Were horse-drawn chariots already in use in Old Kingdom Egypt?

by Damien F. Mackey “… the problem of proving that the highly advanced civilization of Old Kingdom Egypt did not have wheeled military vehicles a full 580 years after the invention and spread of the tripartite wheel seems to be a very much greater one than that of proving that she did”. My grappling with the very serious problem of an apparent lack of archaeology, of literature, and of architectural reliefs, for the horse and for chariots in ancient Egypt prior to the New Kingdom, can be read in articles of mine such as: Exodus Pharaoh could still gather sufficient horses after the Plagues (3) Exodus Pharaoh could still gather sufficient horses after the Plagues Is the biblical Exodus, pitched in Egypt’s Old (or Middle) Kingdom, one chariot army short of reality? (3) Is the biblical Exodus, pitched in Egypt's Old (or Middle) Kingdom, one chariot army short of reality? Expert Stuart Piggott, as referred to in Renata-Gabriela Tatomir’s 2014 article, “The presence of horse in ancient Egypt and the problem of veracity of the horseshoe magic in the ancient Egyptian folklore and mythology”, may have managed to inject some degree of hope into this extremely difficult pursuit: …. The archaeological data which are presently available (some of which have been available since 1976) seem therefore to seriously undermine the claim that Egypt was without horses until the Hyksos dynasties. The work at Nahal Tillah seems to show that horses were available in the immediate vicinity that is in the northern Negev, very early on in the history of Egypt, while Egyptians were clearly present where these horses were present. This fact made some scholars to opinate that it might be possible that the horse and military chariot were re-introduced to Egypt by the Hyksos. The time between the end of the Old Kingdom and the Hyksos is many centuries, and many things can happen in such a long time. Another hypothesis is that horses in the Old Kingdom might be an exception …. However, the scholars’ debate on the likeliness that based on zooarcheology evidence the presence of horse in Egypt may be even much earlier is a very long one, mainly because an Equus caballus is dated to the native Egyptian fauna of Palaeolithic times. According to Gaillard … the faunal samples comprised a lower molar and an incomplete mandible with P2 in situ from a true horse, «Equus caballus». The scholar points out that the morphology of these specimens compares better with that in mandibular teeth of asses …. As such, they should be included in the wild ass material. Gaillard also figured an upper third molar of a Solutrean horse … which is erroneously interpreted by Churcher … as evidence for a true horse in the Kom Ombo area. As matters stand, the presence of wild horses in the Plain of Kom Ombo during Late Palaeolithic times can be considered unsubstantiated. …. However, another issue arises: is there evidence of chariots and wheels in Zoser's reign and the end of Old Kingdom Egypt? So far, Stuart Piggott seems to be an expert in regard to early wheeled vehicles. Downhere is a quote from his book The Earliest Wheeled Transport from the Atlantic Coast to the Caspian Sea providing some helpful factual background information. The central problem of the earliest wheeled vehicles in Europe from about 3000 BC is that of assessing the respective merits of two hypotheses, that assuming a restricted place and time for an invention subsequently rapidly and widely adopted, and that permitting independent invention of the basic principle of wheeled transport in more than one locality, with subsequent parallel regional development. In specific terms it raises the classic issue of 'diffusion' from an area with a higher degree of technological performance to others with less inventive expertise: the Near East and Neolithic Europe around 3000 BC. The problem is not rendered easier by the fact that we are dealing with wooden structures with a low survival value as archaeological artifacts, helped only by fired clay models among those societies which had a tradition of producing such miniature versions of everyday objects, itself a restricted cultural trait. In the instance of the earliest agricultural communities of south-east Europe from the seventh millennium BC, which did so model humans, animals, houses and even furniture, the absence of vehicle models is at least a suggestive piece of negative evidence for a failure to make this break-through in vehicle technology, despite an efficient agrarian economy and a precocious non-ferrous metallurgy before the beginning of the third millennium. When in that millennium the first European wheels, and depictions and models of wheeled vehicles, appear, radiocarbon dates show us how close in time these are to the comparable evidence for the first appearance in Sumer and Elam of the same invention, and the likelihood of independent discovery in east and west, virtually simultaneously, is sensibly diminished. The thesis of the rapid adoption of a novel piece of transport technology originating in the ancient Near East, as proposed by Childe thirty years ago, still remains the preferable alternative. One of the most recent finds in Western Europe, the wagon from Zilrich with disc wheels of the tripartite construction, and a calibrated radiocarbon date of 3030 BC, greatly strengthens this supposition, for the relatively complex technology is precisely that of the early third millennium wheels of Kish, Ur and Susa. …. The foregoing makes it clear that according to that scholar: 1) there is an intrinsic difficulty with survival of evidence of early wheeled vehicles; 2) wagons with tripartite disk wheels were in existence by 3030 BC; and 3) this technology spread far and fast. Given these three facts, the problem of proving that the highly advanced civilization of Old Kingdom Egypt did not have wheeled military vehicles a full 580 years after the invention and spread of the tripartite wheel seems to be a very much greater one than that of proving that she did. ….