Archaeology Magazine - May/June 1983 - 27

tations of camels. Möller's find consisted of a stone zoomorphic ointment vessel in the form of a recumbent dromedary believed to be
carrying a load. The other two sites
yielded terracotta camel heads.
The discovery of camel effigies
from the time of the First Dynasty could have proven of much
greater value in the reconstruction of
socioeconomic life in ancient
Egypt had the fact of their discovery
been given more notice; but on the
strength of the view on camels
propounded earlier by Albright they
remained in prolonged obscurity.
It is rather unfortunate that this
group of scholars remained oblivious
to, or perhaps neglected to notice,
the records of earlier archaeological
excavations going back as far as
the turn of the century and documenting the existence of camels
in early Egypt. Our concepts of the
natural world and the subsistence
activities of ancient people have been
considerably revised in the light
of forthcoming results from such research areas as those dealing with
palaeobotany and animal remains. It
should be remembered that for a
very long time plant and animal deposits were thought to be of little
value to the archaeologist concerned
with man-made objects. Nobody
will ever know what quantities of
camel bones, before they could
be even identified, were discarded by
uninformed field archaeologists
who were only looking for artifacts.
Around 2600 b.c., the time when
the Saharan-Nilotic climate was
beginning to change from its wet to
a dry phase, camel hair was being used for making rope in the lower
Nile Valley. The Egyptian inscriptions tell us that during the Fifth and
Sixth Dynasties- specifically,
under the respective reigns of Sahure
and Pepi II (2494-2181 B.c.)myrrh and frankincense were being
imported from South Arabia to
satisfy the ritual needs of the local

cults. The inscriptions also say
that overland expeditions had been
sent out to the incense country
even a few centuries earlier. Given the
gargantuan needs of the Egyptian
temples for incense, it is altogether
unlikely that donkey caravans
could have handled this trade, and it
is reasonable to suppose that camels
were being used in their stead.
Additional finds leave little
doubt about the role of the camel in
Lower Egypt. Rock carvings of
camels were found by Flinders Petrie
near the rocky plateau known as
Gebel Silsileh which he dated to
1567-1320 b.c. Petrie made an even
more important discovery at the
Rifeh cemetery, which dates from
1530-1200 b.c.; this consisted of a
dromedary statuette carrying
two water jars. Petrie strongly believed that the camel effigy from
Rifeh could not be assigned to a later
age, "and it shows that as early as
Ramesside times it was sufficiently
common to be used as a beast of
burden."
Few in number though they may
be, it nonetheless seems clear
that the camel effigies discovered in
ancient Egyptian tombs were meant
to represent objects quite familiar
to the deceased. The ritual practice
of offering the dead their earthly
possessions in burial was a trait encountered throughout all early
cultures of the world. During the
later dynastic period in Egypt, the
camel appears much more readily
in art as a decorative motif on everyday utensils alongside other desert
animals and deities like Bes. In the
periods that followed, the evidence
for camels becomes more frequent,
and by the Greco-Roman period, of
course, the camel is well established
and the references to its use are
many.
There remains little doubt, however, that the camel's presence
in Egypt and the Sahara fluctuated
in the prehistoric period and its

use varied from one area to another.
Already in 1881, George Rawlinson
offered a judgment in his two- volume
History of Ancient Egypt that
still stands as cogently today: "Without the camel it would have been
scarcely possible to keep up communication with Syria, or with the
Siniatic Desert, where from a very remote time the Egyptians had
valuable possessions." When Palaeolithic hunters learned to depend
on the dog as a guardian, their dwelling habits underwent a transition:
utilizing the senses of the watchdog, the hunter could leave the open
spaces and take up permanent
residence in a closed-in shelter with
less fear of being taken by surprise by wild animals or foes. Similarly, humanity's association with
the camel opened up extraordinary
possibilities. Only after the camel
had been fully exploited could desert
nomadism flourish, and early
groups have a viable means of adapting to the extremely arid and inhospitable conditions of their
landscape.

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A petroglyph found near Aswan on the Nile depicts a camel and a man leading it
by a rope, and includes a hierotic inscription assigned to the Sixth Dynasty
(2423-2263b.C.).
1983
May/June

Archaeology Magazine - May/June 1983

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - May/June 1983