Little known fact The first evidence of horses in Egypt dates from the 13th dynasty. But they were introduced on a significant scale only from the Second Intermediate Period onwards. The first pictures of horses were made during the 18th dynasty. Horses were luxury animals, and only the very wealthy could afford to keep them and treat them according to their worth. They were never used for ploughing and only rarely ridden during the second millennium BCE. For war and hunt alike they were harnessed to chariots. Tutankhamen seems to have enjoyed not only driving his chariot, but also mounting on horseback. This has been inferred from a riding crop [23] found in his tomb bearing the inscription that he came on his horse like the shining Re. According to a few rare depictions, such as a relief in Horemhebs tomb, horses were ridden bareback and without stirrups. At times the rider sat on the horses rump in the fashion donkeys are still mounted today, which would have limited the horses pace to a slow trot. The stables of Ramses II being excavated Ramses II built a complex of six rows of stables for 460 horses at Per-Ramses on the southern edge of the Delta, covering 1,700 square metres. They had sloping floors and troughs at the lower end for keeping the floor as dry as possible and catching the horses urine. The stables contained stone water basins and stone tethers. Pharaohs often supervised personally the treatment their horses were getting. Ramses III frequented his stables and Piye, having conquered the Middle Egyptian town of Shamumu after a lengthy siege, accused the defeated prince Namlot of not feeding his horses properly As I have lived and loved Re and breath is in my nostrils, thus my heart grows heavy seeing how these horses have been starved, which is worse than anything you have done from the evil in your heart. The Piankhi Stela, 23rd dynasty We do not know how the Egyptians trained their horses, though a teachers comparison of schoolboys with horses suggests that their approach was rather hands-on:
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 21:04:41 +0000
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