Proclaimer Blog
The horse and its rider
After the rigours of EMA, Carolyn and I cycled up to the British Museum on Saturday to see the exhibition about the Horse in human history. It was, like all British Museum exhibitions, superbly presented with an excellent audio guide. For me the most fascinating thing was to see just how vital the horse has been to the projection of power in most of human history.
The exhibition begins with a beautifully inlaid wooden box dating from about 4600BC, from Ur (as in Abraham’s original city, only two and a half millennia before him). It included a wonderful series of four scenes of a chariot pulled by donkeys or asses (since horses had not yet come into use), going at increasing speed from left to right (to portray movement) and trampling over enemies. From then, right up to the nineteenth century (and even the start of the twentieth), the ability to ride and to fight on horseback was a potent symbol of the ability to project power. Whether it be the armoured horsemen of the Sasanian/Persian empire or the knights of Medieval Europe, these men were like the fighter pilots or captains of nuclear-armed submarines of their day.
But I was also interested to note what seems to me a significant omission. There was no mention of the bible’s perspective on ‘the horse and its rider’, which is that God has cast them into the sea (Exodus 15). From Egypt at the time of the Exodus, through to Assyria at the time of Hezekiah, and beyond, the bible mocks reliance on ‘the horse and its rider’ and exhorts us to trust in God alone. I would love to have seen some mention of this counter-cultural theme.