Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.
The first chariots introduced into Egypt were, like the horses, of foreign origin, but when built by Egyptian workmen they soon became more elegant, if not stronger than their models. Lightness was the quality chiefly aimed at; and at length the weight was so reduced that it was possible for a man to carry his chariot on his shoulders without fatigue. The materials for them were on this account limited to oak or ash and leather; metal, whether gold or silver, iron or bronze, being used but sparingly, and then only for purposes of ornamentation. The wheels usually had six, but sometimes eight spokes, or occasionally only four. The axle consisted of a single stout pole of acacia. The framework of the chariot was composed of two pieces of wood mortised together so as to form a semicircle or half-ellipse, and closed by a straight bar; to this frame was fixed a floor of sycomore wood or of plaited leather thongs. The sides of the chariot were formed of upright panels, solid in front and open at the sides, each provided with a handrail. The pole, which was of a single piece of wood, was bent into an elbow at about one-fifth of its length from the end, which was inserted into the centre of the axletree. On the gigantic T thus formed was fixed the body of the chariot, the hinder part resting on the axle, and the front attached to the bent part of the pole, while the whole was firmly bound together with double leather thongs. A yoke of hornbeam, shaped like a bow, to which the horses were harnessed, was fastened to the other extremity of the pole. The Asiatics placed three men in a chariot, but the Egyptians only two; the warrior—sinni—whose business it was to fight, and the shield-bearer—qazana—who protected his companion with a buckler during the engagement. A complete set of weapons was carried in the chariot—lances, javelins, and daggers, curved spear, club, and battle-axe—while two bow-cases as well as two large quivers were hung at the sides. The chariot itself was very liable to upset, the slightest cause being sufficient to overturn it. Even when moving at a slow pace, the least inequality of the ground shook it terribly, and when driven at full speed it was only by a miracle of skill that the occupants could maintain their equilibrium. At such times the charioteer would stand astride of the front panels, keeping his right foot only inside the vehicle, and planting the other firmly on the pole, so as to lessen the jolting, and to secure a wider base on which to balance himself. To carry all this into practice long education was necessary, for which there were special schools of instruction, and those who were destined to enter the army were sent to these schools when little more than children. To each man, as soon as he had thoroughly mastered all the difficulties of the profession, a regulation chariot and pair of horses were granted, for which he was responsible to the Pharaoh or to his generals, and he might then return to his home until the next call to arms. The warrior took precedence of the shield-bearer, and both were considered superior to the foot-soldier; the chariotry, in fact, like the cavalry of the present day, was the aristocratic branch of the army, in which the royal princes, together with the nobles and their sons, enlisted. No Egyptian ever willingly trusted himself to the back of a horse, and it was only in the thick of a battle, when his chariot was broken, and there seemed no other way of escaping from the mêlée, that a warrior would venture to mount one of his steeds. There appear, however, to have been here and there a few horsemen, who acted as couriers or aides-de-camp; they used neither saddle-cloth nor stirrups, but were provided with reins with which to guide their animals, and their seat on horseback was even less secure than the footing of the driver in his chariot.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Flinders Petrie.
The infantry was divided into platoons of six to ten men each, commanded by an officer and marshalled round an ensign, which represented either a sacred animal, an emblem of the king or of his double, or a divine figure placed upon the top of a pike; this constituted an object of worship to the group of soldiers to whom it belonged. We are unable to ascertain how many of these platoons, either of infantry or of chariotry, went to form a company or a battalion, or by what ensigns the different grades were distinguished from each other, or what was their relative order of rank. Bodies of men, to the number of forty or fifty, are sometimes represented on the monuments, but this may be merely by chance, or because the draughtsman did not take the trouble to give the proper number accurately. The inferior officers were equipped very much like the soldiers, with the exception of the buckler, which they do not appear to have carried, and certainly did not when on the march: the superior officers might be known by their umbrella or flabellum, a distinction which gave them the right of approaching the king’s person.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.
The military exercises to which all these troops were accustomed probably differed but little from those which were in vogue with the armies of the Ancient Empire; they consisted in wrestling, boxing, jumping, running either singly or in line at regular distances from each other, manual exercises, fencing, and shooting at a target; the war-dance had ceased to be in use among the Egyptian regiments as a military exercise, but it was practised by the Ethiopian and Libyan auxiliaries. At the beginning of each campaign, the men destined to serve in it were called out by the military scribes, who supplied them with arms from the royal arsenals. Then followed the distribution of rations. The soldiers, each carrying a small linen bag, came up in squads before the commissariat officers, and each received his own allowance.*