H.—ANTHROPOLOGY. 177 
the Delta as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, and it was 
fairly plentiful in Upper Hgypt up to the middle of the nineteenth 
century, but it is now rarely, if ever, seen north of Wadi Halfa, It is 
the same with the hippopotamus. In the twelfth century this mammal 
still frequented the Damietta branch of the Nile, and two specimens 
were actually killed near Damietta by an Italian surgeon in the 
year 1600.! In the Dongola Province of Nubia it was very cormmon 
at the beginning of last century, and Burckhardt states that it was 
then a terrible plague there on account of its yoracity. In 1812 several 
hippopotami passed the Second Cataract and made their appearance 
at Wadi Halfa and Derr, while one was actually seen at Darawi, a 
day’s march north of Aswan.? The wild boar is apparently now extinct 
in Egypt, but specimens were shot in the Delta and in the region of 
the Wadi Natrén during last’ century. | The ibis has gradually dis- 
appeared from the Lower Nile Valley, where it was once so common. 
The last specimen of this bird recorded in Egypt was shot in 1877 
in Lake Menzaleh. It is sometimes seen in Lower Nubia, but has 
now entirely disappeared from Egypt proper. 
Much is known about the ancient fauna of the desert wadies from 
the paintings and sculptured scenes in the tombs of the Old and Middle 
Kingdoms and of the Empire. On the walls of many of these tombs 
are depicted hunting scenes,* and among the wild animals figured in 
them are the lion, leopard, Barbary sheep, wild ass, wild ox, hartebeest, 
oryx, ibex, addax, dorcas gazelle, fallow deer, giraffe, and ostrich. As 
several of these animals are not now~ known in Egypt it has been 
argued that the scenes do not faithfully represent the ancient fauna 
of the country. But I can see no reason to doubt that the scenes 
depict actual hunts that took place inthe Arabian and Libyan Deserts 
not far from the localities in which the tombs figuring them are found, 
There is some corroborative evidence in the references in the ancient 
literature to the hunting of the wild animals that frequented Egypt. 
Thutmose 1V., for example, hunted the lion and ibex in the desert 
plateau near Memphis; * Amenhotep III. killed 102 fierce lions during 
the first ten years of his reign,® and in his second regnal year he hunted 
wild cattle in the desert near Keneh;* he saw there a herd of 170, 
and of these he and his huntsmen captured 96, -The desert to the east 
_ of Kaft was a famous hunting-ground at the time of the Eighteenth 
Dynasty. At the present day all but one of the animals represented in 
these ancient hunting scenes are found in the Nubian Deserts to the 
south of Egypt. The exception is important; if is the fallow deer, 
which belongs to the Holarctic, not to the Ethiopian, zoological zone. 
Although most of the animals that were hunted by the dynastic Egyp- 
tians have now disappeared from their northern home, many have been 
recorded in recent years as occurring in the Arabian and Libyan Deserts. 
We can, in fact, follow them gradually receding southwards. The 
dorcas gazelle is still common in both deserts, and the addax some- 
_ times occurs in the region of the Wadi Natrin. The ibex is occasionally 
seen on the mountains north-east of Keneh. The Barbary sheep 
(Ammotragus tragelaphus) was observed by Dr. Schweinfurth in 1878 
in the Wadi Shietun, which opens on the Nile below Ekhmim.* The 
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