IV] THE ORIGIN OF THE LIBYAN HORSE 427 



Minor as far superior to the very best blood from the north, 

 whilst by the tenth century B.C., although the Hittites and 

 Syrians had plenty of horses, they were eager to purchase horses 

 from Egypt at a great price, whilst in the post-Homeric myth 

 Pegasus, the most famous of all steeds, is represented as born 

 in the western Libyan desert. All these facts prove that before 

 the end of the second millennium B.C. the Libyan possessed 

 horses far superior in speed to those of Europe and Asia, and 

 also that these horses were already distinguished by their bay 

 colour with a star in the forehead, which characterises the 

 Libyan stock and its posterity to this very hour. As the 

 Egyptians did not obtain horses until the sixteenth century 

 B.C., it is obviously impossible that the Libyans, supposing 

 them to have obtained the horse for the first time from the 

 Egyptians, could have developed by Homeric times a race of 

 horse so absolutely distinct from all others bred since, even in 

 times when men have expended much care and skill in pro- 

 ducing artificial varieties. But as it has been pointed out 

 (p. 209) that the Arabs, who take such pride in their horses 

 and their pedigrees, are ignorant of the very first principles of 

 breeding, it is most unlikely that the nomad Libyans, who 

 never kept any account of strains, such as Al-Khamseh, or 

 practised castration, would have produced artificially in a com- 

 paratively short time the most wonderful breed of horses that 

 the world has known, and with characteristics so indelibly fixed 

 that they can permanently modify the form and colour of all 

 other breeds. 



If it be objected that there is no record of wild horses in 

 Libya, either in ancient or medieval times, and that conse- 

 quently there never was any indigenous horse for the Libyans 

 to domesticate, I reply that remains of fossil horses have been 

 found in North Africa, that though at present there is not any 

 kind of ass either striped or unstriped in that same region, yet 

 undoubted evidence has been given that there was in that area 

 some kind of wild ass in the time of Herodotus, that many- 

 striped asses existed in the Great Oasis down at least to the 

 tenth century a.d., and we know not how much later, and 

 finally that, according to Pigafetta (p. 60), there were zebras 



