TESTUDO LEITLIII. 31 
Cairo. The species is Testudo ibera, Pallas, hitherto known only from North-west 
Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, Transcaucasia, and Persia. The native from whom they were 
bought informed Dr. Keatinge that he had got them from the Sudan, and that he had 
had them alive for more than fourteen years. There is no evidence that this tortoise 
occurs in Lower Egypt, but, like some other reptilian species, it may possibly range 
from Algeria and Tunisia to the Eastern Sudan, and, in view of this, I have thought 
it as well to record these specimens. The conjecture, however, that they, in all 
likelihood, were brought to Egypt from Syria is perhaps more probable than that they 
were of Sudanese origin. If this species does occur in the Sudan, it is likely to be 
distributed in the direction of Wtidi Haifa and the plain of Suakin. 
Ptiippell 1 records that Testudo calcarata, Schneider, is present in the Province of 
Dongola, where it is known as " Abu Gefne." 
Aristotle 2 relates a tale about the tortoise and the viper, the only interest of which 
is its parallelism to the myth prevalent in India regarding the cobra and the mungoose. 
As is well known, it is said that when a mungoose has been bitten by a cobra it 
searches for a particular plant which it eats, and that it serves as an antidote to the 
poison of the snake. Aristotle had heard that when a tortoise swallows a viper (which 
a tortoise never does, any more than does the mungoose eat the manguswail) it searches 
for and eats the origan or marjoram (to which it is probably partial at all times for its 
aromatic pungency), and he states that some one had mentioned the fact that he had 
seen a tortoise do so several times, but that at last when it was deprived of access to 
the origan, after having swallowed a viper, it died. 
Wilkinson states that a tortoise-headed god occurs as one of the genii on the tombs, 
but he does not state on what tomb, and he adds that the tortoise was not one of the 
sacred animals of Egypt. 
But, in the beginning of the Christian era, it seems as if some myth, probably 
cosmogonic, regarding this animal prevailed in the then Roman Province of Egypt, 
because while in Alexandria, in 1880, I was informed, on reliable authority, that when 
the obelisk was being taken down, for removal to New York, it was found resting on a 
small bronze figure of a tortoise. This obelisk, which had stood for ages at Heliopolis, 
had been removed thence and placed in front of the Caesarium at Alexandria in the 
time of Tiberius. A fragment of a claw of the tortoise was presented to me, and I 
afterwards gave it to the Indian Museum, Calcutta 3 . An analysis of a portion of it 
proved it to be a true bronze. 
1 Neue Wirbellh., Amph. p. 4. 
- Hist. An. iii. (18S3), par M. J. Barthelemy St.-Hilaire, pp. 157-158. 
3 Anderson, Cat. & Hand-Book, Archaeological Collection, pt. ii. 1883, p. 471. 
