226 THE HOUSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



more common. It seems certain that the simple four-spoked 

 wheel is earlier than those with six, eight, and twelve spokes. 

 Whilst it is quite possible that the Florentine chariot is not 

 strictly Egyptian, it is very improbable that it is of northern 

 origin, for the chariot is entirely composed of wood joined 

 with pegs or studs of bone, not a single scrap of metal of 

 any kind copper, bronze, or iron being used in its construc- 

 tion. Now the Egyptians had been using copper from pre- 

 dynastic times, and as at the time of the exodus, according 

 to the Book of Joshua, the Canaanites had chariots of iron 1 , for 

 " the children of Joseph said, The hill is not enough for us ; 

 and all the Canaanites that dwell in the land of the valley 

 have chariots of iron," and "Judah 2 could not drive out the 

 inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron," 

 and as Jabin 3 , king of Canaan, "had nine hundred chariots 

 of iron," and as moreover all the peoples of Asia Minor had 

 been employing copper for many centuries, and by 1400 B.C. 

 some of them were using not only bronze but even iron, it is 

 most improbable that either Egyptian, Canaanite, Syrian, or 

 Hittite, was the maker of the Theban chariot. On the other 

 hand, since the Libyans, who furnished chariots to the army of 

 Xerxes (480 B.C.), had not even weapons of metal, but only 

 carried javelins with the points hardened in the fire 4 , it is 

 clear that if they were not using metal for their cutting 

 weapons in the fifth century B.C., it is most improbable that 

 they were using metal to fasten together their chariots, and it 

 is much more unlikely that they would have been employing 

 copper or any other metal in building chariots, such as those 

 which are represented as routing Ulysses and his company 

 somewhere toward the close of the second millennium B.C. 

 It is obvious that a chariot of such light construction with 

 wheels unshod with metal tires, such as those which protected 

 the Homeric chariot-wheel and probably the " chariots of iron " 

 of the Canaanites, would have been perfectly unfit for stony or 

 hilly countries like Palestine and other parts of Asia Minor, 

 though it would be admirably suited for the sandy plains of 

 Libya. The evidence therefore all points to the Florentine 

 1 xvii. 16-18. 2 Judges i. 19. 3 Judges iv. 3. 4 Herod, vn. 71. 



