The “taming” of horses ca. 2000 bc

Then things changed. From shortly before 2000 bc onward all of the kinds of evidence just listed begin to appear. We begin to have drawings and figurines of— and textual references to—men riding horses or driving them. Grave goods buried with men of substance begin to include horses and spoke-wheeled vehicles. And what are certainly the cheekpieces of organic bits—some found next to the skulls of the horses that once wore them—have been found in late third- and early second- millennium contexts. The conclusion is difficult to escape that late in the third millennium bc the relationship between humans and their horses began to change into what it has remained ever since. At least a few horses were now, in their owners’ eyes, far more important than food animals. The ability to travel at the speed of a horse was greatly appreciated and was soon communicated across a wide geographical area.

For the relationship between humans and horses that began at the end of the third millennium bc we have no good word in the modern languages. While che- valerie and its derivatives bring to mind medieval knights, terms such as “equestrianism,” “equitation,” and even “horsemanship” denote accomplished riding, and hardly include the mere ability to control a team of draft horses. A more basic concept comes from the period before secure riding began. In the Iliad the chariot-driving Trojans are collectively hippodamoi. The Greek word has traditionally been translated “tamers of horses,” and the best of the Trojans is “Hektor, tamer of horses.” Although the translation is justified, perhaps a better one would be “master of horses.”⁴⁷ Hippodameia was the name of various heroines in Greek myth, and the most famous Hippodameia was the bride whom her father offered as a prize to the man who could defeat him in a chariot race (Pelops finally won Hippodameia, by sabotaging the linchpins that held the wheels to the axle of her father’s chariot).⁴⁸ In Homeric Greek the compound adjective hippodamos combines the noun “horse” with the verbal root dam- which denotes controlling, dominating or mastering. A cognate of the Greek dam- is the Latin dom-, which likewise meant “to subdue” or “to force” (it is the verbal root of the noun dominus, and has English derivatives in “domain” and “dominate”).

The “domination” or control of a horse probably began not very well: with a nose-ring. In the Near East the nose-ring had long been the conventional device for controlling oxen, donkeys, and onager-donkey hybrids used in draft or as pack animals. By the last quarter of the third millennium BC pastoralists had brought domesticated horses, as food animals, into southern Caucasia, and it is likely that some of these horses also served as pack animals. Evidently the pastoralists, adopting the Near Eastern practice, subjected some of their pack horses to noserings and occasionally sat on horses that were being led by escorts on foot. Perhaps daring souls then took the lead-ropes into their own hands and found it exciting to goad a horse into a gallop, the rider being more or less confident that with the rope attached to the nose-ring he could bring the horse to a stop. This was by no means good riding, and accidents must have been frequent, but it would surely have been exhilarating.

In any case, pictorial evidence shows that late in the third millennium bc horses were for the first time brought into Mesopotamia and that they came as riding horses, with rings in their noses. In order to turn the horse in the desired direction the early rider carried a stout stick with which to strike it from the right or the left. Needless to say, while a nose-ring worked well enough with plodding oxen, it must often have panicked a galloping horse, with dire consequences. For more than a century, nevertheless, a few men in the Near East were proud of their ability to ride a horse controlled by a nose-ring and a stick, and they showed it off in plaques and cylinder seals. The earliest two-dimensional representation of a horse and rider comes from Mesopotamia: it is incised on a clay tablet sealed with a cylinder seal belonging to Abbakalla of Ur and dating ca. 2030 bc. The sealing shows a naked (?) man seated on a small horse, of course without a saddle, and with no visible means of control other than a stick that he holds in his left hand.⁴⁹ Three-dimensional representations of horse riders began at almost the same time: the first of the long series of “rider figurines,” clay representations of a man on horseback, with his arms wrapped around the horse’s neck. The representation hardly reflected reality. Roger Moorey plausibly suggested that these were votive figurines, meant to keep the owner safe when on horseback. Hundreds if not thousands of these clay figurines have been found, some in temple deposits. Most of the figurines were mass produced in the first millennium bc, but the earliest— from Tell Selenkahiye in eastern Syria—date between 2200 and 1900 bc.⁵⁰ Mesopotamian riders are also portrayed in low relief on clay plaques from the end of the third and beginning of the second millennium. The riders sit far back, in the “donkey seat,” and are shown controlling their mount with a line attached to a nose-ring. For security the rider on one of the plaques grasps the root of the horse’s tail with one hand, and with the other grasps a surcingle strapped like a cinch belt around the horse’s belly.⁵¹ Much safer enjoyment of the horse’s speed came with draft horses pulling a spoke-wheeled cart, and cylinder sealings found at KUltepe—again displaying horses controlled with lines attached to nose-rings— show that “chariots” were in use there by 1900 bc.

The importing of tamed horses into the Near East required lexical innovations. Two Sumerograms were devised for the horse: ANSE.KUR.RA, “ass from the mountains,” and ANSE.ZI.ZI, “speedy ass.” The Sumerograms first appear in texts from the Ur III period (2112-2004 bc, middle chronology). The name “ass from the mountains” suggests that in central Anatolia, Syria and Mesopotamia horses were brought either from the mountainous land of southern Caucasia or—much less likely—form the eastern foothills of the Zagros.⁵² In one of his vaunts King Shulgi of Ur claimed that he darted from Ur to Nippur as rapidly as an ANSE.KUR.RA of the god Sakkan, waving its tail as it races on the road.⁵³