Early History of the Dog 15 



body colour and spotted it, while another showed something original in a 

 dog with red eyes, but an emerald-green dog with a red head shown in a 

 funeral cortege is a combination of animal colour hard to beat. 



When we reach the Twelfth Dynasty, 2266 b. c, we find the first 

 greatest variance in a long, short-legged dog of dachshund type, black-and- 

 tan seemingly, with some white markings. Wilkinson says this dog was a 

 particular house favourite in the time of Usertssem, and he thinks the fancy 

 of a monarch had something to do with varieties and fashions in dogs. 

 These varieties doubtless had their origin in freaks of nature. A few years 

 ago a toy collie was shown in Edinburgh and we had one a short time ago 

 which the youth of the family very well described when he wrote: "It has 

 a head like an alligator and legs like a dachshund." 



It is almost unnecessary to say that the Egyptian god Anubis is shown 

 with a dog's or jackal's head, and it is equally well known that the dog 

 was looked upon with veneration in Egypt, and the death of one caused the 

 family to go into mourning. 



It was this veneration of the dog in Egypt and other countries that 

 caused it to be declared unclean by the Hebrews, who regarded it as a foreign 

 god. That they had dogs both for practical uses and as pets in the house 

 cannot be gainsaid, notwithstanding their employment of the name as a 

 term of reproach. Job speaks of the dogs of his flocks. At the time of the 

 Exodus it was promised that not a dog would move his tongue — that is, the 

 Egyptian watch-dogs. The evidence of dogs about the house is found in 

 the story of the woman of Canaan to whom Christ said: "It is not meet to 

 take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs," to which she answered: 

 "Truth, Lord, yet the dogs (here is used a different Greek word from that 

 in the previous verse) eat of the crumbs which fall from the master's table." 

 Mark gives the woman's response more pointedly when he puts it: "Yes, 

 Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs." 



The references in the Old Testament regarding the eating of dead 

 bodies, or the curse of being devoured by dogs, probably had their origin 

 or foundation in the funeral customs of other nations. The Iranians had 

 rites in which the dog figured prominently in the dispersion of evil spirits, 

 being made to follow the corpse, which was then thrown away to be devoured 

 by dogs and vultures. Yet the dog was more highly thought of by the 

 Iranians than by any other nation of antiquity. In the Zend-Avesta, the 

 religious book of Zoroaster, the dog is treated of at length. 



