EARLY EGYPTIAN CHARIOTS 3 



Indeed, as Professor Owen himself has pointed 

 out, horses are not found represented on any of 

 the monuments of the very early Egyptians, so 

 that apparently the Egyptians of the eighteenth 

 dynasty, whose monuments probably are the first 

 to show horses and chariots, must have been the 

 first to turn their attention seriously to the em- 

 ployment of horses for useful purposes. 



And yet from further statements made in 

 Genesis it seems certain that a native Egyptian 

 king who flourished somewhere about the time 

 of Jacob — that is to say between 1800 and 

 1 700 B.C. — owned many horses and chariots. The 

 Egyptians apparently did not mount horses until 

 a very late period in their history, and even the 

 chariots they constructed were, until many years 

 had passed, used only in time of war. The lower 

 classes, if one may call them so, used only the 

 ass, a beast that must have been popular amongst 

 the Egyptians for centuries before horses were 

 even heard of in Egypt. 



From Genesis we gather too that Pharaoh 

 made Joseph drive in his second chariot ; but the 

 Egyptians who bought corn from Joseph and 

 gave horses in exchange for it belonged probably 

 to the well-to-do class that in time of war was 

 compelled to provide the king with almost as 

 many horses and chariots as he needed, or at any 

 rate as many as he asked for. 



