John:
> The Horse Twins - the Dioskouri - associated with night (death) and
> day (immortality) appear as twin horses, bearers of the chariot of
> the light of the sun. [...]
> Clearly this would seem to be associated with the idea of the spoked
> chariot and the war-leader tanist idea. Since this form of warfare
> only came about in the period after 2,000 BCE it is hardly universal
> within PIE, yet we find Ymir in Germanic Myth and Tanists and horse
> burials in Irish legends.
>
> Can anyone cast some "light" on when the "solar chariot" appeared in
> Indo-European mythology?
I have come to thinking that the horse was an apt symbolism for the
sun/day or the moon/night if you think of these orbs as being "swift
(*ohku-) as a horse (*ekwo-)". So there would be no need originally for a
chariot because the imagery is zoomorphic. Over time, the "swift horse"
imagery would be replaced with a humanoid deity being driven by horses.
Another perspective to be aware of is the "sacrificer-sacrificed" concept
which is symbolized by the horns (sacrificed) and double-axe (sacrificer)
in numerous artifacts. The connection with the horse lies in a possible
association of the sun with the double-axe and the moon with the horns.
Thus the sun, being the double-axe, is also the sacrificer. The moon,
being the horns, is the sacrificed. Afterall, remember Odin? Remember
Horus? The whole sacrificed eye motif symbolized the reflective moon whose
light seemed "sacrificed" in comparison to the sun. So, since the horse is
yet another animal that can be ritualistically sacrificed, the moon could
be easily symbolized as a horse. On the other hand, if we think of the sun
as "slain" every year (symbolic of the return of winter), then we might be
apt to consider the _sun_ as the sacrificed or even both sun and moon if
we imagine a rivalry for domination between days and nights throughout the
year.
Perhaps you should be asking when "horses" became religious icons but we
know that this stems from the neolithic at the very least. Yet the chariot
could not be an Indo-European concept unless we can actually prove that
chariots existed in the fifth millenium BCE.
= gLeN