200 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



but it has been suggested that these reputed wild camels may 

 be descended from animals that belonged to the peoples of the 

 dead cities of that region ^ 



It may well be that the peoples of Central Asia had not 

 domesticated the two-humped camels till a comparatively late 

 period, and as the camel with a single hump did not get a 

 foothold in Africa until the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus^, we 

 need not wonder if the employment of the other species was 

 equally late in Central Asia. That the Bactrian camel had 

 been domesticated by the time of Christ is made certain by 

 Strabo^ w^ho in his description of Persia states that 'the camel- 

 keepers' dwelt on the extreme northern frontier of that region, 

 that is in the deserts on the northern borders, where there w'as 

 scarcely any cultivable land except between certain mountain 

 groups of the waterless upland. This is just the country where 

 man would begin to use the camel. 



It is quite possible that although the camel was in- 

 digenous in Central Asia, it may not have been domesticated 

 by the peoples of that region until a comparatively late period. 

 Though wild camels still survive in Eastern Asia, the Tartar 



^ Beddard, Mammalia, p. 285. 



■■^ Strabo, 815. It has long been noticed that the camel does not appear in 

 Egyptian inscriptions or pictures before the Greek period (Erman, Aegijpten, 

 p. 493, Engl, trans.), whilst others hold that it only got into North Africa in 

 Eoman times. Yet Strabo (loc. cit.) renders it certain that Ptolemy Philadelphus 

 opened up the route from Berenice and Myus Hormus on the Bed Sea to Coptus, 

 by which all the merchandise of India and Arabia passed to Alexandria in his 

 own day. "Philadelphus is said to have been the first to cut with an army this 

 road, though it was then waterless, and to have established halting-places, and 

 he did this on account of the difficult navigation of the Bed Sea, especially for 

 those who set sail from its inmost recess. Formerly the camel-merchants used 

 to make the journey by night, directing their course by the stars, and like 

 mariners they brought supplies of water with them. But now they have provided 

 wateriug-places by digging deep wells and they have constructed cisterns to 

 hold the rain-water, scanty though it be. The journey takes six or seven days." 

 Yet the camel must have been known to Egyptians from a very remote epoch 

 from their trade with Arabia. Thus the Ishmaelites who brought Joseph from 

 Canaan into Egypt, " came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and 

 balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt" (Gen. xxxvii. 25). In 1903 

 Prof. Flinders Petrie found at Abydos a statuette representing a camel. 



=* 727. 



