CHAPTER III. 



EARLY DISTRIBUTION OF HORSES. 



First evidences of horses in Egypt about 1700 B.C. Supported by Egyptian 

 records and history The Patriarch Job had no horses Solomon's great 

 cavalry force organized Arabia as described by Strabo at the beginning of 

 our era No horses then in Arabia Constantius sends two hundred 

 Cappadocian horses into Arabia A.D. 356 Arabia the last country to be 

 supplied with horses The ancient Phoenician merchants and their colonies 

 Hannibal's cavalry forces in the Punic Wars Distant ramifications of 

 Phoenician trade and colonization Commerce reached as far as Britain and 

 the Baltic Probable source of Britain's earliest horses. 



HAVING considered the different theories or opinions as to the 

 original habitat of the horse and the means and facilities by which 

 distribution to the different portions of the earth may have been 

 effected, I have omitted land migration, which will be self-evident 

 to all as an important factor in the problem. It is now in order, 

 therefore, to consider such dates and facts as are pertinent and 

 may be gleaned from history, sacred and profane. 



When Abraham, with Sarah his wife, visited Egypt about 1920 

 B.C., the Pharaoh for her sake bestowed upon him many gifts: 

 "Sheep and oxen and he asses and men servants and maid serv- 

 ants and she asses and camels." Among these great gifts there 

 were no horses, evidently because Egypt had no horses at that 

 time. There is no mention nor reference to horses in Egypt till 

 Joseph became prime minister two hundred years later, when 

 there were a few horses, and they were traded or sold to Joseph by 

 their owners in exchange for food, not in droves, but as individ- 

 uals. These scriptural facts in the experiences of Abraham and 

 Joseph seem to be circumstantially sustained by the discoveries 

 of those learned Egyptologists who, in late years and with the 

 spade in their hands, have resurrected so much of history that had 

 been buried for thousands of years. It was during the reign of 

 the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, that Abraham and Joseph were 

 in Egypt, and in order to approximate the time when horses were 

 first introduced, we must glance at a few facts in connection with 



