EARLY HISTORY OF HORSEMANSHIP 213 



that region made roads unnecessary, and \ve know that the 

 Assyrians and the Babylonians did not wait for roads upon 

 which to take their chariots. I have other reasons, which I 

 will explain later, for believing that the horse was first used for 

 riding. 



The Egyptians undoubtedly received the horse from their 

 Shemitic conquerors, the Hyksos, or shepherd kings. The earliest 

 known representation of the horse in Egypt is of the eighteenth 

 dynasty, a tessera now in the British Museum, representing a 

 chariot with two horses, completely harnessed, and ascribed to 

 the reign of Amenhotep I. The first mention of the horse upon 

 the monuments is made in the inscriptions of Thothmes I., his 

 successor, who captured a chariot and two horses in a Mesopo- 

 tamian campaign, and gives a lasting record of the glorious 

 event. In Genesis xlvii. 1 7, we read that Joseph, who served a 

 Hyksos king, 'gave them bread in exchange for horses.' After 

 the reign of Thothmes I. the horse frequently appears upon 

 the monuments of Egypt. 



Although we are assured that the people of Western Asia 

 had employed the horse long before its use was known to the 

 Egyptians, we have not yet found any very early representations 

 of the horse upon the monuments of the Euphrates valley. 

 The earliest figure of the horse upon the Assyrian remains 

 belongs probably to the ninth century before our era. But, as 

 I have said, the records of king Sargon, and other proofs, show 

 us that the horse had long been used in Asia before it was 

 known in Egypt. 



The probabilities, so far as we have any evidences, are that 

 the Egyptians received the horse from their Shemitic conquer- 

 ors ; these latter received it from those warlike tribes which, 

 for want of a better name, we must call the early Aryans ; these 

 last-named having received the gift, through the lake-dwellers 

 of Switzerland and a long line of unknown and unknowable 

 donors, from the cave-dwellers of Central Europe. 



Had the primitive man of Central Europe not been active^ 

 hardy, and energetic, he could not have maintained life under 



