452 THE PEOPLE 'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



horses to chariots and for riding, but not for labor in bearing 

 burdens or drawing the plow. There is little doubt that the 

 horse was domesticated among Egyptians two thousand years 

 before the Christian era. The Hebrews furnish the world the 

 earliest written accounts of existence and use of horses. Stone- 

 henge says : " The earliest record of the horse which we pos- 

 sess is in the Old Testament, where we first find him inferen- 

 tially mentioned in the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis as exist- 

 ing in the wilderness of Idumea about the beginning of the six- 

 teenth century before Christ." But 1650 B. C., Joseph pro- 

 ceeded from Egypt into Canaan with his father's body, accom- 

 panied with chariots and horsemen, which shows that horses had 

 at least become recognized as valuable among men of high rank. 

 But as they had long been used by Egyptians for war purposes 

 before they were used in pageants and as a means of transpor- 

 tation, their use dates further back than 1600 B. C. 



Lenormant dates the introduction of the horse into Egypt at 

 the time of the " Shepherd Kings," 2200 B. C. We may safely 

 say that the horse has been an important factor in civilization four 

 thousand years. What civilization would have been without the 

 horse is difficult to imagine. Professor Brewer says : " The 

 higher the enlightenment of a people, the greater the variety of 

 uses to which horses are applied." In the earlier civilizations 

 the ass, the ox, the sheep, and even the dog, figured on their 

 monuments before the horse was recognized of great public value. 

 Even among the Assyrians and Phoenicians the horse appears to 

 have been subordinate in rank to the ass, ox, and sheep. Egyp- 

 tian civilization gave him a place on monuments and works of 

 art some five hundred years before he was alluded to in the 

 writings of the Israelites. They spoke of the horse as belong- 

 ing to their enemies. Pharaoh is recorded as taking " six hun- 

 dred chosen chariots, and all the horses," in his pursuit of the 

 Israelites to the Red Sea. Notwithstanding the fact that in the 

 history of Arabia, it has become most noted as the home of the 

 Arab horse, yet, while the Israelites wandered there, we find 

 an entire omission of record to show that there were horses used 

 by this peculiar people. Even six hundred years later, Stone- 



