LIVESTOCK AND ANIMAL HUSBANDRY IN ANCIENT EGYPT

LIVESTOCK IN ANCIENT EGYPT

Cattle stable Agricultural crops were not always the mainstay of the ancient Egyptian diet. The Nile supplied them with a plentiful supply of fish which were caught all year round. In addition to fish, water fowl and cattle were also kept by the Egyptians. Flocks of geese were raised from the earliest times and supplied eggs, meat and fat. However, the domestic fowl didn't make its appearance until middle of the New Kingdom, and then in only very isolated places. [Source: Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com]

There were scribes of the property whose job was “to look at the accounts of the herdsmen." Reckonings of how many head of each breed and of each class, arranged according to their age, were forthcoming; of the “first cows of the herd “(such as of leading cows), of “young cattle," of calves and of their “mothers. " The cattle also had to be led before the master; an endless succession of cattle, goats, donkeys, and sheep. The chief scribe then hands to the master a long piece of writing, and explains to him that, according to it, he may call his own no less than 835 long-horned and 220 hornless cattle, 760 donkeys, 974 sheep, and 2234 goats. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

We see from this example that the proprietors of the Old Kingdom not only possessed large herds of cattle, but also sometimes as many as 1300 cows, and also a considerable number of small stock. The ancient Egyptians however, with their great admiration for cattle, never grew weary of representing them again and again, while they rarely give us pictures of sheep,' goats,' or donkeys. ' Yet both the buck and the ram were noble animals with beautiful twisted horns — the latter also had the honour of representing a mighty god. Pictures of pigs were rarely found on the monuments, and had we not learned from one of the chapters of the ancient Book of the Dead that the god Set once assumed the shape of this animal, we might doubt whether they ever existed in Egypt.

Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Ancient Egyptian Love of Animals

The love of animals was strong in Egypt. Of all domestic animals the ox was the dearest to the heart of the Egyptian. Cattle-breeding takes up a very large space in the representations on the monuments; in almost every tomb of the Old Kingdom we meet with the herdsman and his animals; the latter were either swimming through the water or were being fed or milked. The sort of contempt that we feel for dumb oxen was unknown to the Old Egyptian; on the contrary, the cow was to him a sacred animal, in whose form the highest goddess had deigned to appear, while the bull was considered the ideal conception of heroic strength and power. Other nations had compared their most powerful gods and their greatest heroes to the lion; the Egyptians, on the other hand, compared them to the “strong bull. " [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Robert Partridge of the BBC wrote: “Animals of all kinds were important to the Ancient Egyptians, and featured in the daily secular and religious lives of farmers, craftsmen, priests and rulers. Animals were reared mainly for food, whilst others were kept as pets. The bodies of sacred animals and some pets were often mummified and given elaborate burials. The bodies of some rams were mummified and equipped with gilded masks and even jewellery. Great cats were hunted, and their skins were greatly prized, but they were not always killed and the smaller cats, such as the cheetah, were often tamed and kept as pets. A gilded figure of a cheetah, with the distinctive 'tear' mark, was found on one of Tutankhamun's funerary beds. “ [Source: Robert Partridge, BBC, February 17, 2011]

Animal Husbandry in Ancient Egypt

The care with which the different breeds were kept apart in the pictures shows that, even during the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians had already emerged from the primitive stage of cattle-breeding. They were no longer content to lead the animals to their pasture and in other respects to leave them to themselves; on the contrary, they watched over every phase of their life. Special bulls were kept for breeding purposes, and the herdsmen understood how to assist the cows when calving. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Whether the breeds of any of the other domestic animals were different during the New Kingdom we cannot tell, on account of the scanty material at our command; it was interesting however to meet with a drove of pigs as seen in an illustration. Probably from religious reasons, this animal was never represented by the artists of the Old Kingdom.

We know little of the details of cattle-breeding during the New Kingdom, of how the herds of Upper and Lower Egypt, with the cattle, geese, and small stock, were increased by the hundred thousand. The “herdsmen take care of them and carry herbs to the cattle," they were still fattened according to ancient custom, and they were branded with the stamp of the department to which they belong. The 'chay which was often mentioned at this time as the place where the cattle were kept at night, must had been an open fold; and, in fact, a picture at Tell el Amarna shows us the cattle lying in an open yard.

As regards the rearing and feeding of the domesticated water-birds, if we could rely upon the arguineiitum ex silent io, the Egyptians seem to had confined their attention to geese alone; the goose in fact held the first place amongst the farm birds, in the same way as the ox did amongst the cattle. In the texts of this period geese were frequently mentioned, and in the beautiful picture shown in the plate we had just given, we see exactly how the lists of these birds, which were very valuable for food, were brought to the proprietor. The goose was not always kept for such a material purpose, and those who were fortunate enough to come across the tomb of a certain Bek'e belonging to the beginning of the New Kingdom, in the necropolis of Dra-abul-nega at Thebes, may there observe that the wife of this man, instead of a pet dog or little monkey to play with, preferred a big goose. '

Wild Animals as Pets and Livestock in Ancient Egypt

The Egyptian may have succeeded in domesticating cranes, ibex, gazelles, oryx and baboons. Bas reliefs show men trying to tame hyenas by tying them up and force feeding them meat. The Egyptians were fond of cheetahs and kept herds of gazelles and antelopes. Oryx and other kinds of antelope were kept as household pets. Even though the Egyptians may have tamed elephants there is no evidence they were domesticated like elephants in ancient Carthage.

pet cheetah

In addition to the domestic animals proper, such as cattle, sheep, goats, etc., the herds of the great men in Egypt contained many kinds of wild ruminants. These were taken cither by the lasso or the greyhounds in the desert or mountains, and were brought up together with the cattle; thus in all the pictures of the Old Kingdom we meet with the antelope and the ibex amongst the cattle; the oryx, with its long sword-like horns, the graceful gazelles, kudu, and wild cattle with lyre-shaped horns, and the noble ibex. They were always reckoned with the cattle; like the cattle, the animals when full grown were described as “young cattle," they were also tied up to pegs and fattened with dough after the same process as that carried out with cattle. The flesh of a fat antelope must had been considered as particularly good when roasted, for we nearly always find the antelope amongst the sacrificial animals. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Elephants in elaborate tombs were found in cemetery in Hierakonpolis, dated to 3500 B.C. One of the elephants was ten to eleven years old. That is the age when young males are expelled from the herd. Modern animals trainers say elephants at that age are young and inexperienced and can be captured and trained.

Transportation and Pack and Draft Animals in Ancient Egypt

On the topic of pack and draft animals, Steve Vinson of Indiana University wrote: “Transportation in ancient Egypt entailed the use of boats and ships for water travel; for land transportation, attested methods include foot-traffic and the use of draft animals— especially donkeys and oxen, but also, from the first millennium B.C. onward, camels. Land vehicles, including carts, chariots, sledges [Source: Steve Vinson, Indiana University, Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2013, escholarship.org ]

“Donkey and, later, camel caravans seem to have been the preferred mode of transport for goods along roads and tracks, as Pharaonic texts such as Harkhuf’s autobiography and the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant suggest, and as archaeological evidence—for example, the donkey hoof- prints from the Toshka gneiss-quarry road mentioned above—shows. The period in which the camel was introduced into, and domesticated in, Egypt remains controversial. Most faunal, iconographic, and textual evidence points to a date sometime in the first millennium B.C., but some have argued for an introduction of the camel as early as the Predynastic Period. The question is complicated because faunal or iconographic evidence for the presence of camels does not necessarily prove camel domestication.”

As for animals as a means of transport, Heidi Köpp-Junk of Universität Trier wrote: “As means of overland travel, mount animals, sedan chairs, or chariots are known—and of course walking. For donkey riding, indirect evidence exists from the Old King-dom in the form of representations of oval pillow- shaped saddles depicted in the tombs of Kahief, Neferiretenef , and Methethi. These saddles were similar to the saddle of the Queen of Punt depicted in a New Kingdom scene in the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri. Similarly, representations of donkey riding are known from the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom. The earliest pictorial evidence of a ridden horse dates to the reign of Thutmose III. Horse riding is proven in connection with scouts, couriers, and soldiers and is a mode of locomotion that had an obvious emphasis on speed.” [Source: Heidi Köpp-Junk, Universität Trier, Germany, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013 escholarship.org ]

Wild Herdsmen of the Ancient Egyptian Marshes

During the Old Kingdom cattle were found in their natural pasture which often consisted of stretches of marshy land. In the same way herders in in mountainous countries send their animals to summer pastures, ancient Egyptian herdsmen sent their cattle for a part of each year to the marshes of the north; for though in the Nile valley proper all the land was pretty well brought under cultivation, a good part of the Delta was still wild and uncleared. In the marshy districts the cattle were kept by men who were regarded by other Egyptian as at least somehwat uncivilized. The manner in which the sculptors of the Old Kingdom depicted the marshmen, shows that they considered them rather as pariahs. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Such a man might be indispensable as a good herdsman, an excellent fisherman, an expert bird-catcher; he might make good mats and boats from the papyrus reed, his masters might enjoy his dry wit and homely wisdom, but he was all too dirty. He never thought of shaving off his hair cleanly, but contented himself with cutting it short on the forehead; many indeed went so far as to wear a beard, and even whiskers and moustache as well. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

These men lived in the marshes with the cows; they had no settled home, for their reed huts could be moved from place to place when needful. The Greek description of them in late times corresponds very nearly with the representations on the monuments of the Old Kingdom more than two thousand years earlier. " In our illustration, for instance, it was evening and the work was at an end; some of the men were squatting round the low hearth roasting then geese on wooden spits at the fire; one had not got so far and was only plucking his goose. Others were occupying themselves either with plaiting papyrus reeds or cooking dough for the cattle. Another man was comfortably asleep. He sat down on his mat when he came home and fell asleep there with his shepherd's crook still in his hand; his dog with the long ears and the pointed muzzle had followed his master's example and had gone to sleep at his feet. A large jug, a basket with some small vessels, and a few papyrus mats were all the goods required for our herdsman's housekeeping/

The Egyptian herdsmen seem to had had no delight in the romance of this life in the marshes; doubtless they longed for the comforts of their houses at home. It was a joyful day when they “went out of the north country “and drove their cattle “upwards. " However troublesome it might be to cross the many branches of the river on their way from the north country, nothing was a trouble on that day; in spite of all vexations, we were assured by an inscription that “this herdsman was very merry. " ' If the water were shallow enough it was not much trouble to wade through it with the cattle, at most the herdsman had only to carry the little calf tlirough on his back. It was worse when a deeper stream had to be crossed. Then, as we see, nolens voletis, the herd had to swim; a few herdsmen cross first in a boat, and encourage the tired animals by their cries; they drag the calves through the water by their fore-feet. Another boat follows the animals so as to keep the herd together. The herdsmen, however, were powerless to protect them against one serious danger, and if the crocodile that we see lying in the water near the cows had the courage to attack them, it will be scarcely possible to drive him off his prey.

Meat in Ancient Egypt

Bowl of fat

Ancient Egyptians ate the meat of cattle, sheep and goats. Lots of bones from slaughtered animals have been found. Hieroglyphics show ancient Egyptians hunting ducks, antelope and a variety of wild animals and using nets to catch birds as well as fish. There are even hieroglyphics describing slaves making foie gras.

Pigs were eaten for a time but there was a prejudice against pork associated with Seth, god of evil. Pigs are depicted at a New Kingdom (1055-1069 B.C.) temple in El Kab, south of Luxor. As time went on the ancient Egyptians distanced themselves from pigs, regarding them as unclean, and abstained from pork. Herodotus wrote “the pig is regarded among them as an unclean animal so much so that if a man passing accidently touches a pig, he instantly hurries to the river and plunges in with his clothes on." Herodotus describes swineherds as an inbreed caste forbidden from setting foot in temples.

The Egyptians ate a lot of fish. They ate all the varieties that were found in the Nile and many from the Mediterranean. Archaeologists have found evidence e of fish processing operation, where fish were cleaned, salted and smoked. Fish was also made into sauce.

Leatherworking in Ancient Egypt

André J. Veldmeijer of the Netherlands Flemish Institute in Cairo wrote: “Leather was used throughout Egypt’s history, although its importance varied. It had many applications, ranging from the functional (footwear and wrist-protectors, for example) to the decorative (such as chariot leather). Although leather items were manufactured using simple technology, leatherworking reached a high level of craftsmanship in the New Kingdom. Among the most important leather-decoration techniques employed in Pharaonic Egypt, and one especially favored for chariot leather, was the use of strips of leather of various colors sewn together in partial overlap. In post-Pharaonic times there was a distinct increase in the variety of leather-decoration techniques. Vegetable tanning was most likely introduced by the Romans; the Egyptians employed other methods of making skin durable, such as oil curing.” [Source: André J. Veldmeijer, Netherlands Flemish Institute Cairo, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2008, escholarship.org ]

“The term “leather” refers to skins that have been tanned or tawed—that is, converted into white leather by mineral tanning, as with alum and salt—rather than cured. In Egypt it appears that skins were not tanned or tawed in the Pharaonic Period; however, thus far we lack detailed, systematic chemical analyses from which to make a conclusive determination. Skins and leather were used throughout Egyptian history, but their importance and quality varied. According to Van Driel- Murray, skins were widely used in the Badarian and Amratian (Naqada I) periods but were largely superseded by cloth in the Gerzean (Naqada II).

“In Egypt leather was most commonly made from the skins of cow, sheep, goat, and gazelle, although those of more exotic species such as lion, panther, cheetah, antelope, leopard, camel, hippopotamus, crocodile, and possibly elephant have been identified. Leather was used in a wide variety of items, ranging from clothing, footwear, and cordage, to furniture and (parts of) musical instruments.

cattle rescued from floodings

Hunting, Netting and Fishing in Ancient Egypt

Hunters made their way through the swamps on boats made of reeds, and hunted there with throwsticks. Their knives, in part at least, as well as the tips of their arrows, were made of flint. The monuments of the Old Kingdom feature images of bird-snarers. Their clothing of rush-mats, and the manner in which they wear their hair a nd their beard, make them appear different. These dwellers in the swamps may possibly belong to a different people from the native Egyptians. We know that the northwest of the Delta was inhabited by Libyans. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Fishing was also very popular in ancient Egypt; the peaceful wellstocked waters of the Nile invited the inhabitants of the country to this easy sport. The most primitive manner of fishing — with the spear, was only pursued later as a sport by the wealthy. For this purpose the Egyptians used a thin spear nearly three yards long, in front of which two long barbed points were fastened. The most skilful speared two fish at once, one with each point. Angling was also considered a delightful recreation for gentlemen; we see them seated on chairs and rugs fishing in the artificial lakes in their gardens. "' [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

The great numbers of waterbirds required for Egyptian housekeeping were caught in a less delightful but much more effective manner; a large bird-net was used, which we often see represented in the tombs. The net was spread on a small expanse of water surrounded by a low growth of reeds. Judging from the representations, it was often 10 to 12 feet long and about five feet wide. It was made of netted string and had eight corners. " When spread, the sides were drawn well back and hidden under water plants; in order to draw it up, a rope which ran along the net and was fastened behind to a clod of earth, had to be pulled hard. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated August 2024