Equids as pack animals
Initially all of the domesticates were valued exclusively as a source of food, but eventually people learned that some of their animals could be useful in other ways. What Andrew Sherratt called the Secondary Products Revolution seems to have been a drawn-out process in the second half of the fourth millennium bc.28
By 3000 bc sheep were raised primarily for their wool, and castrated oxen were valued as draft animals useful for pulling sledges and plows. Early in this period the first wheeled vehicles were built, and the invention quickly spread across much of western Eurasia. These heavy vehicles were almost always drawn by a yoked team of oxen.
Perhaps because of their river and their many canals and waterways the Egyptians were very slow to adopt the wheeled vehicle (the first wheeled vehicle attested in Egypt—as in several other lands along the Mediterranean—is the chariot).29 They may have been the first, however, to make use of pack animals. During the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom the Egyptians depended upon the donkey’s back for land transport. Recent discoveries have shed some light on the domestication of the African wild ass (Equus africanus), which in its domesticated state is usually called a donkey (Equus africanus asinus). As its taxonomic designation indicates, the wild ass was domesticated in Africa, where it became a food animal providing both milk and meat. Domestication seems to have occurred late in the fifth millennium bc.
Well before 3000 bc donkeys in Upper Egypt were trained to carry loads. A century ago Sir Flinders Petrie found three Equus africanus skeletons in a First Dynasty tomb, but it was not clear whether the skeletons belonged to food animals or to pack animals, or even whether the animals had been wild or domesticated. We now have more certain evidence for the early employment of the donkey as a pack animal. At Abydos, not far downstream from Karnak and Luxor, archaeologists from the Cairo branch of the Deutsches Archaologisches Insti- tut excavated a huge mortuary complex. The complex contained the bodies of a First Dynasty king and—buried in rows of separate small tombs—some 200 retainers (officials, servants, artisans) who were sacrificially killed and buried with their king. The identity of the king is uncertain, but Aha and Djer are likely candidates. Although the human sacrificial burials have received most attention, as testimony to the exalted position of the king as well as to the grim superstitions of the period, our interest is in three brick tombs excavated in 2002. These tombs contained the fully articulated skeletons of ten donkeys, who also accompanied the king into the Afterlife. A study of the ten donkey skeletons, the most and the earliest ever found, concluded that the donkeys had been used as pack animals, incurring perceptible anatomical damage because of the loads that they had carried.30 In Old Kingdom reliefs the donkey is often shown as a beast of burden.
Although as food animals donkeys had been less valuable than cattle, sheep, goats and pigs, once people learned to use the donkey to carry loads (and occasional riders) its value greatly increased. A tough animal and superbly fitted to semi-desert environments, singly or in caravans a donkey could carry a 200- pound load for a short distance and a 100-pound load from one city to another. Use of the donkey as a pack animal, and occasionally as a riding animal, spread quickly from Egypt through the Levant. In the southern Levant the fashioning of clay figurines of a donkey laden with panniers began no later than the start of the third millennium bc.31
In Mesopotamia and western Iran the native equid was the Asiatic wild ass or onager (Equus hemionus). The onager is larger and stronger than a donkey but hardly manageable, and it has recently been argued that in the third millennium bc the Sumerians were in possession of a domesticated species of onager (Equus hemionus pumpellii) that subsequently became extinct.32 It is more widely supposed that the Sumerians crossed the onager with a donkey, to produce a hybrid that was physically and temperamentally suited for work as a pack animal and a draft animal. A copper or bronze nose-ring, to which a rope was tied, was often used for controlling a large animal. On the “peace” side of the Ur Standard, from ca. 2500 bc, oxen are shown being led in that manner, and on the “war” side the equids (possibly donkey-onager hybrids) drawing heavy wagons are likewise controlled by nose-rings. Donkeys could be managed by less severe devices: a halter or a simple nose-band was usually sufficient.
In modern times the donkey has often been associated with poor and backward economies, but in the Near East in the third millennium bc it connoted wealth. During the Old and Middle Kingdoms in Egypt donkeys continued to be slaughtered at elite tombs, in order to accompany the deceased into the Afterlife. In Syria and Mesopotamia during the third millennium bc donkeys were sacrificed at various temples, where their meat was evidently consumed by the resident god and his worshippers. Donkeys were also sacrificed before the construction of a wall or a large building, and their skeletons have been found in Early Bronze Age foundation deposits. The ritual role of the donkey in Early and Middle Bronze Age societies has received increased attention with the discovery of burials at Tell Brak in Syria and at Tel Haror in southern Israel.33
From the steppe no representation of a pack animal has been found in Neolithic or Early Bronze Age contexts. Because horses had long been domesticated on the steppe as food animals, however, it is very likely that after Andrew Sherratt’s “Secondary Products Revolution” some horses were pressed into service as pack animals. We may also assume that—like the donkey in the Near East— a horse accustomed to carry packs on the steppe would occasionally have been ridden by its Neolithic owner. Without great difficulty an older gelding or mare could have been trained to accept a passenger, while another person led the animal by a rope attached to a nose-band or a halter. We may also assume that on the steppe from time to time a young man—more daringly, and perhaps to entertain or impress onlookers—without accompaniment by a pedestrian handler would have ridden a domesticated horse, attempting to exercise some control over it by a noseband or another rudimentary device. For the inhabitants of the Eurasian steppe the horse was the epitome of speed. The Proto-Indo-European word for “horse” was *ekwo-, a noun related to *oku-s, the PIE adjective for “swift.”34
