THE ADDAX ANTELOPE I 25 



Hassan, though their delineations are but rude and 

 (save for the spiral horns) scarcely recognisable as 

 portraying the present species. The "ram" figured 

 in a certain inscription (facsimile in the Liverpool 

 Museum) is also strangely like an addax with 

 its ruffed shoulders and curling horns. Some 

 have even asserted that the horns borne by the 

 images of various deities and kings in the temple 

 city of Mendes are those of the addax ; the horns 

 being spiral and distinctly annulated. According to 

 Sir Gardner Wilkinson, however, the ram, and not 

 the addax, was associated with the Mendesian figures. 

 One writer even proceeds to draw a parallell between 

 the addax of the Sahara, broad-footed to travel over 

 the sand, and the reindeer of Lapland, broad-footed 

 to travel over the snow, observing that the addax, 

 like the Lapp reindeer, was kept in herds by the 

 early Egyptians — an unlikely story! He adds, more- 

 ever, that the leucoryx— always a rare antelope — was 

 also herded by the Egyptians! The "herds" were 

 probably flocks of sheep. Many years ago Dr. 

 Shaw attempted to show that the addax was the 

 pygarg of Deuteronomy. 



The modern history of the addax presents quite 

 an orderly sequence of facts and dates, linking up 

 the early years of zoological progress with those of 

 recent times in a manner hardly paralleled for com- 

 pleteness by that of any other antelope. Thus in 

 18 16, de Blainville first described the animal from 



