Not quite what I was looking for. I’m trying to follow up on various earlier discussions about the use of the horse in antiquity, so I figured a book titled Chariot would be a sure thing. Unfortunately, this is more of a history of the times and places where chariots were in use, rather than a history of chariot warfare. Author Arthur Cotterell goes on wide digressions, including the chariot in the Mahabharata, Byzantine chariot racing, the chariot in the Roman triumph, and so on.


Cotterell contends that the chariot as a war machine was always used as a mobile archery platform. This is fairly sure for Egyptian and Indian chariots, not quite as plausible for Hittite and Chinese chariots, and pretty dubious for Mycenaean chariots. No Mycenaean chariot examples exist; everything is based on contemporary depictions and literature. All know depictions show Mycenaean chariots with the axle under the center of the car, unlike Egyptian chariots with the axle far to the rear. This would have made the Mycenaean chariot unstable in high speed maneuvers – but suitable for slow turns in tight spaces. The Iliad consistently describes the chariot as a battle taxi – hauling the spear-equipped warrior up to the front, then turned around in readiness to extract him in case of retreat. Cotterell’s arguments for Mycenaean archery chariots are based on the claim that this is what everybody else in the Bronze Age was using theirs for, and also on the slaughter of the suitors at the end of the Odyssey. The idea was Odysseus’ use of the bow was a holdover from an earlier version of the epic, and Homer had to keep it in after warfare styles had changed. Don’t think I buy that.


Nevertheless, there’s a lot of interesting stuff about Indian and Chinese warfare; these are periods I’m not at all familiar with and I am now inspired to do further reading. Fortunately, one of the major strongpoints of Chariot is the outstanding bibliography; not only is there a book list, but references are discussed at length with suggestions for which would be most suitable for an overview and which have details. Sort of kind of recommended. ( )

There are two great inventions in the early history of humanity: writing and wheels. While writing helped transmit information from place to place faster, the wheel actually got people from place to place faster. Attach newly domesticated horses to the front of a basket with wheel and you have yourself a chariot. Early chariots were invented in Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE and they are seen in mosaic reliefs dated to five hundred years after that. They served as parade vehicles, battle taxis for archers, and used in races for public spectacle. For a while, they were the greatest weapons used in large-scale warfare, but strategists and inventors found ways around them. Forcing the battle onto uneven terrain or immobilizing the horses left the chariots unable to effectively take the field. Arthur’s Cotterell’s Chariot is a spectacular look into the history of, uses for, and stories about the first great war machine.

Cotterell’s history moves around the globe in search of new and inventive source material about chariots. He follows its use from Mesopotamia to Egypt to Europe proper, and then to India and China. While there are great stories and illustrations of chariots, there is no full definitive timeline included. Nor is there a good bibliography, and he even goes so far as to use Homer’s works and the Bible as source material. I would have liked a slightly better scholarly approach to the subject, but the history was interesting nonetheless. Any history buff or military history enthusiast should give this one a look-see. ( )

While the author has pulled together an amazing amount of information on the history of the chariot from Europe to China, the impact of this book is undermined by a number of points. For one, Cotterell would have been better served by a thematic or a chronological organization; at points the book seemed repetitive and it could have been more comparative after the initial sections. Two, Cotterell grants rather more unquestioning respect to literary sources (such as the Illiad or the Old Testament) as historical documents than seems wise, with the few caveats buried in the rudimentary end notes. Three, granted that this is a popular work, the inclusion of a time line and a proper bibliography would have been in order. Still, if you're looking for some historical background on bronze age charioteers this is a decent place to start. ( )