EARLY HISTORY OF THE HORSE. 3 



was used for the purposes of war. The noble animal which Job described 

 belonged to the cavalry service of that time. 



The same author assigns to him another task. Job had been previously- 

 speaking of the ostrich and of the hunting of that bird, and he says, " What 

 time she lifteth herself on high,"— springs from the ground as she runs,—" she 

 scorneth the horse and his rider *." 



In less than twenty years after this, we are told that Pharaoh " took 600 chosen 

 chariots and all the horses and chariots of Egypt, and all the horsemen, and 

 pursued the Israelites to the Red Sea t. " Here we seem to have three distinct 

 classes of horses, the chosen chariot horse, the more ordinary chariots, and the 

 cavalry. In fact, the power and value of the horse were now fully appreciated. 

 Buxtorff says that the word "parash," or "horseman," is derived from the 

 Hebrew root to prick or spur, and that the rider derived his name from the use 

 of the spur. It would seem that riding was at this period not only a familiar 

 exercise, but had attained a degree of perfection not generally imagined ±. 



In what country the horse was first domesticated there are no records certainly 

 to determine. The most ancient of all histories is silent as to his existence in 

 the time of Abraham; although it can hardly be imagined that this noble animal 

 was not used when Nimrod founded the Babylonish monarchy, full 200 hundred 

 years before the birth of Abraham — or Semiramis, 150 years afterwards, reigned 

 over the same country — or the Shepherd Kings, a little while before that period, 

 conquered Egypt. It is natural to imagine that the domestication of the horse 

 was coeval with the establishment of civilisation. 



The author was disposed, in a former edition of this work, to trace the first 

 domestication of the horse to Egypt ; but farther consideration has induced him 

 to adopt the opinion of Colonel Hamilton Smith, that it took place in Central 

 Asia, and perhaps nearly simultaneously in the several regions where the wild 

 animals of the horse form existed. From the higher valleys of the Oxus and 

 from Cashmere the knowledge of his usefulness seems to have radiated to 

 China, India, and Egypt §. 



The original horse of the southern and western countries came from the 

 north-eastern part of Asia, the domicile of those who escaped from the ravages 

 of the Flood. Indeed, without the aid of the horse, the advancement of colonisa- 

 tion would have been exceedingly slow. 



Colonel Smith is perfectly correct when he says that " to ancient Egypt we 

 appear to be indebted for the first systematic attention to reviving and improving 

 the breeds of horses ; numerous carved or outlined pictures represent steeds whose 

 symmetry, beauty, and colour attest that they are designed from high-bred 

 types." Grooms also are represented as " rubbing their joints and sedulously 

 attending to their comfort on every proper occasion." The horses, in all those 

 tasteful works of art, are represented as either being loose or harnessed to 

 chariots ; no mounted cavalry are to be seen until a comparatively late period. 

 It is the same with the bas-reliefs of Persepolis. On the frieze, however, of the 

 temple of Minerva, in the Acropolis of Athens, built many years before the 

 destruction of Persepolis, there were numerous figures of men on horseback, but 

 not one of a horse harnessed to a chariot. The following cut was faithfully copied 

 from the frieze of that temple. This is a singular fact, and might lead to a very 

 wrong conclusion — namely, that the chariot was in common use in Persia, and 

 not known in Greece ; whereas the Persians were far more decidedly a nation of 

 horsemen than the Greeks, but chariots were occasionally used by them in theii 

 solemn festivals in honour of their divinities, and therefore naturally found on 



* Job xxxix. 18. t Exod. xiv. 9. X Berenger's History of Horsemanship, i. 11. 



§ Naturalist's Library, vol. xii. p. 76. 



b2 



