Re: The origins of Syria

Dear Friends,

   P.R.S. (Roger) Moorey in The emergence of the light, horse drawn chariot in the Near East c. 2000-1500 B.C. in World Archaeology, Volume 18 No. 2 Weaponsand Warfare published in 1986 states under subchapter 3. Defensive innovation: scale armour:

     The impact of a major military innovation, its timing and its degree
     may be crudely assessed in the absence of more positive evidence
     by the defensive response that it elicits. Yadin (1963: 84) argued
     that metal scale-armour was developed as a reactio to the extensive
     military use of the chariot as a firing platform for archers armed with
     compound bows, since charioteers or archers did not have a free
     hand to protect themselves with a shield. The appearance of a
     third person as a shield-bearer in a chariot is rare, later usage.
     Similar protection was equally vital for the horses. It is only at Nuzi
     in Eastern Iraq, in the later fifteenth to fourteenth centuries B.C.,
     that textual information and material remains may for the first time
     be combined to yield graphic and decisive illustration of scale
     armor for chariot warriors and their horses (Kendall 1974: 236ff.;
    1981: 208ff.). A coat of scale armour to protect the body, known as
    a siriam/sariam, is also not evident in texts before the fifteenth
    century B.C. (Kendall 1981). This same term, with phonetic
    differences was used in Akkadian, Egyptian, Hebrew and Ugaritic
    thereafter. Scale-armour is the third element, with the light chariot,
    and the composite bow, in the group of innovations long attributed
    to the inventiveness of Hurrian-speaking peoples primarily, in this
    case, on philological grounds

    Now after the long citation is my short questions: Were the Indo-
European Hurrians, and perhaps their Mittani neighbors, in Eastern Iraq and Syria given the name Syrian by their contemporaries because of the scale armour the wore in battle while riding in their chariots? Did their word for scale armour come to be a distinctive identification name for their warrior elites?

    Happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans out there.

Best regards, John Piscopo
http://www.johnpiscoposwords.com
PO Box 137
Western Springs, IL 60558-0137
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