bernard Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 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.

With all due respect to Blench, I suspect he's confusing the Pharaoh Hound with the tesem, Egyptian: /Tsm/, which as Dawn (Khazar-khum) noted, is also of the greyhound persuasion. But it's not the same as a saluki, which was introduced into Egypt during the New Kingdom, some 1000 year later.





and



There are a number of sites online which state the prick-eared dog is the saluki, but when you look at even a smooth-haired saluki (as opposed to its more cocker-spaniel counterpart, the "feathered" saluki), you see it doesn't have the "prick ears" that the earliest depictions of dogs in ancient Egypt has, but rather flopped down ears, or as Lansing calls them "lop ears":


Smooth Saluki


Feathered Saluki

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

Yes, as I understand it, and according to Tooley and Lansing:

Tooley:

"In the art of the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom dogs became an increasingly popular motif on stelae and in tomb scenes. For instance, stelae from the Gebelein area, belonging to Nubian mercenaries, often depict dogs and of course there is the famous Hound Stela of Wah-ankh Intef I1 from El-Tarif. The nomarchs' tombs at Beni Hasan depict a variety of different breeds, including: (a) pointed-eared and curly tailed dogs (/Tsm/); (b) pointed-eared and straight-tailed dogs; (c) flat-eared and curly tailed dogs [probably the Saluki or Slughi-KGG]; (d) Dachshund dogs. These dogs are often seen in hunting and battle settings and the majority of them are shown wearing collars. Those depicted with the tomb owner tend not to wear collars and may be watch-dogs or pets. Unfortunately, the remains of the animal buried in this coffin were not saved, so precise identification is impossible. It is tempting to suggest that, since Garstang understood the remains to be those of a jackal, it was in fact a /Tsm/-dog." (p. 74)

Lansing, in reference to this object:



"Two breeds of hunting dogs predominate among those pictured in ancient Egypt and both occur among the earliest documents the slate and ivory carvings of the Predynastic period. One type is prick-eared and is often shown with a tightly curled tail(*). The other is lop-eared and has an extended tail. The first seems to have been the more popular during the Old Kingdom. In the New Kingdom the lop-eared hound was distinctly the favorite. Among the
tribute brought from Nubia in the tomb of Rekh-mi-Re(**), there is a famous picture of a pack of these hounds which indicates how highly they were valued. Similar hunting dogs are to be seen accompanying Tut-'ankh-Amun in the chase(***). The newly acquired ivory is an excellent representation of this breed. It should probably be dated in the latter part of the XVIII Dynasty.

These lop-eared hounds are the ancient forerunners of the present-day greyhounds, bred for speed in the chase then as they are now. The modern species most closely allied to it is the Saluki breed, long prized in the Near East and recently imported into this country. One of these Salukis was judged the best hound in last year's Westminster dog show." (p. 12)

*


**

***

There is also a genetic difference between the Saluki and the Slughi dog, which did not know myself, See this report online, if that is any assistance to you.

> 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?

Considering it's Winters we're talking about, perhaps you'd better ask HIM to give you the Egyptian transcription, if he has one, as I see no word in ancient Egypt that comes close to "uher" which means anything to do with a dog or hound.

According to Hannig (1995: 208b) and the Wb I: 346, the closest you will have is the term /whrt/, "female hound/bitch", but it is "nur in Personnamen belegt" (used only in personal names), so no help there, since it's NOT used as a designation for any specific dog breed or even "dog" , but as an element of a personal name. There is no Egyptian term of /whr/ for 'hound, dog', which probably means /whrt/likely was a foreign term, and not an Egyptian one.

/Tsm/, and its feminine version, /Tsm.t/ are the generic names the ancient Egyptians gave for a 'greyhound like dog'. The usual glyphs determinative for dog (E14) has 4 versions known in glyph rendering, but all are of the prick-eared variety of dog with tall legs - this tends to argue that this was the type of dog first encountered and domesticated by the Egyptians, while the Saluki and other breeds came into Egypt much later than the Old Kingdom.

There's also a good caveat to recall about trying to determine the "breed" of dogs from their representations, as Wapnish and Hesse (1993) noted in their analysis of dogs buried at Ashkelon over centuries:

"Saluki and greyhound type dogs are not the only kinds represented in Egyptian art. A recent book on dog breeds names four similar modern breeds-the Greyhound, Saluki, Pharaoh hound, and Ibizan hound that it says not only appear in Egyptian reliefs and painting, but that originated there as well (Caras 1985). In fact what is truly remarkable is the great diversity of types to be found.

In the tombs at Beni Hasan (XIIth dynasty, 2000-1800 BCE), dogs of many sizes, with various head shapes, coat color, tail length and carriage, limb proportions, chest depth, and neck length, are depicted. Beni Hasan is only the best known of any number of examples of this diversity. One early authority expressed a widely held belief when he wrote: 'In Egypt dogs were very much as they are to-day and doubtlessly were kept pure...It is significant that definite types of dogs are depicted over and over again in the Tombs not only of one period, but in those separated by great numbers of years. These we can, therefore, consider native breeds' (Ash 1927, reissue 1972:49). Egyptian art is reputedly some of the best in the ancient world with respect to the accuracy of animal representations. But do these images represent 'breeds'?" (Wapnish and Hesse 1993: 65)

Reference:

Houlihan, P. 1996. The Animal World of the Pharaohs. London: Thames and Hudson.

Lansing, A. 1941. An XVIII Dynasty Saluki Hound. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 36/1, Part 1. (Jan., 1941):10-12.

Tooley, A.M.J. 1988. Coffin of a Dog from Beni Hasan. JEA 74: 207-211.

Wapnish, P and B. Hesse. 1993. Pampered Pooches or Plain Pariahs? The Ashkelon Dog Burials. The Biblical Archaeologist 56/2 (June 1993): 55-80.

You may also wish to refer to:

Arnold, D. An Egyptian Bestiary. Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 52/4 [[i]An Egyptian Bestiary[/i]] (Spring, 1995): 1;7-64.

Bénédite, G. 1918. The Carnarvon Ivory (Continued). JEA 5/4. (Oct. 1918): 225-241. (Describing the dogs portrayed on a predynastic knife handle in comparison with other examples of such handles.)

Wolley, C. L. Excavations at Tell el-Amarna. JEA 8/1 (April 1922): 48-82(Page 81 refers to finds at the "royal kennels" at Amarna, referring to the bones as those of "greyhounds.").

HTH.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg

Doctoral Candidate
Oriental Institute
Doctoral Programme in Oriental Studies [Egyptology]
Oxford University
Oxford, United Kingdom





Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2007 10:39AM by Katherine Griffis-Greenberg.