Courtesy Melropolitan Museum of Art, N. Y. 

 Egyptian hunting dogs represented on a royal monument found at Thebes, dating from the eleventh dynasty, 

 about 2100 B.C. The stela shows King Horus accompanied by one attendant and five of his dogs. The dogs are 

 of a southern race for they have Berber names inscribed in hieroglyphs above their figures. In three cases a transla- 

 tion of the foreign name into Egyptian is written vertically before the dog's breast 



greyhound. From this may be inferred that 

 the ancient Assyrians had no relation with 

 the later inhabitants of Anau, and that their 

 large hunting dogs with drooping ears, not 

 distantly related to the modern St. Bernard, 

 were of different origin from those which we 

 find in central Asia and in Egypt. On the 

 other hand, the interesting fact that the Anau 

 tjrpe of dog is found in ancient Egypt tends 

 to confirm the current opinion that the 

 primitive inhabitants of the Nile valley mi- 

 grated from central Asia into northwest 

 Africa by way of the Red Sea, and brought 

 with them this dog as well as the long-horned 

 cattle, which are undoubtedly of Asiatic 

 origin. 



There are found in ancient Egj^ptian monu- 

 ments, and also among mummified remains, 

 numerous indications of an erect-eared, short- 

 muzzled, smooth-haired dog, which, in the 

 opinion of experts, "seems to correspond well 

 with the Anau dog," a subspecies which has 

 received the distinctive name of Canis 

 familiaris matris optimoe} Through com- 



mercial intercourse this type was carried 

 from Egypt into ancient Greece, and from 

 the Balkan region it spread into Austria and 

 central Europe during the early historical 

 period. The so-called Canis molossus of the 

 ancients, and also the modern St. Bernard, 

 seem to have been derived from that domesti- 

 cation in western Asia to which the powerful 

 mastiff-like Ass3Tian hunting dogs belonged, 

 such as we find represented in the monu- 

 ments, and examples of which were presented 

 to the Macedonian conqueror. 



Besides the Anau type of dog the primitive 

 Egyptian possessed a huge coursing hound 

 with drooping ears, used in the chase of large 

 animals. From what early domestication 

 this canine race was derived is uncertain, 

 though it may have come from India as a 

 modified descendant of the Tibetan hound. 

 Indian effigies of the latter date back to the 

 second millennium before our era, but, in 

 Egypt, hunting scenes showing the lop-eared 

 sight-hound have come down to us from the 

 earliest dynasties. This creature appears to 



1 Duerst, J. Ulrich. Animal Remains from Ihe 

 Excavations of Anau. Carnegie Inst. Wash., Pub. 73, 

 1908, p. 352. See also Keller, Conrad, Sludien iiber die 

 Hausliere der Miltelmeer-Inseln. Nouv. Mem. Soc. 

 Helvet. Sci. Nat., vol. 46, 1911. On the ancestry of 



the St. Bernard see an article by H. Kraemer in Globus 

 for 1904, Bd. 85. On early Egyptian canine races, see 

 Hilzheimer, Max, Beiirag zur Kennlnis der nordafri- 

 kanische Schackale, etc. Zootogica, Bd. 20, Heft 53, 

 1908. 



405 



