The wheel in African history and beyond: wheel technology in the kingdoms of Kush and Dahomey. (Patreon)

Published:

2023-12-24 09:37:00

Imported:

2026-06

Content

At the turn of the 20th century, transportation across much of the world was dominated by wheeled vehicles, from the trains that cut across urban and rural landscapes to the cars and bicycles which carried passengers along busy streets. For many scholars living at the time, the wheel seemed to be the greatest invention of mankind.

But as historians begun to uncover the use of the wheel in the pre-industrial era, a different picture emerged, one where wheel technology seems to have only been momentarily useful in many parts of the ancient world until it was superseded by other technologies before it was suddenly re-adopted in the early industrial era.

While colonial scholarship latched onto to the presumed absence of the wheel in some societies as evidence of technological backwardness, recent research has shown that the wheeled transport was rare across most of the world from the 5th century to the 19th century, and the reason for the wheel's decline was due to its lower efficiency relative to other technologies in transport and warfare.

This article explores the history of the wheel in African kingdoms of Kush and Dahomey inorder to highlight the wheel's presence in Africa, while placing it in the context of the gradual disappearance of the wheel across the ancient world and its re-emergence in the industrial era.

Images of the wheel in the kingdom of Kush and Dahomey: a royal chariot from the temple of the sun in Meroe, Sudan, ca. 1st century A.D, A royal carriage from Porto-Novo, Benin, 1908.

Background on the earliest appearance of the wheel and the emergence of the chariot.

Despite of the immense public interest in the history of the wheel, few researchers have approached the subject on a global scope across various time periods. Only Richard W. Bulliet has provided a global overview of wheel technology in his celebrated work; The Camel and the Wheel published in 1975, and his 2016 follow-up; The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions. But as is often the case with these 'global histories' Bulliet says nothing about the wheel's history in Africa outside the Maghreb, I will thus rely on both of his works for broad strokes regarding the wheel in the rest of the world, and provide additional research on the wheel in Kush and Dahomey.

The earliest representation of a wheeled vehicles is dated to between 3,950 and 3,650 BC, and was made in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine. The discovery of several figurines of wheeled vehicles associated with the various bronze-age cultures of central and eastern Europe, indicates that the earliest wheels were added on mine-cars used in copper mining. These were fixed wheel-sets where both wheels rotated together as they are rigidly mounted on an axle.

(The wheel: inventions and reinventions pg 53-69)

Evidence for the earliest rotating wheels comes from southern Ukraine between 3,000-2,000 BC, where burial mounds contain the remains of four-wheeled wagons. These wheels were larger than their earlier peers, they had protruding naves that indicate each wheel's rotation was independent of the other, and could maneuver curved paths slightly better than their fixed-wheel predecessors. Later iterations added spokes to the wheel to make them lighter.

(The wheel: inventions and reinventions pg 71-80)

After 2,000 BC, most wheel-users opted for two-wheeled carts instead of four-wheeled wagons. While the latter were only useful in mines and probably as mobile homes, the former could be used in agriculture and local trade. While the wheel in Europe was used in copper mining and housing the steppe nomads, the usage of the wheel in the Middle East followed a different trajectory that reached its apex with the war chariot

(The wheel: inventions and reinventions pg 86-91)

A wheeled bull figurine from the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture of western Ukraine, ca 3950-3650 B.C, Museum of Historical Cultural Heritage PLATAR, Kiev

The first wheels in the Near eastern civilizations appeared in Mesopotamia between the 4th-3rd millennium BC and were mostly four-wheeled wagons and two-wheeled carts, likely used in ceremonial processions and were in limited use in warfare. The differences in the usage of wheels in Mesopotamia versus in Europe may indicate that the wheel spread from the latter to the former as an idea rather than as a technology. Later innovations and cross-cultural exchanges led to the emergence of the two-wheeled chariot pulled by horses around 2,000BC.

(The wheel: inventions pg 100-115)

The charioteer combined the symbolic and ceremonial attributes of the Near-eastern deities and elites, with the pre-existing military systems of archery, to produce a formidable fighting force that spread across the Mediterranean basin to eastern Asia.

While the ancient Egyptians utilised potter's wheels, they did not adopt chariots until around 1600 B.C after both the horse and the vehicle was introduced by the Hyksos who'd occupied lower Egypt since 1730BC. Egyptian chariots were lighter and more numerous than those used in the eastern Mediterranean, and came into action in units, to support the infantry or in pursuit of the enemy. These chariots appear frequently in New kingdom Egyptian art often associated with royal propaganda, processions and battle scenes, but rarely in civil contexts

(The horse, iron and the camel pg 23-26)

The siege of Dapur on a mural in Ramesses II's temple in Thebes, Egypt, ca. 1269

The wheels of Kush: Chariot warfare in the kingdoms of Kerma, Napata and Meroe. (1600BC-360AD)

The spread of the chariot into the Nubian kingdom of Kerma (2500-1500BC) appears to have been contemporaneous with its spread across Egypt. The rulers of Kerma were in close contact with the Hyksos against the Thebean kingdom of Egypt in their middle, and official couriers could hardly have carried out their duties without horse-drawn chariots.

At least one elaborate Nubian rock drawing associated with a Kerma victory in the area of Nag Kolorodna depicts a male figure on a frame-chariot, shown from above with both wheels and axle visible, has one foot on the axle and kneels on the tree between the horses. The Kushite wheeled vehicle is shown with eight-spoke wheels, unlike other early Egyptian and Aegean chariots which have four, combined with unique axe held by the charioteer and the bovines indicates a probable separate development of a war wagon in Kush.

(The Oxford handbook of ancient Nubia pg 186-191, 196 n.41)

A Kushite victory from Lower Nubia at Nag Kolorodna

Four more inscriptions of chariots from lower Nubia come from the sites of Khor Malik, Kosha, and Geddi-Sabu. These are all simple representations that depict the chariot as viewed from above, two wheels with no spokes or 4 spokes, two animals and a rider between or in front of them. Unlike the well executed Nag Kolorodna drawing that can be dated on stylistic grounds given its similarity to Kerma art, these remain undated but were likely also made during the Kerma period in lower nubia from 1600-1500BC.

(The horse, iron and the camel pg 29-32)

Rock art chariots from lower Nubia: 1, Nag Kolorodna: 2. Khor Malik ; 3 and 6 (unidentified location), 4, Kosha, 5, Geddi-Sabu.

After the fall of Kerma and the Hyksos to New kingdom Egypt, the chariot continued to be prominently associated with Nubia, with the Egyptian viceroy of Kush often serving as “driver of the king’s chariot.” Procession and tribute scenes of Nubians delivering tribute to the Egyptians frequently include horses and royal figures riding chariots. Additionally, victory scenes of Egyptian campaigns into Nubia and scenes of deities travelling to Nubia also depict figures riding chariots, often pulled by horses as well as other bovines.

(Between two worlds pg 173-179, The Oxford handbook of ancient Nubia pg 333, 378, The horse, iron and the camel pg 25-26)

Nubians bringing tribute, Tomb of Huy, Viceroy of Kush under Tutankhamen (ca 1341- 1323 BC)

Between the 10th-8th century BC, the kingdom of Kush re-emerged around Napata and conquered Egypt with an army which may have largely consisted of charioteers. The use of chariots is firmly attested across the 25th dynasty realms in Kush, Egypt and Asia. Kushite chariots were engaged in 701 B.C. in Mesopotamia against the Assyrians in the battle of Altaga won by Sennacherib. His annals concerning his third campaign state precisely: "have captured alive with my own hands three teams of chariots from Egyprtian princes. together with some chariots of king Melulha (Kush)". Kushite horses were also imported in the thousands by the Assyrians specifically for their use in chariotry .

(Of Kings and Horses pg 128-129)

The horse burials in the Kushite royal necropolis of el-Kurru were identified as two-horse chariot teams of the Kings; Piankhy, Shabaka, Shabakata, and Tanwetamani. Reliefs from the Amun Temple at Jebel Barkal built by King Piye and the Amun temple at Sanam built by king Taharqa, include representations of chariots drawn by horses and mules. The chariots have as many as six wheels, and all the wheels are shown with 8 spokes just like the Kerma rock drawing more than 1,000 years older. A half-millennium later, at Meroë, the lower part of a relief from the temple of the Sun shows a harness-chariot with 8-spoked wheels.

(Of Kings and Horses pg 130, The horse, iron and the camel pg 27-29)

Reliefs from the temple of Sanam, showing vehicles drawn by mules.

Chariot from the Meroe. temple of the Sun

The non-military use of wheeled technology in ancient and medieval Nubia.

There are two major fields where the wheel was adopted across the old world; in irrigation and in pottery making, neither of which seems to have had a single independent origin but was likely invented multiple times in different regions. The potter's wheel was used for the first time in Nubian contexts between the end of the New kingdom and the rise of the Napatan kingdom of Kush. The oldest of these Nubian wheel-thrown pots comes from el-Kurru where the 25th dynasty kings emerged. The vessels were often decorated, some with Egyptian-style paintings representing mourners and other funerary figures. But these were few and made for a specific funerary ritual afterwhich they were broken.

(Studien zum antiken Sudan pg 20-28)

Wheel-made pottery would increase in production during the Napatan and Meroitic period, but was produced alongside handmade pottery, and both appear to have been equally regarded by their users. As Laszlo Torok writes; "The high quality of the ambitiously decorated and widely distributed handmade wares as well as the repertory of the vessel forms and decorative motifs speak, however, for a cultural rather than qualitative distinction between the production of hand-made and wheel-made finewares. The vessel forms and decoration patterns of the wheel-turned finewares were influenced, though not completely determined, by Egyptian ceramics. By contrast, the production of handmade decorated wares continued a timeless native tradition and only rarely absorbed influences from Egypt."

(Hellenizing art in ancient Nubia pg 245-246)

The wheel-turned wares of the Napatan period originate from mass-producing manufactures, a tradition which continued during the Meroitic period where such pottery occurs in large quantities both at settlement and cemetery sites across the kingdom. Wheel-turned pottery disappeared after the fall of Meroe around 360AD, and the collapse of the centralized workshops where it was mass-produced. The use of the potter's wheel would be revived in the medieval era and would continue until the end of the Christian kingdoms of Makuria and Alodia.

(The kingdom of Kush pg 353, 407, 495, Oxford handbook of ancient Nubia pg 743-744)

Painted pottery from the late meroitic period 1st-3rd century AD, Brooklyn museum, Penn museum. Meroitic potters were known for the production of very fine, wheel-made pottery with walls so thin, that they are known as “eggshell ware”.

In the Late Meroitic period (ca. 3rd century AD) the saqia waterwheel was introduced in Lower Nubia, allowing for the possibility of extending the area of land under cultivation and for developing new cropping regimes. The saqia waterwheel represented an advance in the capability of water-lifting equipment over the balance well or the Archimedes screw. However, it wasn't spread across the kingdom, especially not in the heartland of Kush where the availability of extensive arable land and a low population density obviates the need for artificial irrigation.

(Oxford handbook of ancient Nubia pg 716, Studien zum antiken Sudan pg 300)

Illustration of a saqia water wheel in Sudan

Bullocks drawing a large wheel, Sudan, ca. 1906, Bristol Archives

The spread and decline of wheel technology across the Mediterranean world and the Sahara during the classical era: from the Roman wagon to the Arab camel.

Its likely during the Napatan-Meroitic era that the horse and the chariot spread widely across the Sahara upto the edge of the Tichitt complex in southern Mauritania. Representations of chariots abound in the rugged terrain of southern and central Algeria, as well as in southern Morocco and southern Libya. Most of them remain undated but are estimated to have been made between the late 1st millennium BC to the mid 1st millennium AD.

They are often associated with the semi-sedentary oasis dwellers of the Sahara and the few complex societies of the era such as the Garamantes of Libya. However, the region of Tibesti which is between the Nile valley and the Fezzan, contains no representations of chariots indicating that all wheeled vehicles west of the Nile were derived from a different line of transmission from the mediterreanean coast.

(Urbanization and state formation pg 55, 88, 256-257, 309

Painted chariots from the Tassili-n-Ajjer

The use of chariots for the transport of people in these Saharan sites was very limited by their structure as by the topography, and their use for the transport of material was equally unlikely. Most chariots in Saharan rock art depict hunting scenes but less frequently in battle scenes like in the Nile. The use of chariots for individual sport (which includes hunting) seems to be more likely. These were simple devices, brought by their owners or made locally, were of a nature to obtain a sporting pleasure for the owners, and likely indicated their high social status.

(The horse, iron and the camel pg 35-60)

The ubiquity of wheeled vehicles across the Sahara coincides with the expansion of the ancient states of Carthage, Persia and the Roman empire, with their extensive use of chariots and other war technologies, their monumental road systems, and abundant accounts of wheeled traffic across the mediterreanean world. Roman roads were especially built to transport armies, but they also increased civilian traffic.

Yet despite plentiful evidence for cart ruts in ancient roman roads, the use of wheeled wagons in non-military contexts appears to be sparse. The inhabitants of Roman Egypt for example, often used camels and donkeys for transport, while wagons were in limited use on farms and were in the decline by the 1st century. In Roman north-Africa, wheeled vehicles were used in both transport and farmwork but were in decline by the 2nd century. In Roman Syria, wheeled transport competed with the emerging carravan trade with camels and the latter gradually displaced the former by the 3rd century.

(The camel and the wheel pg 16-21)

Roman city of Timgad, Algeria, 2nd century AD, "Note how the paving slabs are set at 45 degrees to the line of the road so that the ruts caused by wheeled traffic do not enlarge the joints between them".

The reason for this general displacement of the wheeled vehicles with the camel had a lot to do with the latter's efficiency. Roman oxcarts traveled only six to nine miles a day compared to fifteen to twenty for a pack camel. The camel was also far cheaper to purchase and maintain than an oxcart of similar capacity, and required fewer drivers. Lastly, the building of roads was subsidized by the imperial government for military purposes, the civilian traders who used these roads were only taking advantage of this benefit without paying for its full costs, once the revenue for building the roads declined, the road system collapsed and the cost of using wheeled transport became uneconomical.

(The camel and the wheel pg 24-25)

But the biggest contributor to the wheel's usage in transport was its dependence on the antiquated military system of the charioter. Beginning in the eighth century BC, the chariot was slowly eclipsed by the adoption of mounted cavalry as the main striking force first by the Assyrian empire and eventually by virtually every state in the known world. Societies in the eastern mediterreanean were using both the horse and the camel in warfare during antiquity, and by the time of the first caliphate in the 7th century, the mounted soldier and the camel-carravan had obviated the need for wheeled vehicles in warfare and transport.

(The camel and the wheel pg 25, 96-110)

Disappearance of wheeled transport from Europe to China during the middle ages and its re-emergence in western Europe in the early modern period.

Across the Near East, where two-wheeled carts and four-wheeled battle wagons came into use around 3,000 BC, the civilian economy as well as the military turned away from wheeled vehicles as chariots and oxcarts all but disappeared during the first five centuries of the common era. This was largely due to the greater efficiency that could be achieved by pack animals than from ox-carts, but also due to the improved efficiency of the mounted warrior riding on horseback or camelback.

As one European visitor to Persia in 1833 observed; "the roads then becoming impracticable to wheel carriages, we were obliged to perform the rest of the journey on horseback in Persian saddles. . . . I saw no wheel-carriages of any kind in Persia."

(The wheel: inventions and reinventions pg 125-124, 43)

Similary in China, four-wheeled chariots were adopted around 1,200BC but were largely displaced by the mounted warrior around 300B.C. After that, chariots used by noblemen faded out gradually, leaving the chinese wheel-barrow as the most visible wheeled vehicle in medieval china until the 19th century. The Japanese on the other hand, utilised wheeled vehicles much less than even the Chinese, with only limited evidence of oxcarts until the 19th century. As two European visitors to Japan in the 1870s observed; "Everything is transported from and into the interior by horses and bullocks.” “I have seen no wheeled vehicles except the [hand-pulled] jinrikisha and there are very few of these."

(The wheel: inventions and reinventions pg 43-48)

Conditions outside Europe differed little from those within, except for the general absence elsewhere of four-wheeled vehicles in the rest of the world. In post-Roman Europe, as urban street grids deteriorated, and carts and wagons were commonly unloaded at city gates with their goods being distributed within the city by porters or pack animals. Ceremonial processions in wagons and chariot racing continued but were attimes considered demeaning. The usage of wheeled vehicles was confined to transporting elite women to reinforce the repressive culture of exclusion. As such, representations of European passenger wagons, usually covered for privacy, almost always show the passengers to be female.

(The wheel: inventions and reinventions pg 127-146)

But even in the society most associated with wheeled vehicles such as western Europe, paintings of rural scenes before the 18th century feature far more pack and riding animals than they do carts, wagons, and carriages. Until the early modern period, four wheeled vehicles remained rare across much of the world including europe, with only two-wheeled vehicles being used almost exclusively by noblewomen, the infirm, and the elderly, while Noblemen rode horses as a sign of their elite warrior status, and eminent churchmen rode mules.

As one account from 1871 observes;

"Kings and knights considered all kinds of carriages as effeminate machines, and scorned to be seen within them . . . As late as the reign of Francis I [r. 1515–1547], there were only three coaches in Paris."

(The wheel inventions and reinventions 42, 148)

But by the 17th century, four-wheel carriages rose in popularity often as a marker of prestige for the European elites who used them both on the continent and in their American colonies. So much so that carriages were being built faster than paved roads to handle their traffic, which were not only few but poorly maintained even in London and Washington, indicating that they served a more cultural than economic/practical function.

The increase in the usage of carriages after the 17th century wasn't due to improving technology, which had remained virtually unchanged, nor the improvement of road networks, which still required carriages to travel with straw to soak up the mud, but changes in European culture towards the use of carriages for men. This change had a lot to do with the increased adoption and innovation of gunpowder technology which displaced the armored knight, and thus transport by horses and mules.

(The wheel: inventions and reinventions pg 148-160)

The carriage popularity ushered in a period of change during which the streets of European cities slowly acquired better paving, straighter alignment, greater width, and freedom from impediments. The absence of similar changes in non-Western lands, where difficult-to-steer four-wheeled vehicles were rare or unknown, led European travelers to represent the cities they visited there as having narrow, dark, and pestilential mazes of streets and lanes that were out of step with the "modern world".

Wheeled transport in the kingdom of Dahomey and Allada from the 17th-20th century.

The kingdom of Dahomey, and its predecessor, the kingdom of Allada, were the first of many west African states that came into contact with the carriage as a new form of wheeled transport. The first of these vehicles arrived in 1670, when the French presented to the king of Allada with a gilded carriage. This carriage gift created a tradition in the kingdom's royal court that would be continued in the later centuries by the kings of Dahomey.

A European visitor to Dahomey's capital Abomey in 1772 saw two coaches, each drawn by twelve men, in a ceremonial procession. In the Late 18th century, king Agonglo (1789-1797) is said to have acquired a carriage which was still preserved at Abomey in the 1870s. In the 19th century, various European visitors saw large numbers of wheeled vehicles of various sizes displayed in ceremonial processions there. These included a twenty-feet long model of a trading ship mounted on wheels; a huge wooden elephant on wheels; and wheeled sculptures of horses and warriors.

(Wheeled transport in pre-colonial west Africa pg 252-253)

Many of these wheeled vehicles were imported, but some were noted to be of local manufacture. Forbes reports seeing in 1850 "a glasscoach, the handiwork of Hoo-ton-gee, a native artist-a square with four large windows, on wheels", and also 'a wheeled-chair with a huge bird before it, on wheels of Dahomey make, and a Dahoman-made chair on wheels, covered with handsome country cloth". Burton in 1864 likewise noted carriages "of home, or native manufacture", including "a blue-green shandridan, with two short flagstaffs attached to the front". Skertchly in 1871 saw "a dark green coach, evidently of native manufacture".

(Wheeled transport in pre-colonial west Africa pg 253)

Adjiki , king of Porto - Novo , in his carriage in the middle of his ministers and his court, Fortier

While there aren't many accounts of roads in Dahomey, Burton noted that the 6-7 mile road between Abomey and the royal town of Cana (also a royal residence), was kept carefully clear of grass every two months 'for the convenience of the royal carriages. The road between Cana and Abomey was described in many European accounts who compared it favorably with the best of their own roads in Europe. Estimates of the royal road's width varied, but the most common guess was 20 to 30 meters, it was composed of local soil and pebbles, and was lined with tall, shady trees.

Yet despite Burton's claim, there is no evidence that the king ever rode in any of the Dahomey carriages, as he was always in a hammock like most Dahomean elites, and rarely on horseback. Unsurprisingly, the European guests made negative remarks about the Dahomean's tendency to walk in single files on a broad road which could support four coaches. Evidently however, this difference in road use in Dahomey versus western Europe was informed not by economic/practical advantages of wheeled transport, but cultural differences over the symbolic importance of coaches in elite display of wealth.

(Dahomey's royal road pg 11-24)

Dahomey also employed the wheel in gun-carriages, a particulary niche military application of the wheel that was also attested in other parts of Africa including Lagos, Bornu, Zinder, Abeoukta and Tewodros' Ethiopia. The making of gun-carriages in Bornu appears to have been part of a long-standing tradition of importing and employing servile European gunmen to make and handle Bornu's firearms since the 16th century. By the 19th century, explorer accounts indicate that this role was taken over by visiting merchants often Arab, but also Europeans.

Dahomey on the other hand, made their gun carriages locally, and are known to have used them fairly regulary in battle although they didn't prove effective. Similary in Ethiopia, the emperor Tewodros detained foreign craftsmen to make modern weapons, which included a massive gun carriage called sebastopol, which comprised a large cannon that was placed on wheels on which were attached five cables, each pulled by fifty men. Besides this monster of a gun were 14 mortars and cannons on wheels dragged by people and animals, which required the construction of a road at great expense. Ultimately however, the cannons didn't prove decisive in the battle between Tewodros and the British, who defeated the emperor's army in 1868.

(Wheeled transport in pre-colonial west Africa pg 256-257, Manufacturing Emperor Tewodros’s cannon pg 77-80)

makeshift workshop for Bornu's blacksmiths (on the right) and a visiting carpenter, standing next to wheeled carriage, ca. 1826. NYPL

Tewodros II soliders dragging the great mortar "Sebastopol". ca. 1868, Ethiopia

Conclusion: the (in) significance of the wheel in African history and beyond.

The notion that wheels are by themselves indicators of societal sophistication is a product of 20th century presentism influenced by the ubiquity of trains and cars in modern transportation, rather than critical analysis of pre-industrial transport technology.

The facile presumption that wheels were invented because they were economically efficient and were thereafter widely adopted is contradicted by the widespread disappearance of wheeled vehicles across virtually all of the Old world. The supposed advantages of adopting wheeled transport were by no means self-evident, even to the kingdoms of Kush and Dahomey where there's extensive evidence for the usage of the wheel.

All across the world, from Pre-Colombian America, to the Sahel, to the Arabian peninsular, to East Asia, pack animals and porters remained the most efficient method of transport well into the early 20th century.

In Europe, it was only a few centuries after it had been re-popularized in the 17th century that the carriage revolution reached an unexpected climax with the idea of mounting a steam engine on wheels. "Only in Europe, and in a few of European nations’ overseas colonies, did four-wheeled mine-cars and carriages, along with the iron rails and paved roads that evolved with them, provide the infrastructure that was needed to make the transition from horses and oxen to steam power and gasoline engines".