Post by zarahan on Mar 18, 2015 5:45:31 GMT -5
THE HORSES OF KUSH*
Lisa A. Heidorn. 1997. The Horses of Kush. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 105-114
King Piye was outraged at the neglect of horses
when the Kushites conquered Egypt.
CHARIOTRY and cavalry superiority were essential to success in military battles of the first millennium B.C. The Assyrians left numerous records concerning the incorporation of foreign chariotry and cavalry units into their army. These texts make especially frequent mention of Kushite horses. In this article, the textual, representational, and archaeological evidence for horses in the Kushite realm will be examined. The cuneiform evidence for the presence of Kushites and Kushite horses in Assyria during the reigns of several Neo-Assyrian kings will also be discussed.1 The evidence for the breed-ing of horses in the Dongola Reach area of the Third Cataract during the medieval period and later will also be reviewed. It will be posited that this region was already an impor-tant horse-breeding center during the Twenty-fifth Dynasty and perhaps earlier.2 I. THE KUSHITES AND THEIR HORSES According to the victory stela from Napata, when the Kushite king Piye (747-716 B.C.) entered the stables of the defeated ruler of Hermopolis around 728 B.C., he became out-raged at the sight of the neglected horses stabled in them. It was distressing to him that these horses had been allowed to starve during his siege of the city of his rebellious vas-sal.3 Piye seems to have had a great admiration for horses. He had them depicted atop this victory stela at Napata4 and on reliefs on the walls of the temple of Amun at Gebel Barkal. He also initiated the custom of burying a team of horses in a cemetery near his tomb at El Kurru, the earliest of the Gebel Barkal royal cemeteries.6
This practice was followed by three of his successors.7 A relief block from the temple of Taharqa at Kawa depicts a rider on a horse wearing a sun-hat.8 Also, the excavator of the Kushite site of Sanam speculated that a series of rooms comprising the so-called "Treasury" could have been stalls for the stabling of horses, although the surviving reliefs on the temple at Sanam depict mules-not horses-either being ridden or pulling chariots and wagons.9 Finally, a Ptolemaic or Roman period relief from Temple 250 at Meroe shows horsemen with lances. 10
II. KUSHITE HORSES AND THEIR HANDLERS IN ASSYRIA
By the late eighth century B.C., the Assyrians had also developed a deep appreciation of horses. Cavalry and chariotry forces were of utmost importance to Assyria's strategy of controlling trade and politics throughout the Near East. The Assyrians obtained their horses as booty and tribute, and by trade. Tiglath-pileser III, who ruled from 744 to 727 B.C.,11 claims to have taken Egyptian horses as booty after his victories over the Mediterranean coastal cities of KalpUina (modern al-MinaD) and Tyre.12 The Egyptians also sent horses to the Assyrian kings. Sargon II (721-705 B.C.) states in an inscription that Silkanni (= Osor-kon IV, 730-715 B.C.) sent him "twelve large horses of Egypt, the like of which did not exist in... [his] country."'3 Other inscriptions of Sargon mention gifts of "large Egyptian horses trained to the yoke" (i.e., trained as chariot horses), which were presented to him upon the inauguration of his new capital, Dir-Sarrukin.14 Sargon's successor, Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.), claims that when he defeated the Judean king, Hezekiah, and his Egyptian and Kushite allies at the Philistine city of Ekron (Eltekeh) in 701 B.C., he captured Egyp-tian and Nubian charioteers.'5 Horses are listed among the booty which Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.) took from Egypt in the course of his campaigns there and are also counted among the annual tribute payments which he imposed on that land.16
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In addition, Esarhad-don carried off to Assyria numerous captives from the palace at Memphis, including the crown prince of the Kushite king Taharqa, his other sons, his daughters, his wives and concubines, and his palace attendants.17 Ashurbanipal (668-627 B.c.) also includes "large horses" among the booty he claims to have taken from Egypt when he reconquered it in ca. 663 B.C.18 While these inscriptions do not specifically mention "Kushite" horses, there are numer-ous references to Kushites and Kushite horses in other Neo-Assyrian documents. Stephanie Dalley assembled much of the relevant data, noting that,... [T]he late eighth century was a time when the Assyrians were increasingly aware of the im-portance of equestrian technology. Suddenly during that period cavalry in particular developed into Iran28 or in Anatolia.29
But Postgate, citing the lack of evidence for another country with this name, noted that this breed of horse was identified by the Assyrians with the African land of Kush. He cautioned, however, that "this would not imply that all the horses of this kind.., were bred in Nubia, any more than today Arabian horses come from Arabia. All that is necessary is that the type of horse was, rightly or wrongly, associated with that country."30 In a letter dated to around 669 B.C., it is reported that an attempt was made to return the statues of the gods Bel and Zarpanitu from Assyria to Babylon-the city from which these images had been plundered in the course of Sennacherib's general sack of the Babylonian capital in 689 B.C.31 For reasons not concerning us here, the journey was aborted. The horse pulling the cart, however, is described in the letter as a "strong horse harnessed in the trap-pings of the land of Kush." Because the animal pulling the sacred load is not identified as Kushite, it has been suggested that the designation "Kushite" in the Nineveh Horse Re-ports was not a breed identifier, but rather the type of trappings the horses wore.32
But the Nineveh Horse Reports specifically mention "horses of Kush," not "Kushite trappings." The references to Egyptian and Kushite horses in Neo-Assyrian texts indicate that the two North African countries actively bred horses, and that the horses of Kush were a breed prized by Assyrian charioteers. Dalley suggested that the markets established by the As-syrians in the territory of Gaza and on the eastern border of Egypt, which are mentioned in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II, respectively, were involved in the horse trade between Assyria and Egypt. She noted that most Assyrian merchants at this time were either explicitly labeled "horse-traders" or can be shown to have been involved in the horse trade, and she was therefore inclined to believe that Tiglath-pileser and Sargon established these markets to encourage trade with Egypt in order to acquire Nubian horses for their chariotry.33 Several documents mention Kushite horse-experts living in Assyria. Dalley cites a Neo-Assyrian text mentioning a Kushite holding the high military office of "chariot driver of the Prefect of the Land."34 Also, in a loan document dated by its eponym to sometime be-tween 648 and 612 B.C., a man called kisaya, who perhaps worked in the king's stables, was responsible for delivering bales of straw and measures of grain.35
Finally, one of the Nineveh Horse Reports in which a delivery of Kushite horses is mentioned contains an or-der from the king concerning horses in the palace and for the "settlement of Kush."36 This settlement, which was presumably located close to the capital, may have been inhabited by Kushites engaged in the care and handling of horses in the Assyrian army. Unfortunately, the text is broken and the precise information concerning the king's wishes is lost. If we consider only the Neo-Assyrian evidence, then, Kushites were employed in the Assyrian army as horse-experts from at least the reign of Tiglath-pileser III down into the reign of Ashurbanipal-that is, from the mid-eighth century B.C. until almost the end of the third quarter of the seventh.
III. OTHER KUSHITES IN ASSYRIA AND ASSYRIA'S INTEREST IN MELUIJA AND KUSH
Neo-Assyrian texts also mention Kushites working in other jobs in the empire. An eco-nomic document mentions two Kushite eunuchs, with Assyrian names, collecting personal debts.37 And fifteen Kushite women are found on a list of foreign female workers that in-cluded musicians, temple personnel, scribes, smiths, stone-workers, a barber, and a baker.38 Both these texts come from archives in Nineveh and may date from anytime between the beginning of Sargon II's reign in 721 B.C. and the fall of Nineveh in 612. Nubians were also familiar to Assyrian artists, who, beginning in the eighth century B.C., depicted them on art objects and wall reliefs.39 Many of the references to Kushites and Kushite horses in Assyria are from the reign of Esarhaddon. In fact, this king's interest in Kush is attested in a number of texts. Esarhaddon apparently meant not only to conquer Egypt but to extend his control to the southernmost limits of the known world. On one of his later campaigns, he claims to have departed from Egypt towards Melulhba.40 Unfortunately, the account of this expedition is fragmentary and seems to describe an expedition (perhaps in Arabia?) that was unrelated to his southern foray. But in another fragmentary inscription Esarhaddon mentions a "city of Kush which none among [his] fathers [had ever seen],"41 which possibly refers to the Kushite capital or a major city in Kush (although no other inscriptional evidence indicates that Assyrians ever traveled to Kush or Melublha). "City of Kush" in this context might also refer to a major settlement of Kushites within Egypt.
IV. AFRICAN HORSEMEN DURING THE CLASSICAL PERIODS
Evidence for the association of black Africans-perhaps Nubians-with the care and handling of horses extends both back into the late second millennium B.C. and forward into later times.42 During the Greek and Roman periods Africans were frequently represented as grooms, charioteers, or riders.43 A number of royal tombs at Meroe, located between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts and dat-ing to the late first millennium B.C. through the early first millennium A.D., exhibit horse remains on the stairs leading into the tombs,44 seemingly anticipating the later horse sac-rifices in the X-Group royal tumuli at Qustul (fourth-sixth centuries A.D.) in Lower Nubia.45
V. MEDIEVAL NUBIA AND THE DONGOLAWI HORSE
While the evidence cited above suggests a close association between blacks and the training and handling of horses, early textual evidence for the actual practice of horse-breeding in the Sudan is sparse. Such evidence is, however, substantial from the medieval period to the recent past.46 When John Burckhardt traveled to the region in the early 1880s, he found that the Dongola horse was famous throughout the Sudan, Ethiopia, and the rest of the Near East.47 He stated that the breed was originally from Arabia, and that it was one of the finest he had seen: "the horses possess all the superior beauty of the horses of Arabia, but they are larger."48 Burckhardt also noted that five to ten slaves were paid for one prime stallion, and that the Mamluks in Dongola were all mounted on these horses.49 Other late eighteenth-and nineteenth-century travelers in the Sudan noted that the horses of Dongola were a fast-moving trade item in the markets of Berber, Shendy, and Sennar, along the middle Nile, and in Suakin, on the Red Sea coast.50 The demand for these horses was widespread, and in 1769 James Bruce purchased a horse of Dongola in one of the mar-kets of Tigr6.i51
Bruce was very much impressed by the breed and remarked that, north of Khartoum, begins that noble race of horses justly celebrated all over the world.... What figure the Nubian breed would make in point of fleetness is very doubtful, their make being so entirely different from that of the Arabian; but of beautiful and symmetrical parts, great size and strength, the most agile, nervous, and elastic movements, great endurance of fatigue, docility of temper, and seeming attach-ment to man, beyond any other domestic animal, can promise any thing for a stallion, the Nubian is, above all comparison, the most eligible in the world.52 Bruce also noted that Dongola, and the dry area near it seemed to be "the center of excel-lence for this noble animal."53 The Funj kingdom centered at Sennar was one of the main suppliers of horses for the cavalry of the Ethiopian kingdom.54 Bruce reported that in the 1770s the local ruler in Dongola was nominated by the Funj king and that the tribute imposed on the area included horses, which he called "the great strength of Sennar."55
Lisa A. Heidorn. 1997. The Horses of Kush. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 105-114
Lisa A. Heidorn. 1997. The Horses of Kush. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 105-114
King Piye was outraged at the neglect of horses
when the Kushites conquered Egypt.
CHARIOTRY and cavalry superiority were essential to success in military battles of the first millennium B.C. The Assyrians left numerous records concerning the incorporation of foreign chariotry and cavalry units into their army. These texts make especially frequent mention of Kushite horses. In this article, the textual, representational, and archaeological evidence for horses in the Kushite realm will be examined. The cuneiform evidence for the presence of Kushites and Kushite horses in Assyria during the reigns of several Neo-Assyrian kings will also be discussed.1 The evidence for the breed-ing of horses in the Dongola Reach area of the Third Cataract during the medieval period and later will also be reviewed. It will be posited that this region was already an impor-tant horse-breeding center during the Twenty-fifth Dynasty and perhaps earlier.2 I. THE KUSHITES AND THEIR HORSES According to the victory stela from Napata, when the Kushite king Piye (747-716 B.C.) entered the stables of the defeated ruler of Hermopolis around 728 B.C., he became out-raged at the sight of the neglected horses stabled in them. It was distressing to him that these horses had been allowed to starve during his siege of the city of his rebellious vas-sal.3 Piye seems to have had a great admiration for horses. He had them depicted atop this victory stela at Napata4 and on reliefs on the walls of the temple of Amun at Gebel Barkal. He also initiated the custom of burying a team of horses in a cemetery near his tomb at El Kurru, the earliest of the Gebel Barkal royal cemeteries.6
This practice was followed by three of his successors.7 A relief block from the temple of Taharqa at Kawa depicts a rider on a horse wearing a sun-hat.8 Also, the excavator of the Kushite site of Sanam speculated that a series of rooms comprising the so-called "Treasury" could have been stalls for the stabling of horses, although the surviving reliefs on the temple at Sanam depict mules-not horses-either being ridden or pulling chariots and wagons.9 Finally, a Ptolemaic or Roman period relief from Temple 250 at Meroe shows horsemen with lances. 10
II. KUSHITE HORSES AND THEIR HANDLERS IN ASSYRIA
By the late eighth century B.C., the Assyrians had also developed a deep appreciation of horses. Cavalry and chariotry forces were of utmost importance to Assyria's strategy of controlling trade and politics throughout the Near East. The Assyrians obtained their horses as booty and tribute, and by trade. Tiglath-pileser III, who ruled from 744 to 727 B.C.,11 claims to have taken Egyptian horses as booty after his victories over the Mediterranean coastal cities of KalpUina (modern al-MinaD) and Tyre.12 The Egyptians also sent horses to the Assyrian kings. Sargon II (721-705 B.C.) states in an inscription that Silkanni (= Osor-kon IV, 730-715 B.C.) sent him "twelve large horses of Egypt, the like of which did not exist in... [his] country."'3 Other inscriptions of Sargon mention gifts of "large Egyptian horses trained to the yoke" (i.e., trained as chariot horses), which were presented to him upon the inauguration of his new capital, Dir-Sarrukin.14 Sargon's successor, Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.), claims that when he defeated the Judean king, Hezekiah, and his Egyptian and Kushite allies at the Philistine city of Ekron (Eltekeh) in 701 B.C., he captured Egyp-tian and Nubian charioteers.'5 Horses are listed among the booty which Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.) took from Egypt in the course of his campaigns there and are also counted among the annual tribute payments which he imposed on that land.16
In addition, Esarhad-don carried off to Assyria numerous captives from the palace at Memphis, including the crown prince of the Kushite king Taharqa, his other sons, his daughters, his wives and concubines, and his palace attendants.17 Ashurbanipal (668-627 B.c.) also includes "large horses" among the booty he claims to have taken from Egypt when he reconquered it in ca. 663 B.C.18 While these inscriptions do not specifically mention "Kushite" horses, there are numer-ous references to Kushites and Kushite horses in other Neo-Assyrian documents. Stephanie Dalley assembled much of the relevant data, noting that,... [T]he late eighth century was a time when the Assyrians were increasingly aware of the im-portance of equestrian technology. Suddenly during that period cavalry in particular developed into Iran28 or in Anatolia.29
But Postgate, citing the lack of evidence for another country with this name, noted that this breed of horse was identified by the Assyrians with the African land of Kush. He cautioned, however, that "this would not imply that all the horses of this kind.., were bred in Nubia, any more than today Arabian horses come from Arabia. All that is necessary is that the type of horse was, rightly or wrongly, associated with that country."30 In a letter dated to around 669 B.C., it is reported that an attempt was made to return the statues of the gods Bel and Zarpanitu from Assyria to Babylon-the city from which these images had been plundered in the course of Sennacherib's general sack of the Babylonian capital in 689 B.C.31 For reasons not concerning us here, the journey was aborted. The horse pulling the cart, however, is described in the letter as a "strong horse harnessed in the trap-pings of the land of Kush." Because the animal pulling the sacred load is not identified as Kushite, it has been suggested that the designation "Kushite" in the Nineveh Horse Re-ports was not a breed identifier, but rather the type of trappings the horses wore.32
But the Nineveh Horse Reports specifically mention "horses of Kush," not "Kushite trappings." The references to Egyptian and Kushite horses in Neo-Assyrian texts indicate that the two North African countries actively bred horses, and that the horses of Kush were a breed prized by Assyrian charioteers. Dalley suggested that the markets established by the As-syrians in the territory of Gaza and on the eastern border of Egypt, which are mentioned in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II, respectively, were involved in the horse trade between Assyria and Egypt. She noted that most Assyrian merchants at this time were either explicitly labeled "horse-traders" or can be shown to have been involved in the horse trade, and she was therefore inclined to believe that Tiglath-pileser and Sargon established these markets to encourage trade with Egypt in order to acquire Nubian horses for their chariotry.33 Several documents mention Kushite horse-experts living in Assyria. Dalley cites a Neo-Assyrian text mentioning a Kushite holding the high military office of "chariot driver of the Prefect of the Land."34 Also, in a loan document dated by its eponym to sometime be-tween 648 and 612 B.C., a man called kisaya, who perhaps worked in the king's stables, was responsible for delivering bales of straw and measures of grain.35
Finally, one of the Nineveh Horse Reports in which a delivery of Kushite horses is mentioned contains an or-der from the king concerning horses in the palace and for the "settlement of Kush."36 This settlement, which was presumably located close to the capital, may have been inhabited by Kushites engaged in the care and handling of horses in the Assyrian army. Unfortunately, the text is broken and the precise information concerning the king's wishes is lost. If we consider only the Neo-Assyrian evidence, then, Kushites were employed in the Assyrian army as horse-experts from at least the reign of Tiglath-pileser III down into the reign of Ashurbanipal-that is, from the mid-eighth century B.C. until almost the end of the third quarter of the seventh.
III. OTHER KUSHITES IN ASSYRIA AND ASSYRIA'S INTEREST IN MELUIJA AND KUSH
Neo-Assyrian texts also mention Kushites working in other jobs in the empire. An eco-nomic document mentions two Kushite eunuchs, with Assyrian names, collecting personal debts.37 And fifteen Kushite women are found on a list of foreign female workers that in-cluded musicians, temple personnel, scribes, smiths, stone-workers, a barber, and a baker.38 Both these texts come from archives in Nineveh and may date from anytime between the beginning of Sargon II's reign in 721 B.C. and the fall of Nineveh in 612. Nubians were also familiar to Assyrian artists, who, beginning in the eighth century B.C., depicted them on art objects and wall reliefs.39 Many of the references to Kushites and Kushite horses in Assyria are from the reign of Esarhaddon. In fact, this king's interest in Kush is attested in a number of texts. Esarhaddon apparently meant not only to conquer Egypt but to extend his control to the southernmost limits of the known world. On one of his later campaigns, he claims to have departed from Egypt towards Melulhba.40 Unfortunately, the account of this expedition is fragmentary and seems to describe an expedition (perhaps in Arabia?) that was unrelated to his southern foray. But in another fragmentary inscription Esarhaddon mentions a "city of Kush which none among [his] fathers [had ever seen],"41 which possibly refers to the Kushite capital or a major city in Kush (although no other inscriptional evidence indicates that Assyrians ever traveled to Kush or Melublha). "City of Kush" in this context might also refer to a major settlement of Kushites within Egypt.
IV. AFRICAN HORSEMEN DURING THE CLASSICAL PERIODS
Evidence for the association of black Africans-perhaps Nubians-with the care and handling of horses extends both back into the late second millennium B.C. and forward into later times.42 During the Greek and Roman periods Africans were frequently represented as grooms, charioteers, or riders.43 A number of royal tombs at Meroe, located between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts and dat-ing to the late first millennium B.C. through the early first millennium A.D., exhibit horse remains on the stairs leading into the tombs,44 seemingly anticipating the later horse sac-rifices in the X-Group royal tumuli at Qustul (fourth-sixth centuries A.D.) in Lower Nubia.45
V. MEDIEVAL NUBIA AND THE DONGOLAWI HORSE
While the evidence cited above suggests a close association between blacks and the training and handling of horses, early textual evidence for the actual practice of horse-breeding in the Sudan is sparse. Such evidence is, however, substantial from the medieval period to the recent past.46 When John Burckhardt traveled to the region in the early 1880s, he found that the Dongola horse was famous throughout the Sudan, Ethiopia, and the rest of the Near East.47 He stated that the breed was originally from Arabia, and that it was one of the finest he had seen: "the horses possess all the superior beauty of the horses of Arabia, but they are larger."48 Burckhardt also noted that five to ten slaves were paid for one prime stallion, and that the Mamluks in Dongola were all mounted on these horses.49 Other late eighteenth-and nineteenth-century travelers in the Sudan noted that the horses of Dongola were a fast-moving trade item in the markets of Berber, Shendy, and Sennar, along the middle Nile, and in Suakin, on the Red Sea coast.50 The demand for these horses was widespread, and in 1769 James Bruce purchased a horse of Dongola in one of the mar-kets of Tigr6.i51
Bruce was very much impressed by the breed and remarked that, north of Khartoum, begins that noble race of horses justly celebrated all over the world.... What figure the Nubian breed would make in point of fleetness is very doubtful, their make being so entirely different from that of the Arabian; but of beautiful and symmetrical parts, great size and strength, the most agile, nervous, and elastic movements, great endurance of fatigue, docility of temper, and seeming attach-ment to man, beyond any other domestic animal, can promise any thing for a stallion, the Nubian is, above all comparison, the most eligible in the world.52 Bruce also noted that Dongola, and the dry area near it seemed to be "the center of excel-lence for this noble animal."53 The Funj kingdom centered at Sennar was one of the main suppliers of horses for the cavalry of the Ethiopian kingdom.54 Bruce reported that in the 1770s the local ruler in Dongola was nominated by the Funj king and that the tribute imposed on the area included horses, which he called "the great strength of Sennar."55
Lisa A. Heidorn. 1997. The Horses of Kush. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 105-114
