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 cortége is a combination of animal colour hard to beat. 
When we reach the Twelfth Dynasty, 2266.8. 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 vas 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. 
