The Horsemen of Israel: Horses and Chariotry in Monarchic Israel (Ninth-Eighth Centuries B.C.E.).

• Author: Dunham, Sally
• Position: Book review

The Horsemen of Israel: Horses and Chariotty in Monarchic Israel (Ninth-Eighth Centuries B.C.E.). By DEBORAH O'DANIEL CANTRELL. History, Archaeology, and Culture of the Levant, vol. 1. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 2011. Pp. xii + 150, illus. $39.50.

This is a very interesting and informative book, written in a clear and engaging style. The author is a lawyer who has also been involved in the horse business as a rider, breeder, trainer, and importer of horses and has competed in barrel racing, jumping, and dressage (see Zevit 2012) and so has a particular interest in and insight into the handling and use of horses. Her purpose in this book is to assess the significance of horses in Israel and Judah from the tenth through seventh centuries B.C.E.

She starts with an analysis of the "battle horse." Here she re-creates for the reader what horses were like in battle and how they may have reacted to the violent sights and sounds. She does this with quotations from ancient texts, as well as analysis of how a horse's sight, hearing, and sense of smell would have affected its behavior in the dangers of battle. While horses are quite sensitive to noises, smells, and unusual sights, they can be de-sensitized through training, examples of which she notes from antiquity (Xenophon) as well as modem times (training of mounted police horses) (p. 20). This is a particularly interesting and convincing "horse's view" of a battle. Cantrell also notes that the use of bells attached to a horse's harness may have functioned as a "white noise" that the horse would hear, while lessening the more violent sounds of the battlefield (p. 22).

With regard to the gender of the "battle-horse," Cantrell suggests that geldings were probably used most often since they have a calmer temperament than stallions and are more easily worked with each other and stabled with mares. She notes that although Assyrian reliefs consistently show stallions pulling battle chariots, this may be for show, since the placement of the genitalia is incorrect (p. 24; on the reliefs the genitalia are farther toward the center of the horse and therefore more visible than in reality). She further notes that neo-Assyrian administrative texts differentiate between breeding stallions and riding horses, and between broodmares and riding mares.

In her discussion of the use of horses in battles, Cantrell emphasizes several aspects: 1) the danger of horses panicking out of control; 2) horses as lethal...