From Ritual Wheels to War Machines: The Rise of Chariots from Tell Agrab to Kadesh

 by Mary Harrsch © 2026

This reproduction of a model wheeled vehicle from Tell Agrab that I photographed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago is dated to around 2600 BCE. My research revealed while often described loosely as an early “chariot,” its form and archaeological context strongly indicate that it represents a ceremonial or symbolic conveyance rather than a functional military vehicle.

Model of a ceremonial wheeled vehicle from Tell Agrab (c. 2600 BCE), that I photographed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago. This Early Dynastic model reflects symbolic elite and ritual use, foreshadowing the rise of militarized chariots in the Near East.

The model depicts a solid-wheeled vehicle drawn by multiple non-equids, likely onagers or equid hybrids. Such vehicles could carry loads or serve in ritual and ceremonial contexts, but they were too heavy and slow for battlefield maneuvering. Moreover, controlling multiple powerful animals—especially for rapid maneuvers or coordinated tactics—would have been extremely difficult, even if the vehicle was lightly loaded.

Instead, as such vehicles were adapted to military use, two-horse teams predominated. Horses could sustain rapid charges and long-distance movement, whereas onagers and hybrids were slower and more temperamental. Coordinated chariot tactics, like flanking or retreating under pressure, required animals responsive to reins and voice commands.

Even in much later periods, such as Roman antiquity, professional charioteers were required to manage a four-horse quadriga usually on carefully prepared tracks. That this Early Dynastic model shows a single driver controlling several powerful non-equid animals suggests a focus on ritualized display, procession, or elite symbolism associated with divine movement, royal ideology, and controlled ceremonial motion, rather than practical transport or warfare. There is no evidence from Egypt, Hittite, Mitanni, or Mesopotamian sources that onagers, donkeys, or equid hybrids were used in actual combat.

The true technological revolution that made chariots militarily viable—the spoked wheel—did not originate in Mesopotamia. It first appeared among the Sintashta Culture (c. 2100–1800 BCE) located in the southern Urals and northern Kazakhstan, on the Eurasian stepp in the late third to early second millennium BCE, where lighter vehicles, improved traction, and increasingly sophisticated horse control were developed to meet the demands of long-distance mobility and open landscapes.

From the steppe, these innovations spread southward through cultural exchange rather than direct conquest, reaching Hurrian populations in northern Mesopotamia and Syria. Initially adopted as elite or prestige conveyances, spoked-wheel vehicles became fully militarized under the kingdom of Mitanni. During this period, horse training was formalized, chariot crews professionalized, and chariot warfare integrated into state military strategy.

In its earliest military applications, the Mitanni kingdom deployed spoked-wheel chariots primarily against neighboring Hurrian-speaking city-states in the upper Tigris–Euphrates region. These polities relied largely on infantry formations and heavy ox-drawn wagons, which were slow, cumbersome, and poorly suited to open-field maneuvering. Mitanni chariots, by contrast, were light, fast, and crewed by trained teams of drivers and archers, providing a decisive tactical advantage. In engagements across the fertile river valleys and rolling plains of northern Mesopotamia, the mobility of these vehicles allowed Mitanni forces to outflank infantry lines, strike quickly, and withdraw before local forces could respond effectively.

Rather than seeking outright destruction, the Mitanni often used chariot forces to enforce vassalage, extract tribute, and assert dominance over Hurrian elites, establishing political and military hegemony without necessarily obliterating local communities. Over time, the prominence of Mitanni chariots prompted some Hurrian city-states to experiment with similar vehicles, gradually militarizing their own transport technologies in response to the threat. This early period demonstrates that, for the Mitanni, the chariot was as much a tool of political control and prestige as a weapon of war, establishing patterns of elite dominance that would later influence the broader Near Eastern world.

Once Mitanni demonstrated the strategic effectiveness of chariot forces, neighboring powers—including the Hittites, Egyptians, and Mesopotamian states—were compelled to respond. In Egypt, exposure to the Hyksos’ spoked-wheel chariots during the Second Intermediate Period had already introduced the technology, but the Egyptians initially used chariots primarily for prestige, reconnaissance, and elite display rather than fully militarized operations. Observing Mitanni and later Hittite successes, Egypt accelerated the systematization of chariot training, crew organization, and battlefield integration, transforming chariotry from a symbol of status into a decisive military instrument. Across the eastern Mediterranean and Near East, chariotry was adopted not merely for its technological sophistication but as a strategic necessity, becoming a central feature of Late Bronze Age warfare, diplomacy, and elite identity.

Beyond the well-known battles of Megiddo and Kadesh, chariots played a decisive role in numerous campaigns across the Levant during the Late Bronze Age. Egyptian forces first encountered the tactical potential of chariots during the early 18th Dynasty campaigns against Hurrian-aligned or Mitanni-influenced polities in southern Syria and northern Canaan (c. 1550–1500 BCE). These light, fast vehicles outmaneuvered infantry formations and cumbersome ox-drawn wagons, serving both for reconnaissance, raiding, and intimidation as well as for establishing Egyptian authority over vassal states.

Following this, Egyptian armies deployed chariots against Canaanite city-states in the Beth-Shan region (c. 15th–14th century BCE), where infantry-heavy polities and fortified settlements relied on slow-moving wagons. The mobility of chariots enabled rapid strikes against multiple targets, compelling tribute and reinforcing Egyptian control over strategic northern routes.

By the mid-14th century BCE, campaigns against Amurru and Aleppo further showcased the offensive potential of chariots. Elite chariot crews executed rapid strikes, encircled cities, and enforced vassalage across dispersed fortified settlements, foreshadowing the larger, more famous battles to come.

Throughout the Late Bronze Age, chariots were also widely used by Hittite, Mitanni, and Egyptian forces in smaller-scale raids and skirmishes, projecting power across trade routes, supporting allied city-states, and intimidating rivals. In these operations, chariots provided speed, maneuverability, and shock force that allowed relatively small, elite units to dominate infantry-heavy armies. Their repeated success in both raids and pitched battles established the chariot as a decisive instrument of warfare, culminating in iconic engagements like Megiddo and Kadesh while shaping political and military dynamics across the Levant.

Viewed in a long-term perspective, the development of the chariot illustrates a gradual transformation from symbolic conveyance to battlefield instrument. The Early Dynastic model from Tell Agrab reflects an initial phase in which wheeled vehicles were primarily ritualized, ceremonial, and emblematic of elite or divine authority, rather than functional weapons. Centuries later, the Mitanni kingdom harnessed the spoked-wheel chariot to establish military dominance over neighboring Hurrian city-states, exploiting mobility and trained crews to outmatch infantry and heavy ox-drawn wagons. Observing this success, the Hittites and Assyrians adopted and adapted chariotry, integrating it into professional armies with coordinated tactics and standardized crews. The Egyptians, although exposed to chariots in the Levant as early as the early 16th century BCE, initially used them for prestige, reconnaissance, and elite display; only in the mid-14th century BCE, confronted with Hittite chariot forces, did Egypt fully systematize chariot training and integrate it into battlefield strategy. Across these cultures, the chariot evolved from a symbol of control and status into a transformative tool of warfare, reshaping the political, military, and cultural landscapes of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean.

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The Last Flight of the Ba: Reimagining the Afterlife at the End of Antiquity

by Mary Harrsch © 2026 

This Nubian ba-bird statue (Ballana Cemetery B, Tomb 245; ca. 225–300 CE) that I photographed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago belongs to the final phase of a mortuary concept whose origins lie more than two thousand years earlier in ancient Egypt. My research revealed its presence in Nubia—and its sudden disappearance shortly thereafter—offers a striking case study in cultural transmission, adaptation, and rupture.

Sandstone Ba-bird statue from Ballana Cemetery B, tomb 245, Meroitic Phase IIIB-IV (225-300 CE) photographed at the Institute of the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago by Mary Harrsch

The ba first emerges in the Old Kingdom (3rd millennium BCE) as one component of the Egyptian conception of personhood. Initially textual and closely associated with royal and divine vitality, the ba represented mobility, individuality, and the capacity to move between the worlds of the living and the dead. By the Middle Kingdom, it acquired its canonical iconographic form as a human-headed bird, a visualization that stabilized during the New Kingdom and became ubiquitous in funerary papyri and tomb decoration. In this context, the ba was shown leaving the tomb by day and returning to reunite with the body, underscoring the continued importance of corporeal preservation.

From the Late Period onward, Egyptian theology increasingly treated the ba as part of a more integrated and abstract soul concept. In Roman-period Egypt, the ba did not disappear, but its visual prominence declined. While it continued to appear in hieroglyphic and Demotic texts, temple reliefs, and small-scale funerary objects such as amulets and shrouds, it was often absent from the dominant imagery of Roman-style coffins and mummy portraits, which emphasized individual likeness and social identity over explicit depictions of afterlife mechanics. The ba remained theologically intact, but visually implicit rather than central.

In Nubia, however, the trajectory diverged. Egyptian mortuary concepts had been selectively adopted since the New Kingdom and Napatan periods, but during the Meroitic and post-Meroitic phases they were reworked within a distinctly Nubian elite ideology. In cemeteries such as Ballana and Qustul (ca. 250–350 CE), the ba was not merely depicted but fully materialized as a three-dimensional stone statue placed within monumental tumulus tombs. These sculptures likely functioned as permanent anchors for the deceased’s spiritual essence, particularly in a funerary tradition that did not replicate Egyptian mummification practices in full. At precisely the moment when Roman Egypt was reducing the visual role of the ba, Nubia was giving it one of its most emphatic and sculptural expressions.

This tradition ended abruptly. By the mid–4th century CE, with the collapse of Meroitic political structures and a rapid transformation in burial customs, ba statues disappear entirely from the Nubian archaeological record. There is no evidence for their survival or reinterpretation in later X-Group, Makurian, or Christian Nubian contexts. Unlike in Egypt, where the ba was absorbed into evolving religious frameworks, in Nubia the concept appears to have been abandoned wholesale once the elite ideology that sustained it collapsed.

The Ballana ba-bird thus represents not a late survival of an Egyptian idea, but the closing chapter of a long and complex history: a concept born in Old Kingdom theology, reshaped through centuries of Egyptian religious thought, monumentalized in Nubia, and then brought to an abrupt end in the political and religious realignments of Late Antiquity.

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Did the Julii Have Ties to Picenum? Evidence, Coincidence, and Possibility

 by Mary Harrsch © 2025

A fair-complexioned dictator, a conquered Adriatic people, and a Roman family myth invite a closer look

I was reading an article about the ancient Piceni people of the Italian peninsula that noted they may have had relatively light hair and eyes, reflecting the broad range of physical variation attested among Iron Age populations in central Italy. (https://greekreporter.com/.../dna-analysis-piceni-people.../) Julius Caesar himself is described by ancient biographers as fair-complexioned, which prompted me to explore—cautiously—the possibility that some branch of the gens Julia may have had connections to Picenum.

Detail of the Battle of Tullus Hostilius against the Veientes and Fidenates that occurred in one of Rome's early expansionist wars as portrayed between 1597-1601 by Giuseppe Cesari aka Cavalier d'Arpino that I photographed at the Capitoline Museum in Rome.

Plutarch, in his Life of Caesar, describes Caesar as λευκός (leukos), a term commonly translated as “fair” or “pale,” likely referring to his complexion and health rather than implying ethnic origin. Suetonius likewise describes Caesar as candidus. These descriptors are consistent but imprecise, and on their own they tell us little about ancestry. Still, they serve as a reminder that physical variation across ancient Italy was considerable and not confined to rigid regional or ethnic boundaries.

The Piceni were a distinct Italic people who inhabited the Adriatic coast of central Italy in a region known as Picenum (modern Marche and northern Abruzzo). Archaeological and genetic studies indicate that they shared a broadly similar genetic history with other Central Italian Iron Age populations, rather than representing a discrete migration from northern Europe. At the same time, Picenum occupied a strategically important position within Rome’s expanding sphere of influence, and its incorporation into the Roman state in the third century BCE created new opportunities for integration, alliance, and elite mobility.

The Julii were among the oldest patrician families at Rome. Their securely attested prominence begins in the late third century BCE during the Second Punic War, when Sextus Julius Caesar served as praetor in 208 BCE. His father is generally identified as Lucius Julius, who apparently did not yet use the cognomen Caesar, and his grandfather is thought to have been Lucius Julius Libo, consul in 267 BCE. Later Julian tradition famously claimed descent from Alba Longa and the goddess Venus—an origin story best understood as ideological and political rather than historical, particularly given its usefulness in the late Republic.

It is chronologically noteworthy that Lucius Julius Libo’s consulship follows relatively soon after Rome’s annexation of Picenum, completed after the capture of Asculum by Publius Sempronius Sophus. While there is no evidence that the Julii originated in Picenum, Roman expansion into central Italy often involved complex patterns of patronage, marriage alliances, land acquisition, and the incorporation of regional elites. Any such connections—especially those transmitted through maternal lines or client relationships—would be unlikely to appear in later, streamlined patrician genealogies.

The scholarly connection between Libo and Gaius Julius Caesar remains speculative, but it is interesting that the cognomen Libo is commonly interpreted as referring to a “sprinkler” or libation-pourer, probably derived from ritual functions associated with sacrifice. Generations later, Gaius Julius Caesar was appointed flamen dialis, high priest of Jupiter, whose primary duties centered on daily sacrifices and libations to maintain the favor of the chief god. While this parallel cannot be treated as evidence of hereditary priesthood or continuous ritual identity, it may reflect a long-standing familial association with religious prestige. Roman priestly offices were not hereditary in a strict sense, but they were often associated with particular patrician lineages over time.

Taken together, these observations do not establish a Picene origin for the Julii. However, they do suggest that limited or indirect connections to Picenum—through alliances, property, or regional networks formed during Rome’s consolidation of Italy—are historically plausible. Roman aristocratic identity was shaped as much by selective memory and myth-making as by lived social reality, and later origin narratives often obscured earlier regional entanglements. In that context, the absence of explicit evidence should caution against firm conclusions in either direction, leaving room for hypotheses that acknowledge both the constraints of our sources and the complexity of elite mobility in Republican Italy.

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Harnessing AI in Humanities Research: Ensuring Authentic Insight Despite Fabricated Citations and Model Bias

by Mary Harrsch © 2025

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in scholarly practice, its role within the humanities requires both methodological clarity and critical scrutiny. This paper presents a practical, multi-agent workflow for integrating generative AI into historical research while maintaining rigorous academic standards. Drawing on the author’s use of DeepSeek for factual retrieval, ChatGPT for dialogic interpretation and narrative synthesis, and ClaudeAI for structural review, the study demonstrates how different models can function as complementary counterparts—mirroring the distributed expertise of peer review.

AI-generated image of the Roman general Belisarius battling a Vandal Warrior in North Africa created with Adobe Firefly. The original image was then verified for historical accuracy using Anthropic's ClaudeAI. Corrections were made using Photoshop and its Generative Fill feature.

Through case studies—including the development of a quantitative framework for assessing household wealth in Pompeii, the reconstruction of post-catastrophe cultural cycles in Mesoamerica, and the reinterpretation of ancient Mediterranean artifacts—the paper illustrates how iterative questioning enables AI to operate as an intellectual partner rather than a passive search tool. The analysis also highlights the risks inherent in relying on opaque training models, such as citation fabrication, semantic drift, and uncritical reinforcement of user assumptions.

To mitigate these challenges, the paper outlines verification protocols grounded in cross-checking with authoritative databases such as WorldCat, Google Scholar, and JSTOR, and discusses the use of generative image tools (Adobe Firefly, DALL·E) to create historically informed visualizations while maintaining ethical and evidentiary standards. Ultimately, the study argues that AI can significantly amplify humanistic inquiry—expanding interdisciplinary reach, accelerating interpretive insight, and supporting the construction of deeper historical understanding—provided scholars remain vigilant stewards of evidence, provenance, and context.

You can view and/or download the full text here:

https://zenodo.org/records/18089948

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Shimmering Spirits of an Emerging Empire: Goldwork from the Rise of the Achaemenids

 by Mary Harrsch ©2025

I photographed this extraordinary gold pendant—now in the collections of the Princeton University Art Museum but on loan to The Field Museum in Chicago—and was immediately struck by its intricate, world of animals and sacred symbols. The pendant's surface is alive with detail: a radiant bird spreads its wings at the top, while two powerful goats rear up on either side of a stylized tree of life. Even the lower register is packed with sinuous forms, ending in delicate dangling leaf-like elements that would have shimmered with every movement.

Gold pendant with goats, bird, and apotropaic mask, late 7th to early 6th century, Western Iran (?), Princeton University Art Museum. Photographed by the author.

Dated to the late 7th–early 6th century BCE, this piece has no recorded find spot, but its imagery speaks volumes. The pairing of a sacred tree with flanking goats is a deeply rooted symbol in Western Iranian and early Achaemenid art, appearing on seals, metalwork, and elite ornaments from the region during the rise of the Persian Empire. The bird above—part guardian, part emblem of divine presence—echoes motifs used by artisans working in the orbit of Median and early Achaemenid courts.

The Tree of Life and Master of Animals motifs, which would later become powerful symbols of Achaemenid imperial authority, are not Persian inventions but inheritances from far older civilizations.

The Tree of Life, first appearing in Mesopotamian art of the 4th millennium BCE during the Uruk period, symbolized fertility, eternal life, and a cosmic link between heaven and earth, often depicted with flanking animals.

The Master of Animals motif, with a probable Neolithic precursor at Çatalhöyük around 6000 BCE, was standardized in Mesopotamia as a heroic figure subduing beasts, representing the triumph of order over chaos and elite dominion over nature.

The Achaemenid Empire (c. 550–330 BCE) masterfully adopted and adapted these ancient, widespread symbols. They reinterpreted the Tree of Life, frequently using the date palm or cedar, to signify royal power and divine favor bestowed upon the king. Simultaneously, they depicted their monarchs in the classic "Master" pose on seals and reliefs, visually asserting the Persian king's role as the central, divinely-sanctioned controller of all worldly forces, thus embedding their new dynasty within a timeless, Near Eastern tradition of sacred kingship.

At the bottom of the pendant, a frontal, mask-like face gazes outward. Its large staring eyes and flowing tendrils give it a Medusa-like presence, but it does not depict a Greek Gorgon Instead, it belongs to a shared ancient Near Eastern tradition of apotropaic masks. These guardian visages were meant to ward off danger—functionally much like the gorgoneia of Greek art—even though they arose from different mythologies.

The pendant's breathtaking craftsmanship displays the inclusion of fine granulation and beaded filigree, tiny gold spheres and wires arranged with astonishing precision. It reflects a technical mastery typical of luxury workshops active in western Iran during this transitional era, just as Achaemenid visual language was beginning to crystallize.

Although its original owner remains unknown, this pendant captures the spirit of a developing cosmology—where sacred creatures, royal symbols, protective spirits, and shimmering gold announced status, belief, and connection to emerging imperial power.

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