Sumerian Chariot

[JP Vieira]

Hello
The Sumerian armies introduced many features lately to be found in other armies.
One of those was the war chariot.
However the model depicted in Sumerian art and its role in war is very controversial.
Many scholars claim that this device could not have been use in war (the way we imagine chariots do) because it did not posses the necessary characteristics to do it;.
Many believe that this chariot was in fact a “battle-taxi”, a prestigious form of transportation for the nobleman who would do battle. Almost like a modern commander arriving at the battlefield in a limousine.

[LordShiva]

Nice. Interesting to have a four-wheeled chariot.

Teh Sumerian horses look happier than teh Mycenaean ones. Is it because they don't have the pony (lol) tails?

[Dr Strangelove]

I think that chariots were in general used primarily to carry soldiers around an enemy force's flank. Even 2 wheeled chariots were pretty unwieldy on open terrain. You couldn't really charge an enemy with a chariot. Chariots would naturally be slower than cavalry and would probably be vulnerable if brought in close proximity to a body of enemy soldiers. Think of it this way, which would be easier, for a standing archer or spearman to hit a chariot, a fairly large and not really very fast target, or for a spearman or archer in a badly shaking moving chariot to hit a standing soldier?

The horses in this picture and the picture in the thread about Mycenean chariots look pretty small. Is the picture accurate? If the horses used at that time were so small perhaps the reason that chariots were popular during this time was that horses had not been bred to a size capable of being used as cavalry mounts.

[SlowwHand]

The horses are full size. The men are giants.

[Proteus_MST]

Maybe this is just an illusion as the horses stand on the ground, whereas the men stand on the chariots floor which is elevated above the ground (at a height a little bit more than half the height of the wheels).

[JP Vieira]

Those are not horses: they are onagers, a species of wild donkeys, and their size is accurate.

[Will9]

No offence, but the chest of the guy on the left needs some work.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Will
No offence, but the chest of the guy on the left needs some work.

They didn't have proper gyms to work out in those days

[VetLegion]

Nice picture.

I've never heard of onagers. Aren't donkeys famous for being stubborn and at times refusing to move? I wonder how mobile this chariot was

[Proteus_MST]

I remember a version of the roman catapults being named after them, because with its movement after each shot (due to the forces being transferred onto the catapults frame) it looked like a bucking Onager

[JP Vieira]

Onagers are a species of wild donkeys found in the middle East and North Africa.
The use of such an animal is one of the reasons that some people advocate that this chariot was used more as a mean of transportation that as a battle vehicle.

[Dr Strangelove]

If that is what what available then it's easy to see that they wouldn't have been able to deploy true cavalry.

[Eli]

Wasn't the average horse much smaller back then? 2500 years of selective breeding tend to have an effect.

[Dr Strangelove]

That's what I'm thinking and it may be why the Egyptians developed war chariots before they developed cavalry.

[Straybow]

I saw a TV program where they recreated an early single-donkey-chariot. It had a driver and an archer. They found that once they were moving at a fast trot the jostling of the little rocks and bumps smoothed out and the archer was able to shoot accurately.