The saddle was not used in Egypt ; the Assyrian monuments show decorated saddle-cloths rather than the saddle. The harness of the chariots of Egypt and Assyria are also illustrated on the monuments (see especially Sir J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians revised ed. 1878). The ancient Greeks rode bare-backed as in the Panathenaic frieze of the Par thenon or used a saddle-cloth (417rrcoP, Lat. ephippium; sella as applied to a saddle is quite late). Even the saddle-cloth does not appear to have been in use till the 5th century. A 6th-century vase, found at Daphnae, Lower Egypt (Flinders-Petrie and Mur ray, Tanis, 1888, ii. Pl. xxix.), shows a woman riding astride on a cloth, with fully developed headstall and powerful bit. A black figured sarcophagus, now in the British Museum, from Clazo menae, shows a long pointed epliippium with a chest-strap. These indicate Asiatic influence, for Daphnae was an Ionian and Carian settlement of the 7th century B.c. In Xenophon (/.c.) we find that the saddle-cloth had been adopted by the Athenian cavalry, and from his advice as to the seat to be adopted pads or rolls seem to have been added. There were no stirrups (till the time of the emperor Maurice, A.D. 602), and the rider mounted at a vault or by blocks ; mounting by the spear used as a vaulting pole was also practised as an athletic feat. On a funeral monument of the time
of Nero in the museum at Mainz is the figure of a horseman on a saddle-cloth with something resembling the pommel and cantle of a saddle, but the first saddle proper is found in the so-called column of Theodosius at Constantinople (usually ascribed to the end of the 4th century A.D., though it may be more than zoo years earlier), where two figures are riding on high-peaked saddles rest ing on embroidered saddle-cloths. In mediaeval times the saddle was much like that of the Oriental saddle of to-day with high peaks before and behind. In the military saddle of the 14th and 15th century the high front parts of the saddle were armoured and extended to protect the legs of the rider. The jousting saddle (cf. the example in the Tower of London) becomes almost a box into which the rider is fixed; the high cantle fits round the rider's loins and when charging he lifted himself into practically a stand ing position in the stirrups. The saddle for use on the road or hunting was much like the Arab saddle of to-day, and similar forms are in use in Europe and elsewhere where the British saddle has not been adopted. Women rode astride or on a pillion behind a male rider. The side-saddle is said to date from the end of the I2th century. For the harness of the ancient draught horse see