CHAPTER IV 



ELEPHANTS, HISTORICAL 



Early Egyptian art offers a few representations of the 

 elephant, which was probably better known in pre-dynastic 

 and early dynastic times than at a later date. A very small 

 statuette of black stone in the Egyptian collection of the 

 Berlin Museum unquestionably represents an elephant, and 

 some more doubtful instances appear in certain ivory reliefs, 

 as on a comb in the First Egyptian Room of the Metropolitan 

 Museum of Art, New York. All of these, as well as the 

 statuette, date from before 3000 B. C. Of the various ob- 

 jects made of ivory, such as combs, bracelets, pendants, 

 spoons, statuettes, etc., and found in tombs dating from 3600 

 B. C. to 3000 B. C, a certain number are of hippopotamus 

 ivory. While the elephant appears to have become less 

 familiar to the Egyptian of the third millennium before 

 Christ, ivory was still secured and worked and an inscription 

 at Elephantine, on the tomb of a noble of the Sixth Dynasty 

 (c. 2475-2025 B. C), relates that on his return from an 

 expedition to the southward he sent to the king a tusk 5 ft. 

 long, retaining for his own use one 10 ft. long. Another 

 noble, of the Twelfth Dynasty (2000-1788 B. C), captured a 

 live elephant which may have been brought to Egypt. The 

 chief source of supply seems to have been the "land of 

 Punt," the Somali Coast and Libya, whence in the fifteenth 

 century B. C. 700 tusks were brought. Of the 2,500 scarabs 

 in the Metropolitan Museum only one or two are of ivory, 



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