8io 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



benches of the guests ; as in Greece and Rome, lie was there to 

 dispose of the 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 fash- 

 ions, 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 disgusts in such matters that we experi- 

 ence ; their life presented excessive refinements 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 a great thing that he has lost, but it is in the kitchen or his 

 kennel that he finishes up his master's dessert. 



The house-dog was shaved, combed, and washed ; he was some- 

 times tinted with henna as if he were a woman ; he wore fine col- 

 lars on his neck, furnished sometimes with an earthenware clasp 

 in the shape of a bell or a flower. Children 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 a dog, willingly confronted the threatened danger rather than 

 be separated from the dog which he had raised. He, of course, 

 had a name, to which he answered : Si-togai, the son of the bat ; 

 Akeni, the ferreter ; Khaoabsou, the lamp or star ; Soubou, the 



Figs. 1, 2, and 3. Dogs from the Egyptian Monuments. 



Fig. 1, one of the favorite dogs of King Antef, from his funereal stele. Fig. 2, bitch depicted 

 in a Theban tomb of the twentieth dynasty. Fig. 3, hound from the tomb of Anna at 

 Thebes (eighteenth dynasty ), from a drawing by M. Boussac. 



strong ; and Nahsi, the black. He is seen with kings as well as- 

 with common persons. Rameses II, during the earlier years of 

 his reign, was always escorted by a female dog which was called 

 AnaitiennaMou, or brave as the goddess Anai'tis. A petty king 

 of the eleventh dynasty, about 3,300 b. c, had five dogs which 

 he loved so much that he carved their names and engraved their 

 portraits on his tomb They were, indeed, blooded animals whose 

 names revealed their foreign origin. The finest one of them 

 (Fig. 1) was called Abaikarou, a faithful transcription of the word 



