A 2000-year-old tablet inscribed with the rules for horse racing has been discovered in the Beyşehir district of Konya Province, central Anatolia, Turkey. According to Selçuk University history professor Dr. Hasan Bahar, this is the only tablet ever found that details rules of the sport that had a massive following in the Greek, Roman and Byzantine eras. Other sources mention horse racing, but don’t get into the rules.
“There are horseracing rules on the tablet. It says that if a horse comes in first place in a race it cannot participate in other races, while another horse of the winning horse’s owner also cannot enter another race. In this way, others were given a chance to win. This was a beautiful rule, showing that unlike races in the modern world, races back then were based on gentlemanly conduct,” Bahar also said.
That may be overstating the case somewhat. Ancient equestrian sports had many of the same features of modern ones — multiple heats and races in a day, careful breeding of horses, publically published bloodlines, on and off-track betting — including scandals like doping and contractual disputes. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were often brutal, resulting in injury and death to horses and drivers/jockeys. Then fandom was very far from gentlemanly as well. Supporters of the four factiones of the chariot race (Reds, Blues, Whites, and Greens) regularly faced off against each other in violent riots. The Nika Riots of 532 A.D. lasted a week, killed tens of thousands and burned half of Constantinople to the ground.
The tablet is part of a monument known as “Horse Rock” to the locals after the relief of a horse carved into the rockface. It was a funerary monument dedicated to Lukuyanus, a beloved jockey who was likely buried in the “grave room”, a small chamber next to the horse relief with a columned entrance. The grave room is devoid of remains now so we don’t know much about Lukuyanus other than what’s on the inscription. It opens: “Lukuyanus The Warrior, Died Before Getting Married. He is Our Hero.”
Since he died before marriage, he was likely a young man when he met his end, but he lived long enough and had enough success on the track to earn him dedicated fans who built him such a handsome and on-topic final resting place. Fan-funded funerary monuments for sports heroes have proved rich sources of historical information before, thanks to their elaborate inscriptions of victory statistics and laments about referee error leading to death.
The monument is near the site of an ancient hippodrome in mountains that were sacred to the Hittites. The Romans may even have built a hippodrome on this spot to bless and be blessed by the Hittites’ holy hills.
