Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1891-12-09
THE DOG IN ANCIENT EGYPT.
He Was q Friend, Faithful Servant and
Was Treated Like a Human Being.

In Egypt the dog was friend and
faithful servant He lived in the house
with his master, followed him in his
walks, attended the public ceremonies,
sometimes free, at other thimes held
in leash by a slave or child, or In prince
ly families by favor1te dwarf. At his
meals he had his place marked under
the benches of the guests; as in Greece
and Rome, he was there to dispose of
bones, the fragments of meat and the
pieces of bread that were thrown down,
and in a general way to keep
the dining-room clean. These were
certainly not very refined fashions,
and If our house-dogs had to satisfy
themselves in this way they would be
likely to die of hunger. The ancients
did not feel the delicate tastes and dis
gusts in such matters that we expert
ence; their life presented excessive re-
fnements and rude features of which
we have no idea, side by side. The
house-dog in Egypt was a domestic,
working at his trade, only his trade
was one of those in which we have
ceased to employ him; it may not have
been great thing that he has lost, but
it is in the kitchen or his kennel that
he finishes up his masters dessert
The house dog was shaved, combed
and washed he was sometimes tinted
with Aenna as If he were a woman; he
wore fine collars on his neck, furnished
sometimes with an earthenware clasp
in the shape of bell or flower. Chill
dren played with him, became attached
to him, and the hero of one story, to
whom his fates had predicted at
his birth that he would die of
the bite of dog, willingly confronted
the threatened danger rather than be
separated from the dog which he had
raised. He, of course, had a name, to
of the bat; Akeni, the ferreter;
Khaoubsou, the lamp or star; Soubou,
the strong, and Nahsi. the black.
He is seen with kings as well as with
common persons. Rameses H., during
the earlier years of his reign, was al
ways escorted by a female dog which
was called Anaitiennaktou, or brave as
the goddess Anaitis. A petty king of
the eleventh dynasty, about $500 B. c.,
had five dogs, which he so loved that he
carved their names and engraved their
portraits on his tomb. They were, in
deed blooded animals, whose names
revealed their foreign origin. The finest
of them was called Abaikarou, a faith
full transcription of the word abaikour,
by which the hunting-dog is designated
in many of the Berber dialects.
The shepherds had dogs Of medium
size with pointed ears, like those which
still guard the hocks of upper Egypt
Hunters sought out two or three kinds
Of hounds, some having straight ears
and short tails, and some dropping ears
and long tail, like the slouguis of the
modern Berbers They are to be seen
in many of the tombs springing in pur-
suit of gazelles and antelopes, or run
ming down the hare and the ostrich. A
few pugs, heavy and grotesque like
ours, are represented occasionally,
rather as house dogs than as hunters.
These animals were in considerable
number, and made the ancient Egyp-
tian villages as dangerous at night as
modern villages are. An officer rele-
gated to one of the Delta burgs few
years after the death Of Rameses II.
complained bitterly in their boldness in
letter addressed to one of his chiefs:
when, sometimes" he says, "the
people Of the country meet to drink
Cilician beer and go out to open the
bottles-there are two hundred large
masAffs and three hundred wolf-dogs
waiting all day at the door of my house
every time l go out at nightfall to
take part in the feast 1 am kept out
If have not with me the little wolf
dog Of Nahihou, the royal scribe, who
lodges with me. He saves me from the
other dogs. At whatever time l go, he
goes with me on the street; and when
he barks I run, swinging my clubs and
whips 1t is, in fact, only a pack of
NANCY, high-tailed wolf-dogs prowling
around the cattle-pens. When they
have made their round, the largest
ones in front, in a compact massSas if
in bunch, one would say that it was
the enchantment of some god, flame
which had fixed itself and would not
let CO."
Rowing dogs are less numerous and
less f0rocious now, but they become at
times terrible to strangers. It has
often happened to me, when casually
passing through a village of upper
Egypt about midnight, to be reminded,
when met them, of the bulldog in one
of Dickens novels, "a bitter of man and
killer of children for sport. which
usually lived on the right side of the
street, but also hid itself on the left
side so as to be ready to jump upon the
| first passer-by."
As it il under Tewf1k Pasha, SO it
was In the time of Rameses IL, and the
experience of the present day enables
us to understand exactly what our
scribe meant in the passage have just
quoted.-M. g. Maspers, in La Nature.