Manufacturing Power: Cavalry and the Assyrian State

 by Mary Harrsch © 2025

This small clay figurine of a horse and rider I photographed at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago reflects one of the most consequential military innovations of the ancient Near East: the Assyrian transformation of horseback riding into an organized arm of state warfare.

This Assyrian clay figurine of a horse and rider reflects a major military transformation of the early first millennium BCE. The rider’s face was made using a mold, while the rest of the figure was hand modeled—an efficient method that allowed for mass production and visual standardization. Rather than portraying an individual, the figurine represents a role: the mounted soldier as part of a disciplined, state-controlled cavalry force. Found as a grave good, objects like this show how Assyria’s militarized identity extended beyond the battlefield into everyday beliefs about power, protection, and the afterlife. Photographed at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago by Mary Harrsch.

My research revealed while earlier cultures knew how to ride horses, the Assyrians were the first to institutionalize cavalry as a permanent, tactically integrated component of their army. Beginning in the ninth and eighth centuries BCE, mounted troops were no longer occasional scouts or messengers but regular units supported by state-controlled breeding programs, training systems, and logistical networks. Horses became strategic assets, carefully counted, branded, and redistributed by the crown.

The way this figurine was made mirrors that political reality. The rider’s face was produced using a mold, while the rest of the figure was modeled by hand. This combination allowed for efficient mass production while preserving a basic human form. The result is not an individualized portrait, but a standardized type—the Assyrian rider as a role rather than a person. This reflects a military system that valued discipline, interchangeability, and bureaucratic control over heroic individuality.

This shift had profound political meaning. The Neo-Assyrian Empire defined itself through constant military readiness. Annual campaigns were expected of kings, and success in war was presented as proof of divine favor from the god Aššur. Cavalry offered speed, flexibility, and reach across difficult terrain—qualities essential for maintaining imperial control over vast territories.

These advantages fed directly into Assyrian royal ideology, which emphasized perpetual campaign readiness and divine mandate to impose order. The normalization of cavalry—reflected even in small grave figurines—signals how deeply this military transformation shaped Assyrian identity.

Including a mounted figure in a burial may have expressed loyalty to the state, a desire for protection in the afterlife, or identification with Assyria’s most powerful institution: its army.

In miniature form, this object echoes the same message proclaimed in monumental palace reliefs. Assyrian power rested not only on violence, but on organization, repetition, and the normalization of military identity as a foundation of social and cosmic order.

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