152 The Wild Elephant. 



races who inhabited the valley of the Nile, it is observ- 

 able that the elephant is nowhere to be found amongst 

 the animals figured on the monuments of ancient Egypt, 

 whilst the camelopard, the lion, and even the hippopota- 

 mus are represented. And although in later times the 

 knowledge of the art of training appears to have existed 

 under the Ptolemies, and on the southern shores of the 

 Mediterranean, it admits of no doubt that it was com- 

 municated by the more accomplished natives of India 

 who had settled there. ^ 



Another favourite doctrine of the earlier visitors to 

 the East seems to me to be equally fallacious ; Pyrard, 

 Bernier, Phillipe, Thevenot, and other travellers in 

 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, proclaimed the 

 superiority of the elephant of Ceylon, in size, strength, 

 and sagacity, above those of all other parts of India ; ^ 



' See Schlegel's Essay on the Ele- figured in the sculptures of Nineveh is 



phant and the Sphynx, Classical your- universally as wild, not domesticated. 



nal, No. 1.x. Although the trained " This is merely a reiteration of the 



elephant nowhere appears upon the statement of .i^Slian, who ascribes to 



monuments of the Egyptians, the animal the elephants of Taprobane a vast 



was not unknown to them, and ivory superiority in size, strength, and in- 



and elephants are figured on the walls telligence, above those of continental 



of Thebes and Karnac amongst the India: Kal 01 Se'ye i-Tjo-icoTat cAe'c^oi'Tes 



spoils of Thothmes III. and the tmv r)TTeipioTu>v aAKi/moTcpoi re Trjv 



tribute paid to Rameses I. The Island pioinqv Kal fxiC'^ov; ISeiv eitrt, Kal Bvfxoao- 



of Elephantine, in the Nile, near (jxarepoi. Se iravTa ndvrri KpivowTO nv. 



Assouan (Syene) is styled in hiero- — .fll^LiAN, Z>e Nat. Atiim. lib. xvi. 



glyphical writing "The Land of the cap. xviii. 



Elephant ;" but as it is a mere rock, it .iElian also, in the same chapter, 



probably owes its designation to its states the fact of the shipment of ele- 



form. See Sir Gardner Wilkinson's phants in large boats from Ceylon to 



Ancient Egyptians, vol. i. pi. iv. ; vol. the opposite continent of India, for sale 



V. p. 176. Above the first cataract of to the king of Kalinga ; so that the 



the Nile are two small islands, each export from Manaar, described in a 



bearing the name of Phylse ;— quaere, former passage, has been going on 



is the derivation of this word at all apparently without interruption since 



connected with the Arabic term Jil? the time of the Romans. 

 See ante, p. 4, note. The elephant 



