Elias Manuel Morgado Pinheiro Dissertação de Mestrado em ...

etter part, that notion prevails today. However, identifying this origin proved to be a
much more daunting task, one that has produced a heated debate that rages on today.
Throughout most of the 20 th century, the homogeny found in chariots from the
Southern Ukrainian steppe, West Asia and Egypt, lead scholars to the assumption of a
common origin. That concept was further expanded into the notion that a single people
was responsible for the development and spread of the war chariot. Therefore, it stands
to reason, that in order to identify the origin of the technology, one simply had to find a
foreign element associated with it, within pre-existing societies. Thus, in the Near East,
two different groups of people, both to an extent foreigners, became the focus of the
discussion: the Hurrian and Kassite speakers 1 . Of the two, the former was of particular
interest, in great measure due to the Mitanni political system, where an Indo-European
superstrate existed over a Hurrian substrate 2 .
Mittani, in general, and the Indo-European element, in particular, were closely
associated with chariotry and horse-breeding. A particular text (CTH 284), authored by
Kikkuli of Mittani, dealing with horse breeding and training, attests this association.
Despite being written in Hittite language, the author introduces himself has “Kikkuli,
master horse trainer of the land of Mitanni” 3 . Additionally, the Kikkuli text is notorious
for the presence of a significant number of Indo-European loanwords, which further
emphasizes the connection.
So, in light of this evidence, the theory that the light horse-drawn chariot had
been introduced in the Near East, in its final form, by groups of Indo-European speakers
from beyond the Caucasus arose. This view was crystallized in the early 1960‟s by
Albrecht Goetze. In 1963 he wrote:
“What is important [...] is the role played […] by the Hurrians and by the thin
layer of Indians which revitalized them from about 1650 on. For to them can be traced a
fundamental change in the technique of warfare which is recognizable everywhere in
the Near East at that time and characterizes the period as nothing else. It is the
introduction of the light horse-drawn chariot. […]The result was that henceforth warfare
was essentially different from what it had been before. 4 ”
He further added:
1 Moorey. 1986, p.197
2 Thieme, 1960
3 Nyland, 2009, p.9
4 Goetze, 1963, p.124-125
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