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Egyptian Chariots

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Backtothedarkplace (U2955180) on Wednesday, 18th February 2009

  Hi Hasse,
  
  Been thinking about this one and the uses for Chariots that I can think of are
  
  1 scouting/ boarder patrol work. As I recall it the Eygptian ones were small and light weight should enable them to work well cross country and enable the eygptians to put a force of men larger then a similar amount of cavalry pretty much where ever they want.
  
  2 Battle. As well as acting as a sort of cavalry force to pin and harrass an enemy you could bung a few infantry in the back and move a force across a battle field to enable an attack from an unexpected direction.
  
  3 Raiding. Deep swift movements against the enemy again more men than the same number of horse could carry.
  
  4 Ease of use, I think it might be easier to teach a man to fight from a moving platform than on horse back.
  
  5 flexibility at a pinch you could haul a reasonable amount of supplies with them not always possible with cavalry. I think that a pair of horses pulling a vehicle might stay fresher longer than a pair carrying a similar load on their backs.
  
  6 To add a touch of class to what might otherwise be a vulgar brawl.
  
  

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by TerryG*09* (U13753139) on Wednesday, 18th February 2009

  backtothedarkplace,
  "you could bung a few infantry in the back"
  not to sure about that one. Egyptian chariots were built for only two men, one to steer and one with a bow and arrow and/or a sheild.
  
  the way that they used them was to charge paralell to the enemies front line and continuosly fire arrows, there would be a stedy stream of them riding just after each other so that there would be a heavy bombardment of arrows.
  
  and also for hunting!

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• Message 3

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  Posted by TerryG*09* (U13753139) on Wednesday, 18th February 2009

  but other wise, spot on!!

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• Message 4

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Wednesday, 18th February 2009

  In Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔric poems, chariots had been described as a piece of transportation of nopblemen to battlefield. However these descended and battled as foot soldiers at a time when foot soldiers at best had a knife and/or a piece of shield (too expensive to buy full armour!). From the little we know, noblemen were very heavily protected (and thus not easily killed), perhaps too heavily to had been flexible on horse fighting. You have also to take into account that to have a valid cavalry one has to have really 10,000s of horses - Greek (and potentially Egyptian, I do not know) armies had very small sized cavalries, thus there was no use of developing cavalry tactics with... a mere 500-1000 poor horses that would be decimated by the thousands of foot troops. I doubt that Egyptians over-relied on their chariots on the actual battle. As mentioned above, it would be mostly an effective way of transportation, especially for those that were not experienced riders (no wonder why Mongols never highly esteemed chariots!)!
  
  Later phalanx warfare with the mere presence of more and more well armed men in the front as well as back lines simply rendered chariots obsolete. More than that, it rendered simple cavalry tactics obsolete (as cavalry could not just dive in and kill, it had to do special manoevres to side-hit the formation and that was not exactly the easiest thing to do). Not even cvalry archers changed that. However by mid-Roman times, the rapid increase in the horse keeping all around the world especially in north-central Asia meant that rather than having the 10% of your army mounted, you could have actually the 100% of a really huge army (200,000 is it ok for you?), which of course changed everything! You could just move at "light-speed" from one place to another and pest the place like locusts...
  
  Back to Pharaonic Egypt, this was not the case. Horses were a thing of the very few. And riders were numbered. The chariot was the logical choice. For transportation. Not so much for battle.

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• Message 5

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Wednesday, 18th February 2009

  correction - of course heavy cavalry existed! It was rather Mycenaean noblemen heavy hoplites wore types of armour not compatible with horses (e.g. a type of lorica segmentata that went done to the feet as an apron - excellent protection, not working on a horse though). Now why didn't they take it to heavy cavalry? Simple: they were around 20-30 noblemen... so 20-30 heavy riders can do nothing even against a totally unarmed mass of 200 men.

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• Message 6

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  Posted by LairigGhru (U5452625) on Thursday, 19th February 2009

  Fascinating to imagine boys of the time drooling over the technology and comparing one example with another - either favourably or disparagingly.

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• Message 7

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  Posted by Backtothedarkplace (U2955180) on Thursday, 19th February 2009

  Hi lairigGhru,
  
  Whats the bets one of these days they find a set of bronze age top trump cards? LOL
  
  

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• Message 8

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  Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Tuesday, 3rd March 2009

  "...5 flexibility at a pinch you could haul a reasonable amount of supplies..."
  
  
  I doubt that for two reasons. Firstly, the chariots were small, so I doubt that they could haul very much at all, and secondly, in the event of a surprise attack, you would not want your attack force encumbered with goods. You would want them immediately available.

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