220 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



where the upper Asiatic horse had by that time been long in 

 use, it is clear that the Egyptian horses for which great prices 

 were paid must have been superior in quality to the native 

 horses of western Asia. But as the Egyptian horses were 

 almost always of a dark colour, and as we have shown that the 

 few white horses seen on the monuments were probably derived 

 from Asia, it follows that the Egyptian horses so highly valued 

 by the kings of Syria and the Hittites were of a dark colour. 

 These horses must have been bred in Africa, but, as Egypt could 

 not breed them herself in sufficient numbers for export, she 

 must have drawn her supply from neighbouring peoples. She 

 could not have obtained them from any of the tribes which dwelt 

 in North-east Africa between the Nile, the Red Sea, and the 

 Indian Ocean, for Strabo, who had very full information respect- 

 ing all the nations of that area, demonstrates clearly that down 

 to the Christian era not one of these tribes used either the horse 

 or the camel. 



But on the west bank of the Nile it was far different. The 

 Ethiopians indeed and the Nubians, who dwelt on the left bank 

 of the river, had no horses, as seems absolutely certain from 

 Strabo's account of these peoples 1 , a fact which, taken in con- 

 junction with the complete absence of the horse amongst all 

 the peoples lying between the Nile and the Indian Ocean, 

 demonstrates that there is no historical foundation for M. 

 Sanson's E. c. africanus (the breed of Dongola) which according 

 to that writer originated in North-east Africa, "probably in 

 Nubia" (p. 2). But on the other hand it can be proved that 

 all the Libyan tribes who lived between the Nile and the 

 Atlantic were not only drivers of horses from before the dawn 

 of history, but that they also possessed the best breed that the 

 world has known. 



In the Odyssey when the disguised Odysseus pretends that 

 he is a Cretan, he relates how after returning home from Troy 

 to Crete, a few days later he took part in a disastrous piratical 

 expedition to the mouth of the Nile : " We came to the fair- 

 flowing Aegyptus, and in the river Aegyptus I stayed my 



1 786, 818. 



