"Ox drawn Sea Peoples chariots" Topic

A number of companies sell these, but I'm having trouble visualizing them, and how they might have been used in battle.

I have seen movies of stampeding bison. I can see how it would be terrifying to have large numbers of ox (or bison) drawn chariots coming at you at the run.

I have read about cape buffalo, which many hunters rate as the most dangerous animal in Africa. I understand they can run, they are stubborn, and just plain mean.

Yet I still have trouble envisioning ox drawn chariots as an offensive weapon. Just too much like a farmer's ox cart, plodding along the road.

Does anyone have any information on how they were used in battle? Were they used as an impact sort of weapon, to break up enemy formations? Might they have been some form of mobile fortification? Or perhaps a mobile, raised command platform?

Are there any good books about the Sea Peoples' military, particularly their ox chariots? There is an Osprey, I see. Is that any good?

Grelber

Interesting classification about the ox drawn chariots. These were not battle chariots. They are pictured in several books hauling families rather than only warriors.
So they can be rated as a mob or mass of people. Something to consider. Slow unweilding.

There is almost nothing in the historical record about the Sea Peoples at all, never mind their tactics. The main sources are the temple reliefs on Egyptian structures. These are meant to glorify the Pharaoh & show Egyptian military prowess. So it's propaganda. The degree of accuracy is unknown & unknowable but we can expect some simplifications, some exaggerations & some distortions of truth.

So, as TP wrote, the ox-carts are illustrated carrying civilians & being attacked by Egyptians. Is this all they were – transport?

As an historian, I might end here. As a wargamer, why not explore the options? Could the ox-carts be swift battle chariots? Of course not. BUT could they provide slow moving protection for SP warriors? This is not ridiculous.

I have a unit of 3 such carts in my SP's army.They have archers in them & function like Hussite battle-wagons. BTW the archer troop type is *not* illustrated in the Egyptian reliefs. Could they have existed? It's hard to believe the SPs had no archers so why not a small number?

Given we don't even know what those crested headdresses the Peleset wear are made of (feathers? reeds? strips of leather?) I think my interpretation is plausible. And if you follow orthodoxy strictly, you have Sea Peoples' armies that are all warband. No light troops. No chariots. And no militarised ox-wagons. A bit limiting. A bit boring.

I never imagined them as anything other than transport.

In wargaming terms: objectives or camps. MAYBE mobile infantry, but I would doubt even that.

Our best guess is that the Sea People were whole groups of people migrating, rather than organized military invasions.

There are occasional depictions in the Egyptian reliefs of oxcarts with Sea People warriors in them – one copied at link They may be no more than a "baggage guard", but I think it's this that has suggested the use of "improvised war-wagons".

The Ramessid temple illustrations show them as carts, containing families who are being massacred by the Egyptians. Not combat vehicles, merely vehicles caught up in combat.

I have also always thought about them as transport – the lighter horse-drawn chariots more as missile platforms

An ox is simply any castrated bovine that has been trained to work, so your mileage will vary depending on the bovine.

That being said, I've dealt with and treated a lot of working oxen professionally(don't ask . . .). Other than transport, I'd never let oxen get within a country mile of a battlefield.

Beside, I wouldn't be caught dead standing in an ox-cart in my best armor. It would be like seeing a riot cop on a Segway – the visual just doesn't convey shock and awe.

Lucius' comments are an example of why the TMP community can be so helpful – a myriad of experience and perspective. Thank you for sharing.

Obviously we won't know until someone invents a Time Machine, or at least something that lets us look back in time. That would be really handy. In the meantime the chariots are mentioned enough that they were probably important. You could suppose they merely had logistical uses, but other logistical elements are not mentioned.

One thing I personally think we overlook is the ammo question. A soldier can carry maybe five light spears, or two larger ones. That's a hard limit on what they can do with them. If an ox cart has a driver, and someone with a spear to jab at anyone who gets too close, the spear throwing guy can have a hundred pounds of spears and give his full attention to throwing. He's a carefully chosen guy, a star athlete, he can really throw a spear. And he's got fifty or a hundred of them right there. The enemy troops are packed together both to enhance their effectiveness and to keep them from running away. Roll a couple of carts up and start throwing spears at men without armor and non-metal shields and you're causing a lot of casualties pretty quick. Equally valuable, that mass of men is getting disordered as people try to help wounded friends and try to dodge spears. And there are bodies on the ground. And everyone is looking at those two cars on their left so they can dodge the next incoming spear, so they are not looking forward at the enemy and are paying less attention to their commander.

Sure, the carts are vulnerable, BUT… if one guy rushes one of the carts he becomes the prime target for the spear throwers, and the distance is shorter than to the mass of troops. The commander may try to order a twenty man rush at the carts, and he may even be able to get his men to try it. But you can see that coming and the carts are already turned and poised to rush off when this happens.

Most importantly, they knew all kinds of stuff we don't know. There may have been other applications and tricks that made these clumsy things useful.

As troop management got better the carts became more vulnerable, but luckily horses were invented and faster, nimbler chariots became the standard.

You can carry a lot of arrows on a light chariot, probably five times what you one person could carry on their person. So you can fire rapidly and cause a lot of trouble. Then you can zip to the back and pick up more arrows. So it's not just a mobility thing, it's an ammo thing.

As for stampeding, I'm not sure you can do it with the carts attached.

Thinking outside the square, Andrew! Some great ideas here.
Building & riding in a chariot was speciality work but anyone could utilise an ox-cart. NB it will have to move very slowly.

This is of course speculation. However, you may want to think Boers & wagon-laagers. Those ox-born vehicles were used in battle against the Zulus because they were there & they were effective. And I'm fairly sure the pragmatic Boer didn't care about appearances.

link
(for those who don't want to open – swat team on segeways).

The British in the Peninsula used oxen to draw seige guns.
Oxen are a bit slower but can eat rougher food than horses, haul heavier wagons.

Plenty of examples of oxen in war. Even in the modern era Viet Minh soldiers are using oxen to haul artillery up mountains while fighting the French.

Andrew…. Heroic Machine-gun-spear-throwers in heavy battle carts? Are you a Hollywood script writer?

If your looking for oxen in 15mm Viking Forge has excellent models. I expended quite a lot and came up quite small sadly. Wish I found theirs first.

I'm not sure that LBA infantry would be "closely packed" – in fact, I view LBA infantry as more of swarms. Maybe there were some trained infantry of the period that could operate in a type of 'phalanx' or 'shield wall'.

The problems of LBA/MBA warfare are too many to even start speculating. However, I would argue that the SP used their carts as transports (mainly). Could the ox carts have been used as 'missile platforms' as A. Walters suggests – possibly but unlikely. It appears that the SP were mostly raiders. Were they warriors? No doubt. However, would they have been trained in tactics and were they specialized? Doubtful – again, the problem is that we just don't know enough about the period.

However, it's an interesting concept. My main caveat is that they were facing a chariot army of professionals (the Egyptians under Ramsees II or Menerptah or whomever). We know that the Egyptians defeated the SP on land and sea (admittedly, according to the Egyptians).

I would argue that a chariot with a trained archer would run rings around an ox-drawn chariot and the archer would pick off a javelin thrower at a much greater distance, especially with a compound bow.

However, like I've said in previous posts on various LBA/Trojan War topics – it's a hobby and a few ox-drawn chariots with warriors would look cool on the tabletop!

I really like the idea of the look of ox-carts as part of Horde units.