousand years. But by the 400s and 300s BCE, they had become less militarily useful. Generals figured out effective strategies to counter them, and people bred horses to be big and strong enough that they could carry a cavalryman on their backs. Eventually, the chariot, which had been the fastest and most agile thing on the battlefield, came to seem unwieldy.
Chariots stuck around, though, as a symbol of wealth, status, and luxury. They were also used for sport, as chariot racing — perhaps a topic I’ll return to at some point — became a popular pastime in ancient Rome. Huge crowds in the Circus Maximus cheered on their favorite drivers. It was fierce competition and good fun, but it was also a reminder of the days when the chariot ruled the world.
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