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I received an e-mail from Mark Everson with a question about chariot warfare.
Though military history is definitely NOT my subject, I hope these quotes from an excellent study on warfare will help to solve this problem:
"Once perfected, the technology of the chariot would have been easy to replicate and even easier to transport and sell; an Egyptian bas-relief of c. 1170BC shows a chariot being carried on the shoulders of one man -no feat if it weighed, as a reconstruction did, less than a hundred pounds- and such a highly marketable product would have stimulated production wherever crafstmen with the necessary skills resided. The check on overproduction of such a saleable and high-priced item would ahve been, in practice, not shortages of skills or raw material but a dearth of suitable horses. The chariot horse had to be a selected and highly schooled animal. The earliest known schooling of horses, apparently to dressage standard if an elaborate contemporary vocabulary of horsemanship is a reliable indication, can be dated from a group of Mesopotamian texts to the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BC; then as now, the young horse was intransigent in any languge spoken to it.
After the expulsion of the Hurrians, the Assyrians solved the besetting problem of Mesopotamian civilisation -the encirclement of its rich but naturally defenceless land by predators- by going over to the offensive, and progressively extending the boundaries of what became the first ethnically eclectic empire to include parts of what today are Arabia, Iran and Turkey, together with the whole of modern Syria and Israel. Thus the legacy of the chariot was the warmaking state. The chariot itself was to be the nucleus of the campaigning army.
The Assyrian was the first true long-range army, able to campaign as far as 300 miles from base and to move at speeds of advance that would not be exceeded until the coming of the internal combustion engine.
Assyrian resources did not extend to the paving of roads -of little point, in any case, in a climate which is excessively dry but, when wet, washes away untarred road metal- but the kingdom had an extensive network of royal highways, often mentioned as boundaries to fields in the land registration documents that cuneiform scribes wrote in vast numbers on the clay tablets which provide archaeologists with their information. Along these roads the horsed elements of an army might move as fast as thirty miles a day -a good march even for a modern force. Of course, the roads deteriorated in quality beyond the central plain and inside enemy territory, where military engineers would have to improve the going up hillsides and through mountain passes. The army also made use of water transport where appropriate, though both the Tigris and Euphrates are difficult to navigate, because of shoals and uneven seasonal water-flows.
The first chariot battle of which we have an account, the battle of Megiddo in northern Palestine, fought in 1469BC between the pharaoh Tuthmosis III and a confederation of Egypt's enemies under Hyksos leadership, was concluded with almost no bloodshed on either side. Megiddo is also generally counted as the first battle of history, in that we can date it, locate its site, identify the contestants and follow its course. Tuthmosis, who had just come to the throne, was pursuing the new Egyptian strategy of vigorous offensive against the outsiders who had violated the immunity of the river kingdom. Collecting an army, he marched in stages of ten to fifteen miles a day -an impressive speed of advance- along the Mediterranean coast, through Gaza and then up to the mountains on the Syrian border. The enemy seems to have counted on the difficult terrain forming a barrier against his attack. There were three routes through the mountains to the town of Megiddo; the pharaoh chose the most difficult, against advice, on the ground that he might thereby surprise them. The approach march took three days, the last spent negotiating a pass of less than two chariots' width. Late in the evening he camped on the plain in front of Megiddo and next morning deployed his army for battle. The enemy had also come forward, but, when they saw the extent of the Egyptian line, with one wing on each flank of the valley and the pharaoh commanding from his chariot in the centre, their morale collapsed and they fled in panic to the protection of the walls of Megiddo in their rear. Tuthmosis ordered a pursuit, but his soldiers stopped to plunder the enemy's abandoned camp on the way and two of the principals in the opposing army managed to get inside Megiddo. Since the city had ample water supply within its massive walls, it managed to hold out against the Egyptians -who constructed a line of circumvallation around it against any relief operation- for seven months. Only eighty-three of the enemy had been killed in the battle and 340 taken prisoner; the fugitives, however, did not rally and the besieged kings eventually surrendered, sending their children out as hostages and begging the pharaoh that 'the Breath of Life be given to their nostrils'."
(source: J.Keegan: 'A History of Warfare',1993)
BTW, do you know anything about ancient chariots? Our military lead wants to do things like preventing chariots from moving over anything but very flat ground. While I agree that chariots lost effectiveness when fighting over broken ground, they could get over it if necessary. If no other way than by being partly disassembled and carried!
"Once perfected, the technology of the chariot would have been easy to replicate and even easier to transport and sell; an Egyptian bas-relief of c. 1170BC shows a chariot being carried on the shoulders of one man -no feat if it weighed, as a reconstruction did, less than a hundred pounds- and such a highly marketable product would have stimulated production wherever crafstmen with the necessary skills resided. The check on overproduction of such a saleable and high-priced item would ahve been, in practice, not shortages of skills or raw material but a dearth of suitable horses. The chariot horse had to be a selected and highly schooled animal. The earliest known schooling of horses, apparently to dressage standard if an elaborate contemporary vocabulary of horsemanship is a reliable indication, can be dated from a group of Mesopotamian texts to the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BC; then as now, the young horse was intransigent in any languge spoken to it.
After the expulsion of the Hurrians, the Assyrians solved the besetting problem of Mesopotamian civilisation -the encirclement of its rich but naturally defenceless land by predators- by going over to the offensive, and progressively extending the boundaries of what became the first ethnically eclectic empire to include parts of what today are Arabia, Iran and Turkey, together with the whole of modern Syria and Israel. Thus the legacy of the chariot was the warmaking state. The chariot itself was to be the nucleus of the campaigning army.
The Assyrian was the first true long-range army, able to campaign as far as 300 miles from base and to move at speeds of advance that would not be exceeded until the coming of the internal combustion engine.
Assyrian resources did not extend to the paving of roads -of little point, in any case, in a climate which is excessively dry but, when wet, washes away untarred road metal- but the kingdom had an extensive network of royal highways, often mentioned as boundaries to fields in the land registration documents that cuneiform scribes wrote in vast numbers on the clay tablets which provide archaeologists with their information. Along these roads the horsed elements of an army might move as fast as thirty miles a day -a good march even for a modern force. Of course, the roads deteriorated in quality beyond the central plain and inside enemy territory, where military engineers would have to improve the going up hillsides and through mountain passes. The army also made use of water transport where appropriate, though both the Tigris and Euphrates are difficult to navigate, because of shoals and uneven seasonal water-flows.
The first chariot battle of which we have an account, the battle of Megiddo in northern Palestine, fought in 1469BC between the pharaoh Tuthmosis III and a confederation of Egypt's enemies under Hyksos leadership, was concluded with almost no bloodshed on either side. Megiddo is also generally counted as the first battle of history, in that we can date it, locate its site, identify the contestants and follow its course. Tuthmosis, who had just come to the throne, was pursuing the new Egyptian strategy of vigorous offensive against the outsiders who had violated the immunity of the river kingdom. Collecting an army, he marched in stages of ten to fifteen miles a day -an impressive speed of advance- along the Mediterranean coast, through Gaza and then up to the mountains on the Syrian border. The enemy seems to have counted on the difficult terrain forming a barrier against his attack. There were three routes through the mountains to the town of Megiddo; the pharaoh chose the most difficult, against advice, on the ground that he might thereby surprise them. The approach march took three days, the last spent negotiating a pass of less than two chariots' width. Late in the evening he camped on the plain in front of Megiddo and next morning deployed his army for battle. The enemy had also come forward, but, when they saw the extent of the Egyptian line, with one wing on each flank of the valley and the pharaoh commanding from his chariot in the centre, their morale collapsed and they fled in panic to the protection of the walls of Megiddo in their rear. Tuthmosis ordered a pursuit, but his soldiers stopped to plunder the enemy's abandoned camp on the way and two of the principals in the opposing army managed to get inside Megiddo. Since the city had ample water supply within its massive walls, it managed to hold out against the Egyptians -who constructed a line of circumvallation around it against any relief operation- for seven months. Only eighty-three of the enemy had been killed in the battle and 340 taken prisoner; the fugitives, however, did not rally and the besieged kings eventually surrendered, sending their children out as hostages and begging the pharaoh that 'the Breath of Life be given to their nostrils'."
(source: J.Keegan: 'A History of Warfare',1993)
. If you did send a comment to that effect by email, then obviously I missed it... good to have this one resolved. That only leaves 324 issues to go before v1.0. 
. I have it in my notes somewhere.
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