The First Cavalries in the Ancient Near East

Abstract As a causative factor in premodern history, it is hard to overrate the significance of cavalry, the organized use, that is, of skilled riders in mounted warfare. Yet the origins of cavalry have garnered scant attention lately, at least among historians of the ancient Near East. The reasons for this neglect are complex, but the essential cause is that military historians, once a plentiful group, now make up only a tiny band within the academy. Cavalry’s origins therefore remain murky. A prevailing theory, the “Early Steppe Riders Thesis,” supposes that good military riding appeared as early as the fourth millennium B.C. on the steppes of Eurasia. The minority theory (the “Iron Age Near East Thesis”) has cavalry evolving from chariotry in the Iron Age Near East. The present essay uses this larger debate as a springboard, but its focus is narrower. Its aim is to establish when, where, and under what circumstances cavalry rose in the ancient Near East. I exploit new finds and reexamine known evidence, both written and representational, from Assyria, Urarṭu, and the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex (SACC). I argue that the big changes first occurred not in Assyria, or Urarṭu (as a minority of Iron Age Near East Thesis scholars have held), but among the Syro-Anatolian polities. After glimpses of Middle Bronze Age riding in Syria, true cavalries are manifest by the second half of the tenth century in SACC. If accepted, these conclusions could rectify misconceptions about the Syro-Anatolian Kulturraum as militarily passive and sterile and could provide a solider basis for judging the place of the Near East in the larger conversation about the world-historical origins of cavalry.