Earliest Frame Saddle for Horses

The warriors of the Hittites (about 1200 BCE) used chariots if they were going to fight with the assistance of a horse. Cavalry meant chariots, not men on horseback. Many extant Hittite letters, written from field commanders or vassal kings, request battle chariots. They meant the chariots, the horses, and the drivers. A chariot has greater limitations on rough ground than a mounted horse. So why chariots? Probably the lack of a frame saddle. (Photo at top of Hittite prince lion-hunt scene in Pergamon Museum by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg, Wiki)

Horses in Battles without Saddles

No one had invented saddles that fully supported active fighting from horseback. You need stirrups, for example. That’s the logical answer. Even chariots had limits to the fighting capacity they provided. So, for example, the stronger style of Hittite chariot could carry three men instead of the two of Egyptian chariots. That third guy could hold a shield and protect the driver and the archer/spearman. It was quite an advantage. Expanding the ways of fighting with horses was a major piece of ancient “arms races.”

The scholars I consulted concluded that the Hittites did ride horseback, but only for transportation where they couldn’t ride a chariot. In addition, they didn’t have much in the way of saddles, presumably, but there’s no evidence. A simple pad, bareback? We can’t know at this point. Bridles and bits seem to have come about earlier. But the history of saddles definitely peaks historians’ interest. When did people first create saddles that a warrior could launch weapons from with full force?

Earliest Frame Saddle Currently Discovered

All of this means an early carbon date of 420 A.D. is a big deal for a wooden, leather, and iron frame saddle with stirrups found in Mongolia. It makes it the oldest frame saddle and stirrup. Given the millennium and a half or so from the time of the Hittites I write about, you can see why the scholars are so tentative even about whether the Hittites rode horseback or only in chariots.

Saddles are mostly made of materials like leather and wood that don’t survive well. So there were likely saddles that we will never know about. But this well preserved one from a cave burial in western Mongolia provides, for now, an “earliest” example. The remains were looted and recovered by police in 2015. Context will have been destroyed in that process. The exciting news now has to do with a study that provided accurate dating of the human remains and saddle from what has been called “the cave of the equestrian.”

Further Reading about this stunning frame saddle

Reasearchers concluded, “Our study raises the possibility that the Eastern Steppe played a key role in the early development and spread of the frame saddle and stirrup.” For the full discussion of this “stunningly preserved” piece of history and the background of when horses entered human history, you may enjoy reading LiveScience “Painted saddle found in Mongolian tomb is oldest of its kind.”

Further Reading about an early Near Eastern Bronze Age bit

If you’d like to read about a donkey bit dating to 2700 BCE found in central Israel, you can go to the bottom paragraph in one of my Roundup of Archaeology posts.