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Chariot: The Astounding Rise and Fall of the World's First War Machine
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Chariot: The Astounding Rise and Fall of the World's First War Machine
By
Arthur Cotterell
Lively, accessible and lavishly illustrated, this is the first account ever written which deals with the whole spread of the chariot's use as a war machine right across the Old World, from Ireland to Korea. The chariot changed the face of ancient warfare. First in West Asia and Egypt, then in India and China, charioteers came to dominate the battlefield. In 1274 B.C. at Kadesh in present-day Syria - where the untried pharaoh Ramesses II was nearly defeated by the Hittites - some 5,000 chariots were deployed in battle. Its use as a war machine is graphically recounted in Indian epics and Chinese chronicles. Homer's Iliad tells of the attack on Troy by Greek heroes who rode in chariots In 326 B.C. Alexander the Great faced charioteers in northern India, while in 55 B.C., on a Kent beach, Julius Caesar was met by British chariots. Even though the chariot was the favourite conveyance of both gods and kings, there were risks when it was driven at high speed. It is more than possible that the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun died from injuries sustained in a chariot accident.
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