Umm, they were using scale armor in Egypt as early as 1500, and it was of course very popular with the steppe people (although not always of metal obviously). There's scale armor for charioteers in Syria by about 1400. To quote Albert E. Dien "Scale armor had a long history in the Near East and was almost exclusively the armor of the steppeland nomads." Scale armor had a very long history in the east and the steppes.
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