166 



THE HORSE AND ITS RIDER. 



ine workmansliip, SBd brought there from the Palace of Theodore 

 the Goth at Ravenna. In many of the legends these giants are 

 described as fighting naked, and so late as the year 1578, a 

 reoiment of Scottish highlanders, m';n of Celto-Sythic origin, 

 stripped themselves naked to a man before they charged the 

 Spauiai'ds at the Battle of Rymeuant, near Maliues. In almost 

 every legend we find them spoken of as fighting on horseback. 

 Bearing these tacts in mind, we shall proceed to Egypt again. 

 We have seen that in Abraham's time no mention is made of 

 horses, bat 205 years later we find Joseph his descendant riding 

 in a chariot, and mention made of the issue of corn from the 

 royal granaries for horees, among other domestic animals enu- 

 merate J : and we also find that Joseph, when he held the highest 

 ministerial piower in Egypt, sent chariots drawn b}' horses to 

 bring his aged father and his brethren to the banks of the Nile. 

 It would therefoi'e certainly appear that at some time between the 

 visit of Abraham and the elevation of Joseph, a period of about 

 200 years, the Egvptians had possessed themselves of horses, 

 but it is now ascertained that during this very period. Lower 

 Egypt had been invaded by the Hyksos or Cushites, who held 

 dominion then for many yeai-s, forming the I7th dynasty of 

 Manetlio, according to Lepsius, and having the seat of their 

 government at Memphis, while the Egyptian kings retreated to 

 I'hebes in Upper Egypt. Now who were the Hyksos, Cushites 

 or Shepherd Kings? Hyksos is a word of ancient Upper 

 Armenia, and means a Haik wearer — it is the same as the old 

 English word nuck. And we find that Snorro speaking of 

 Scythia calls it Sarkland — the land of " Tunic," or •' Xuck," or 

 "Shirt" wearers. Cushites in the Septuagint translation of the 

 Scriptures is rendered Ethiopians, but wrongly, for in the 

 older historical pai-ts of the Old Testament, the word Cush 

 is invariably used in regard to nations li\ing East of the 

 Red Sea ; these Hyksos then were nothing more than a band 

 of predatory Scj'tbians, fair-haired and blue eyed, who in 

 chai-iots or on horee-back, had penetrated from high Asia into 

 Egypt, and then became for a time the master class. It is sup- 

 posed that the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt b}' Thothmes 

 the first, of the 18th dynasty, according to Dr. Hales, about 27 

 years before Joseph's administration during the yeare of famine ; 

 and also, according to Dr. Hales, that after his death the Israelites, 

 then living in Goshen, and gi-eatly increased in numbers, began 

 to meditate revolutionary projects, and invited the Shepherd 

 Kings — the Hyksos — who ailer their expulsion had retreated 

 no further than Hanran, on the river Jordan, to re-enter Egypt, 

 which they did, and re-established the pastoral tyranny, subjecting 

 both the Egyptians and the Israelites to their oppression. This 

 wa-i the new dynasty, " the King that knew not Joseph.'' Now 

 I think that every candid mind will admit on a consideration of 

 these facts, the great probability that the horee was first brought 

 into the deserts of Arabia and into Egypt by these hordes of 

 Nomadic conqueroi-s, that on their first expulsion, their horees 

 and cattle fell as spoil into the hands of the Egyptians, and that 

 the hoi-ses greatly multiplied in numbei's, and became celebrated 

 for beauty, strength and spirit, and if we can believe the profane 

 authoi's, the multiplication must have been truly enormous, for 

 we find them, not long after the expulsion of the Hyksos, speak- 

 ing of Ramses Niamoun the 3rd, surnamed the Great, the Sesos- 

 tris of the Greek authore, and the fourteenth ruler of the 19th 

 dynasty, according to the chronology of Rosellini, and represent- 

 ing liim as going on au expedition to the East with 27,000 war 

 chariots, but this is probably an exaggeration, for in the time of 

 Setos, the 1st King of the 19th dynast}', according to Lepsius, and 

 supposed to be the King, "who knew not Joseph," and who per- 

 islied, according to the Jewish writers, in the Red Sea, we find 

 that monarch could only muster 600 chariots of war, " all the 

 chariots of Egypt," wherewith to pursue the Israelites. Now as 

 each chariot was drawn by two horses, this is a va=t reduction 

 from the immense numbers assigned by Heroditus to Ramse.', 



[1,853 



imless we consider that nearly all the hoi'ses in Egypt had per- 

 ished only a few days before, under the " very grievous murrain," 

 which constituted the fifth plague of Moses, and under the fearful 

 storm of hail which " smote throughout all the land of Egypt, 

 all that was in the field, both man and beast." 



Although by the law of Moses the Israelites were forbidden 

 to multiply horses, and expressly commanded not to return to 

 Egypt for that purpose, we find that King Solomon disobeyed 

 the command, and in his reign, for the first time in the histoiy 

 of Israel, we hear of the importation and use of horses, that King 

 having purchased horees for 1,400 chariots and 12,000 troopers. 

 Previous to this time, we argue from ^arious passages, that 

 infantry constituted the whole stieugth of the hosts of Isi'ael, that 

 oxen were almost entirely used for agricultural purposes, asses and 

 mules for journeying from place to place. From the Hyksos or 

 Scythian nomachs, it is probable that all the nations surrounding 

 Israel obtained hoi'ses, not long after they were furnished to the 

 Egyptians, for King David, in the Psalms, constantly speaks of 

 horsemen as among the number of his pagan enemies, and in the 

 time of his grandson Rehoboam, Sbishak, the King of Egypt, 

 came up to war against Jerusalem with 1,200 chariots and S0,000 

 horsemen, and among them are enumerated some tribes from the 

 Eastern bank of the Red Sea. It is a fact worthy of notice, that 

 though we find the sculptured resemblances of horses and chariots 

 without number on the monuments of Egypt, employed both in 

 military and domestic uses, there is but one known instance of a 

 mounted Egyptian ; the sculptures show the Egyptian horse to 

 have been of a very high bred race, the eye is fiery and promi- 

 nent; the head small and beautifully s;ton; the neck archer", 

 the body well rounded ; t ' e legs clean and the tail with a fine 

 curve, long and flowing; the acrionis depicted as spirited, giving 

 an idea of swiftness and courage. The horee was not a sacred 

 animal among the Egyptians ; no portion of its body has even 

 been found mummified, and there are very few instances of its 

 figure being found among the hieroglyphics. 



In the most ancient annals of India, dating from a period 

 contemporaneous with that of Moses, horses are mentioned, and 

 we know that the sacrifice of a horse even at this period, was one 

 of the most awful solemnities attending the worship of the God- 

 dess Kali. And in the Mahabarata, an old Indian heroic poem, 

 dating back certainly not less than the 6th century before the 

 Christian era, and recording the fii-st great military religious 

 invasion of India, in the enumeration of the corps of armies both 

 chariots and cavalry are mentioned, and this was a northern inva- 

 sion. The conclusion therefore is that the original seat of the 

 horse was neither in the plains of the Nile, nor in those of Hin- 

 dostan, nor in Syrin, or Arabia, but in the Centre of Asia, whence 

 at various periods of the world's histoiy, of many of which we 

 have now not even the tradition, radiated eastward, westward and 

 southward tribes of -Nomad wanderers, the fiist tamers of the 

 hoi-se to bit and bridle, the rapidity of whose movements and 

 conquests could never have been effected without such an animal, 

 and in whose country both it and the ass existed in a wild 

 state. 



And here we may take a glance at another race of mounted 

 wai'riors, a people of antiquity so dist^mt, that even those whom 

 we call the Antients, placed them back in the heroic or fabulous 

 ages, and attributed to them a wondrous origin and still more 

 wondrous form ; I mean the Centaurs, depicted by the poets and 

 sculptore of old as half-man and half-horse, the portions of the 

 two beings constituting a distinct whole. At the bottom of 

 every fable there is generally a fact, and the fact would 

 appear to be, that at some veiy remote period, or as 

 it may be poetically said in the old heroic days, when" 

 demigods performed prodigies on the earth, some wandering 

 tribe of northern horsemen, more adventurous than their fellows, 



