Introduced into Egypt by the
Hyksos in the sixteenth
century B.C., the
chariot was throughout the New
Kingdom closely associated with the king, who is
constantly shown dominating the field of
battle, the
reins around his waist, firing his bow. Chariots
begin to appear in Egyptian wall reliefs and
paintings from the early 18th dynasty, and are
mentioned as diplomatic gifts in the correspondence
from
el-Amarna. Until the discovery of Tutankhamun's
tomb only two complete vehicles were known - one now
in Florence and another from the tomb of
Yuya and
Tjuyu - together with a miscellaneous array of
chariot fittings and fragments from other tombs in
the
Valley of the Kings and elsewhere. The burial of
Tutankhamun yielded six complete but dismantled
chariots of unparalleled richness and
sophistication, four found at the southeast end of
the Antechamber and two along the north wall of the
Treasury. Each had had its axle sawn through to
enable it to be brought along the narrow corridor
into the tomb, and each had been broken down into
its component parts for compactness when stored.
Thrown about when the tomb was robbed, and roughly
handled when the burial was tidied up, the confused
and precarious heaps into which these parts had been
thrown were a nightmare to untangle. But, after much
delicate preservative work, five of the six chariots
could be reassembled for display in the Cairo
Museum.