The oldest horse-training manual sets out a 214-day programme.

1400 BC · 1993 · apart: 3393 years

Kikkuli of Mitanni wrote it around 1400 BC for Hittite chariot horses; in the 1990s an Australian researcher repeated it with Arabian horses.

◍ Show on the globe

The event

• Battle of Kadesh1274 BC · Kadesh. The armies of Ramesses II and the Hittite king Muwatalli II clashed at Kadesh in perhaps the largest chariot battle ever fought. It ended inconclusively and later led to one of the earliest known peace treaties.

14th century BC · 20th century

More amazing facts

• 1450 BC · 1952 The oldest Greek writing was cracked by an architect and self-taught linguist.
• 1450 BC · 69 BC · 1878 Cleopatra's Needle is almost 1,400 years older than Cleopatra: it was raised under Thutmose III around 1450 BC, and she was born in 69 BC.
• 1400 BC The oldest substantially complete piece of written music is about 3,400 years old: a hymn to the goddess Nikkal, notated in cuneiform on a clay tablet from Ugarit in Syria around 1400 BC.
• 1400 BC Football has a 3,400-year-old ancestor, as even FIFA's president has acknowledged.
• 1370 BC We even know the season when the Egtved Girl was buried in Denmark: summer, 1370 BC. The tree rings of her oak coffin say so, and a yarrow flower had been laid on it.
• 1350 BC · 1963 In ancient Egypt a pregnancy test used grain: a woman urinated on wheat and barley, and if they sprouted, she was pregnant.

All amazing facts (1058) →