Wagons of the Steppe Peoples

The sources name wagons for the Huns, the Gaoche, the Göktürks and the Uyghurs. None of them describes how a wagon was made.

The wagons of the Huns

Ammianus Marcellinus writes that nobody among the Huns ploughs a field. They have no fixed abode and wander like fugitives, with wagons in which they live. In the wagons, he says, their wives weave their clothing, sleep with their husbands, bear children and bring them up.^[1] Otto Maenchen-Helfen holds that Ammianus is following the old Greek picture of the Scythians as wagon dwellers. In that picture the wagons, which mostly served to move the tents, were taken for the homes of the nomads.^[2] Ammianus thus made a horde on the move into the ordinary way of Hunnic life.^[2]

Jordanes describes the battle on the Catalaunian plains. On the evening of the first day Attila withdrew behind the barrier of his camp, which he had fortified with wagons.^[3] Priscus, who travelled to Attila’s court, says that the barbarians load rafts on wagons and carry them across marshy ground. He adds that the people who live by the rivers use boats made from a single log.^[4]

No wagon of the Huns has been found. Maenchen-Helfen therefore reasons from graves of other peoples that buried dismantled carts. He regards the wagons that carried the rafts as heavy four-wheeled vehicles. The wagons in Attila’s army, he holds, must have been light, probably two-wheeled wains.^[5] A cart from the fifth mound at Pazyryk in the Altai, a find from an earlier age, had wheels of about 1.5 metres with thirty-four spokes each. It had a raised seat for the driver and a superstructure covered with black felt. The absence of metal parts points to local make.^[6] The Xiongnu graves of Noin Ula held cart parts with Chinese axle caps.^[6]

The same author asks who built the wagons. Many Huns may have been able to make a tent, he says, but only a few could have been cartwrights.^[7] The Hunnic war machine therefore rested on a division of labour in peacetime.^[7]

Ammianus describes the Alans in the same chapter. They dwell in wagons that they cover with rounded canopies of bark and drive across the endless plains.^[8]

The high carts of the Gaoche

The Wei Shu says that the Gaoche lived like the Rouran. They moved with water and grass, wore skins and ate meat, and their cattle and sheep were the same. Only their cart wheels were high and large, and the spokes were very many.^[9] The Chinese name of the people, gaoche, means high carts.^[10] The name may also relate to a Turkic word for circle or hoop, and not only describe the wagons.^[11] Maenchen-Helfen likewise regards the earlier names of the people, among them ti-li and ting-ling, as variants of a Turkic word for wheel.^[12]

The Xin Tang Shu says of the Uyghurs that they customarily rode in high-wheeled carts. In the time of the Wei, it adds, they were called the Gaoche tribes, or Chile, which became Tiele in the mistaken form.^[13] The carts thus link the Uyghurs of the eighth century with the Tiele of the fifth.

The felt carts of the Göktürks

The Sui Shu describes the Shiwei of the north and says that they rode in ox carts and built their huts from reed mats, in the manner of the felt carts of the Göktürks.^[14] The Tongdian repeats the comparison.^[15] The Tongdian copies much of its text from the older histories, so it is not a second witness here. The comparison shows that a felt cart was a known sight to the writers of the Sui histories, and it shows nothing more about the Göktürk vehicle.

In 843 the Tang officer Shi Xiong climbed the wall of Zhenwu and looked over the camp of the Uyghurs.^[16] He saw several dozen felt carts. The people with them wore red and green clothes in the Chinese manner, and his scouts learned that the carts held the tent of the princess.^[16] The felt carts of the Uyghur court of 843 were thus tents on wheels.

In 569 the Roman envoys at the court of Istemi saw wagons drawn up in front of a dwelling over a wide area.^[17] They held silver dishes, bowls and many statues of animals.^[17] Menander calls the Göktürk dwellings skēnē and kalybē. A modern note understands the second word as the round huts of branches that steppe nomads often carried on wagons.^[18] The scene belongs to the embassy of Zemarchos.^[17]

Gaps in the evidence

No source gives the dimensions of a steppe wagon, the wood it was made of or the draught animals of the Göktürk carts. No source names a wheelwright of the Huns, the Gaoche or the Göktürks. Our knowledge of the vehicles rests on short remarks by Chinese, Roman and Byzantine writers, who saw them on the march.

References

^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, p. 31.2.10, p. 385
^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 214
^ Jordanes
^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 83
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 215
^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 216
^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 12
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, p. 31.2.18, p. 391
^ Wei Shu, juan 103
^ Pulleyblank 1990, p. 22,25
^ Pulleyblank 1990, p. 22
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 217
^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
^ Tongdian, juan 200
^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 161
^ a b c Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.3, p. 121
^ Blockley 1985, p. 264

Sources

Ammianus Marcellinus
Jordanes (after Priscus and Ammianus Marcellinus)
Priscus
Wei Shu, juan 103
Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217 (after Jiu Tangshu)
Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
Tongdian, juan 200 (after Sui Shu and Zhou Shu)
Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 161
Menander Protector

Literature

John C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English Translation, vol. III: Books XXVII–XXXI (1939)
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
Edwin G. Pulleyblank, The 'High Carts': A Turkish-Speaking People Before the Türks (1990)
R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)