As usual a most informative post.

I inquired because there is a 1971 paper by Welmers, that is being used by Clyde Winters, that argues that the Mande migrated from Egypt because they have saluki dogs (and supposedly these dogs are not found elsewhere in Africa).

Blench (p. 269) states that there were 3 basic types of dog in ancient Egypt; the pariah dog, the greyhound and the mastiff. The greyhound was divided into two types the tesem and the saluki. the tesem being the lean, tall, prick-eared dog found in many wall paintings.

I wanted to check this out. Is tesem the specific name for these greyhounds and distinguished from saluki/slughi?

Winters is the one who claims that "uher" is the name for dog in Egyptian and uses it to claim that it is similar to the word for dog in a number of African languages (actually not very convincing). Is "uher" a word in Egyptian at all and what does it mean?

References

R. Blench 2006 Archaeology, Language, and the African Past new York: Altamira

Wm. E. Welmers. 1971 "Niger-Congo, Mande" in T.A. Sebeok, et al. eds.Linguistics in sub-Saharan Africa (Current Trends in Linguistics, 7), pp. 113-140 The Hague: Mouton

Bernard



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/2007 10:26PM by Tommi Huhtamaki.