192 THE ARAB THE HORSE OF THE FUTURE 



That does not look as if before the time of Christ 

 there were no horses in Arabia, nor as if they were 

 not ridden. 



But whether the Arabs had horses before Christ 

 or not is really not material. The horse of which 

 I am writing, now called Arabian, is the Eastern 

 horse, in medieval literature as I have before said, 

 frequently spoken of by that description, and some- 

 times called Barb. The Godolphin Arabian and 

 the Godolphin Barb were two names for the same 

 horse. Yet, by whatever name you call him, his 

 breed was known thousands of years ago — at least 

 7,000 years ago, I believe. 



You find pictures of him thousands of years 

 before Christ, harnessed in chariots, which, by the 

 way, is no proof that he was not ridden. There is 

 a splendid picture of three abreast in a chariot in 

 Professor Sayce's * Races of the Old Testament ' 

 (1893), with heads and forms as beautiful as can 

 be found to-day in the purest Arabian. The author 

 of ' Stones Crying Out ' says that the Assyrian 

 sculptures show that ' their horses were of noble 

 blood, perhaps Arabian,' and are drawn from the 

 finest models. I maintain that those horses cer- 

 tainly were Arabian — that is, that they were of the 

 same grand breed which is now called Arabian. 

 There is a drawing of the head of one in a picture 

 of Sennacherib in his chariot, which is a perfect 

 likeness of the handsomest Arab you could find 

 to-day. 



