Egyption: circa 1350 BC
The domesticated horse had arrived in the countries of the eastern Mediterranean at
some time in the second millennium, brought there from Asia during one of the warlike
migrations, and had been largely responsible for the overthrow of the Egyptian Empire by
the Hyksos in about 1500 bc. We may suppose that these horses, 'the tanks of the
ancient world', were more formidable than beautiful. But quite early they were evolved
from instruments of aggression into objects of pride. On reliefs of the Ramassid period
we can see that the Egyptians, having taken them over from their conquerors, had
cultivated their beauty as well as their strength, and we can find the same feelings in the
Assyrian reliefs from 1000 bc. A pride in the beauty of horses, which appears repeatedly
in the Homeric poems, was to continue through the ancient world, and survive till it
became the root of the word 'chivalry'. The Dauphin's speech about his horse in
Shakespeare's Henry V, although partly intended as satire, expresses the feelings of
most young men of spirit (and means) up to 1914.
When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he
touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes ... It is a
beast for Perseus: he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never
appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him: he is indeed a
horse; and all other jades you may call beasts.
The point is that the artists treatment of horses down the ages says more about the
human response to animals than about the horse itself.
