Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 245 



beautiful dark horses can be no other than Libyans, who at the 

 time when these vases were painted were a standing danger to 

 the Egyptians, and must have been perfectly familiar to the 

 Greeks who were employed to secure the Egyptian frontiers. 

 The Scythian women, however, even down to the second 

 century A.D. had not learned to ride, as do the Tartar women 

 (cf. p. 139) of to-day, but they still travelled from place to place 

 in their waggons as in the time of Herodotus. 



We have seen that the setting on of the tail is a character- 

 istic of the pure-bred Arab and his well-bred derivatives, a 

 point to which great attention is paid by horse-fanciers in 

 Western Asia and India. Though unfortunately in none of 

 the Daphnae pictures of horses ridden by women has the tail 

 survived, yet on two other fragments 1 we can clearly see that 

 the horses' tails are set on high like those of well-bred Arabs 

 and the horses seen under the chariot of Seti I (p. 217). 

 Again, the Daphnae pottery 2 yields the earliest known repre- 

 sentation in painting of the winged horse Pegasus, whose birth- 

 place according to the legend was the Libyan desert. The 

 winged steed was naturally modelled after the fleetest courser 

 known to the artist, who has simply added wings to indicate 

 his supernatural swiftness. In the Pegasus of the Daphnae 

 vase the tail is clearly set on high. It is now plain that as in 

 the Egyptian paintings of the New Empire so in the sixth 

 century B.C. the high set of the tail, as well as the dark colour 

 two of the features of the Kohl breed of Arabia characterised 

 the horses of North Africa. 



In the small lightly built and docile horses of the Libyans 

 we recognise the light built Barb and 'Arab' of to-day, a horse 

 of matchless swiftness, when carrying a light rider, such as the 

 typical Numidian horsemen described by Livy (cf. p. 241), but 

 not well adapted for a heavy weight or for draught purposes. 

 The horse ridden by the Libyan women on the Daphnae frag- 

 ments is not a thoroughbred, but a fine cross-bred horse. We 

 have seen proof that the great desire of the ancients was to 



1 Brit. Mus., B 129, 10 (two horsemen) ; B 125, 8 (a horse with the upper part 

 of tail well defined, though a portion is lost). 



2 Brit. Mus., P 105. 



