By 3000 BCsheep 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 Egyp -
tians 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 domesti -
cation 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 BCdonkeys in Upper Egypt were trained to carry loads.
A century ago Sir Flinders Petrie found three Equus africanusskeletons 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 domestica -
ted. 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 Archäologisches 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 supersti -
tions 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 accom -
panied 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
34 The Kurgan theory and taming of horses