by Brian Fagan
No one knows how Saharan pastoralists, and others, first tamed donkeys, but it was perhaps a consequence of seasonal corralling of wild asses. The practice was still commonplace throughout the Saharan Sahel, the southern margins of the desert, as recently as the nineteenth century, and it is still used with reindeer by the Saami of Lapland. Perhaps domestication began with young animals who bred in their corrals and became familiar with human behavior. Perhaps, too, they were first tamed for their meat and milk, both little used today. However, those who corralled them soon became aware of the donkey’s remarkable qualities, which made them perfectly adapted to an existence in increasingly dry environments.
Donkeys, with their efficient gait, walk faster than cattle, especially over rugged terrain. This quality alone offered huge advantages to cattle people confronted with the need for much greater mobility, with regular journeys of many kilometers to grazing grounds now widely separated over the landscape and to increasingly elusive water supplies. There were other advantages. Donkeys have labile body temperatures and tolerate desiccation readily, to the point that they can be trained to expect water only every two or three days. They dehydrate more slowly than cattle and rehydrate rapidly, do not need to rest for rumination, and can digest food while dehydrated. The donkey is said to be relatively easy to train and, above all, is a consummate load carrier.
Firewood and water, domestic possessions, young children and animals—all were suitable for a donkey’s back. In many of today’s societies, donkeys are considered “women’s animals,” used for domestic tasks—animals of lower status than cattle, sheep, or goats, which had important social roles in herding societies. But they were the load carriers of Saharan cattle herding. They carried things over an enormous area of northern Africa, the Sahara, and, soon, farther afield.
Donkeys of the Pharaohs
At some point, these utilitarian pack animals came into use in the Nile Valley. Whether this was the result of pastoral groups moving to the edges of the settled lands along the river or because the Egyptians domesticated donkeys independently, we don’t know. The earliest Nile Valley donkey bones come from villages in the Nile Delta and in the northern Sudan by at least 4000 BCE. Donkeys appear at the small town of Maadi, now on the outskirts of an expanding Cairo, during the first half of the fourth millennium. This important settlement was a key link in a major trade network that brought commodities from the eastern Mediterranean coastal region, and perhaps even from Mesopotamia, to the Nile.
Contacts between people living inside and outside the Nile Valley expanded dramatically after about 3500 BCE, both through river trade and via caravans of pack animals over neighboring deserts. Within a thousand years, donkeys appear in inscriptions and wall paintings. By then, they were in common use as beasts of burden; even, on occasion, buried near pharaohs.
Abydos, about 480 kilometers (298 miles) south of Cairo, is the burial place of the earliest pharaohs of about five thousand years ago.4 A great embayment of cliffs provides a dramatic setting on the west bank of the Nile. Royal tombs and mortuary enclosures surrounded by high-status burials commemorate the departed kings in a symbolic landscape associated with the legendary Osiris, ruler of the realm of the dead. One ruler’s tomb lay close to some buried lions, an ancient symbol of kingship. Fourteen large funerary boats accompanied another enclosure, ready for the journey to the Other World. One of the very early rulers went to eternity accompanied by donkeys, laid to rest adjacent to his funerary enclosure. Unfortunately, we don’t know who he was.
Ten donkeys lay in three carefully prepared brick tombs with wood-and-masonry roofs. Each beast lay on its left side on a reed mat, as carefully buried as high officials. The donkeys were apparently in good health and well looked after, but the cartilage of their major joints at hip and shoulder display signs of heavy wear from overloading. The same areas display signs of arthritis, also caused by load carrying. Why did the mourners lavish such care on dead, or sacrificed, beasts? Presumably the donkeys’ importance came from their qualities as pack animals, capable of surviving on little water and poor forage as they tramped across arid terrain carrying precious loads for the king.
The Abydos donkeys were larger and finer limbed than today’s familiar beasts. They display some features of domesticated donkeys, others of wild asses. However, the pathological conditions of their backs clearly identify them as domesticated pack animals, the earliest unequivocal evidence for human use of such animals anywhere, even if we know from fragmentary bones that donkeys were in use along the Nile earlier. The physical changes and smaller size of the donkey developed over many centuries, which, among other things, made them slower than the revered beasts at Abydos.
Donkeys played a lowly part in Egyptian iconography, beyond being a symbol of the Sun God Re, for they were pack animals, not much else. They soon assumed a vital part in overland trade, so much so that wealthier members of Egyptian society were said to own more than a thousand donkeys each by 2500 BCE, used for agriculture and carrying loads or people, and for meat and milk. They traveled up and down the Nile, but above all, they ventured into the arid lands on either side of the river, to the Red Sea and deep into the Sahara.
Figure 8.1 A man guides donkeys. From the tomb of Mereruka, VI Dynasty, c. 2349 BCE. Saqqara, Egypt. De Agostini/Superstock.
Why would donkey caravans have ventured into the unforgiving desert? The pharaohs craved lapis lazuli, gold, and other raw materials found in desert outcrops. They also traded extensively with distant kingdoms in what they called Nubia, now southern Egypt and northern Sudan, far upstream of the First Cataract, where their domains ended. During much of the Old Kingdom (2750–2180 BCE), the desert nomads were hostile, which made journeys along the Nile dangerous, especially when valuable cargoes were involved. So the Egyptians operated donkey trails far into the Sahara, well clear of hostile marauders. Few traces of these ancient caravan routes survive for modern investigators, for they lie in some of the most forbidding desert on earth.
Trackways to the West
The Dakhla Oasis lies about 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the Nile Valley, in Egypt’s Western Desert. In 1947, a sandstorm revealed what was probably the westernmost outpost of Egyptian civilization as early as 2600 BCE. Judging from strategically placed watchtowers, Egyptian knowledge of the desert to the west of Dakhla dated back to at least the time of the pharaoh Khufu (2589–2566 BCE). Rock inscriptions tell us that parties of at least four hundred men penetrated sixty kilometers (thirty-seven miles) into the arid landscape to acquire mineral powder used in paint. Apparently, people in Dakhla were familiar with the harsh, completely arid desert farther west, even if systematic journeying began later.
In 1999/2000, a German desert traveler, Carol Bergmann, discovered a chain of staging posts that once marked an ancient donkey trail that ran about 400 kilometers (248 miles) southwest into the desert from Dakhla to the Gilf Kebir Plateau in the Libyan Desert. Since then, German scholars have worked on the ancient donkey trails.5 Clay vessels and other artifacts along the trail clearly link it to the administrative center in the oasis as early as Sixth Dynasty times (2345–2181 BCE). The terrain between Dakhla and the Gilf Kebir Plateau had but sparse vegetation and was almost waterless. Undeterred, the Egyptians organized donkey caravans along a much-used trail so wanting in food and water that provisions and water for human and beast had to be carried in and stashed at intervals along the way. Remarkably, donkey droppings and even traces of the trail itself survive in this remote landscape. Strategically placed stone cairns still mark the route. So do small stone circles, places where the caravaneers watered their beasts. Special supply caravans dumped food and water in carefully located caches. So far, archaeologists have located about twenty dumps of some three hundred clay jars along the route, just a fraction of what must actually have been used. Mineral stains inside the jars are characteristic of evaporating liquid, presumably water. Some have yielded barley seeds, perhaps food for donkeys and their drivers. Many of the vessels
have eroded outer surfaces, as if they lay empty for some time before being refilled. The jars were probably sealed with leather covers.
Figure 8.2 An ancient Egyptian donkey trail leading toward Abu Ballas, “Pottery Hill,” on the caravan route between the Dakhla Oasis and the Gilf Kebir Plateau. Courtesy of Dr. Rudolph Kuper.
In some places, the caches were larger, with hearths and other structures nearby that speak of somewhat longer stays. Some have vats for preparing bread dough, presumably the staple ration of the drivers. The men who stayed there may have guarded the provisions and water and also baked large amounts of bread for passing caravans.
Assuming that the donkeys covered about twenty-five to thirty kilometers (fifteen to nineteen miles) a day, the caravans would have stopped at large halts every third day, when the beasts were watered. Thus the journey from Dakhla to Gilf Kebir would have taken about two weeks, probably best undertaken in winter, with its cooler temperatures and chances of at least some forage from irregular rainfall.
The logistics of the trail must have been formidable, even under the most favorable circumstances. Distributing jars and water at regular intervals along the trail would have required numerous donkeys. Perhaps some beasts carried out four empty jars each, to reduce the danger of losing a precious load, while the water traveled in two light goatskin bags per beast, about 60 liters (16 gallons) per load. A 3,000 liter (793-gallon) stash at a major station would have required twenty-five donkeys to transport a hundred jars and fifty more to fill them.
What was the trail used for and where, ultimately, did it lead beyond the Gilf Kebir? There’s no evidence that the Egyptians penetrated deeper into the Sahara, but they certainly maintained contact with nomadic herding groups far west of the Nile. Perhaps the trail was a bypass that allowed the pharaohs to skirt hostile groups along the river and maintain their valuable trade with Nubia. The elaborate logistics to provide food and water for animals and people required enormous effort, but the potential rewards in gold, ivory, semiprecious stones, and African products such as leopard skins were enormous. With hostile tribes along the river and a constant danger of raids, the caravans passed south and north through the desert, via routes far west of the Nile. Here, a well-armed donkey convoy, which would have required a secure, water-plentiful base to be successful, was safe from surprise raids. The strategy appears to have worked. During the twenty-third century BCE, Harkhuf, the governor of the southern part of Upper Egypt and overseer of caravans for the pharaoh Merenre (2283–2278 BCE), made at least four journeys to Nubia (see sidebar “Harkhuf and His Donkeys”).
Harkhuf and His Donkeys
Harkhuf’s travels give us momentary insight into the scale of the Egyptian donkey trade. The inscriptions on the walls of his tomb at Aswan, near the First Cataract, tell us that Pharaoh Merenre charged Harkhuf’s family with exploring Nubia upstream, where gold abounded. As a young man, Harkhuf accompanied his father along a desert route to a kingdom named Yam, deep in Nubia. They traveled by donkey, the first of four expeditions that took Harkhuf far upstream. We do not know whether such donkey journeys were routine or whether Harkhuf traveled in unusual luxury. The accounts of his trips come from his tomb, a place for boasting if ever there was one. Most likely few people traveled in such elaborate style, but donkey caravans to Nubia were certainly routine for many centuries. Harkhuf was, after all, an important official at the royal court. His four trips southward took him not up the Nile itself, but along the so-called Oasis Road. This overland route led from Upper Egypt through a chain of four desert oases before regaining the Nile Valley at Toshke, in Nubia. Given the hostile terrain and unsettled conditions along the river, Harkhuf and his parties traveled on hundreds of donkeys. This enabled him to complete one successful journey in seven months and to travel on other occasions deep into Nubia to the kingdom of Yam, which was centered on the town of Kerma, south of the Third Cataract, well over 500 kilometers (311 miles) upstream of the First Cataract, near Aswan.
Harkhuf’s inscriptions tell us that he exchanged gifts with the ruler of Yam and returned with “three hundred donkeys laden with incense, ebony . . . elephant tusks, throw sticks, and all sorts of good products.” Just the logistics of this caravan beggar description. One estimate has it that a third of the donkeys would have carried goods, another third provisions, and a final third water through arid stages of the journey. An armed escort accompanied the caravan.
Harkhuf’s entourage included a dancing dwarf. Harkhuf had sent a courier ahead to the court to report on his doings. The youthful pharaoh Pepi II wrote back in his own hand in great excitement: “Come north to the residence at once! Hurry and bring with you this dwarf whom you brought from the land of the horizon-dwellers live, hale, and hearty, for the dances of the god, to gladden the heart.” When traveling on the Nile, men were to guard the dwarf lest he fall into the water. Twenty were to watch over him as he slept in camp, lest he come to harm. “My majesty wishes to see this pygmy more than the gifts of the mine-land [Sinai] and of Punt [the Red Sea lands].”6 The royal message, originally preserved on papyrus, would have perished almost immediately had not Harkhuf caused it to be inscribed on the wall of his sepulcher after years as a prosperous senior courtier.
For centuries, donkeys by the hundred plied well-trodden tracks between the Nile and the Red Sea and deep into the Western Desert. The Theban Desert Road Survey, a project of Yale University, has traced some of the desolate caravan routes that crossed forbidding terrain to the Kharga Oasis, 177 kilometers (110 miles) west of the Nile.7 Thebes (modern-day Luxor) became an important hub for trade east and west, especially during a turbulent period in approximately 1800 BCE, when Hyksos invaders from Southwest Asia occupied the Nile Delta. The pharaohs marooned in Upper Egypt responded by controlling desert caravan routes that led east and west and trading with the Nubian rulers of Kerma upstream. In about 2000 BCE, the Theban ruler Mentuhotep II annexed the western oasis region. So successful were Egyptian donkey caravans that, for centuries, the desert effectively became a fourth power in the Egyptian equation.
The well-watered Kharga Oasis extends ninety-six kilometers (sixty miles) north and south along a limestone ridge in the Western Desert. The oasis became a major caravan crossroads both for the well-trodden Girja Road from the Nile and for routes to Nubia and places to the north. Umm Mawagir (“mother of bread molds” in Arabic) was a large permanent settlement of several thousand people at the end of the Girja Road that flourished between 1650 and 1550 BCE. Its excavators, John and Deborah Darnell, found an administrative building, grain silos, storerooms, workshops, and enormous numbers of bread molds, all protected by a military garrison. Anyone wanting to trade in the Western Desert had to deal with the people at Kharga, whether they were driving a handful of donkeys or hundreds of beasts. From the oasis, the archaeologists are mapping ancient trails, using potsherds (pottery fragments) from an enormous area, including Nubia. Umm Mawagir and the earlier oasis settlement at Dakhla Oasis, to the south, were the bases that allowed the rulers of Thebes to control donkey caravan trade over an enormous tract of arid landscapes.
Donkeys were everywhere in Egypt, as commonplace as people working in the fields. At the tomb workers’ village at Deir el-Medina, on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Thebes, dozens of ostraca (potsherds, or smooth limestone flakes used as “writing pads”) record medical remedies, love poems, and the transactions of the donkey trade, written between 1500 and 1200 BCE. The Deir el-Medina workers were unusually literate and quite prosperous. Their ostraca record the trading of donkeys, people borrowing them, owners commonly renting them out—the Ancient Egyptian equivalent of a rent-a-car. Owners leased out their beasts for an average of a month, sometimes longer, with the transactions faithfully recorded. The records preserve the inevitable problems: failure to pay, disagreements over prices, and the unexpected death of what were valuable animals. Water carriers, woodcutters, and policemen rented donkeys, for which they paid about three and a quarter sacks of grain a month,
about two-thirds a worker’s salary. This must have been a profitable business. Records one ostracon: “Year 3, second month of winter day 1. This day, giving the donkey for hire to the policeman Amen-Kha: makes 5 copper deben for the month. And it spent 42 days with him.” (A deben was about a quarter pound of copper.) Leases were sometimes guaranteed against potential disputes, and occasionally terminated early, especially if the animal fell ill. “Year 31, fourth month of winter, day 17. Giving the donkey to Hori in place of his father,” records another document. Ten days later “[the donkey] died, although his lease was not [complete].”8 Situations like this were hard on the owner, perhaps, but the business was lucrative, with so many donkeys used for agriculture and load carrying.
Egypt’s contacts with Mesopotamia were of little economic importance compared with the gold and tropical products obtained from Nubia and the semiprecious stones, copper, and other vital commodities packed in from the Sinai. Some official caravans, sent to obtain copper and other strategic commodities, involved hundreds of people and thousands of donkeys. Apart from riverboats and coastal merchantmen, all diplomatic ventures and trading expeditions relied on strings of donkeys, which plodded stoically along arid trackways far from the Nile. These “average joes” linked temples and oases; cities, towns, and villages hundreds of kilometers apart. Their arduous journeys globalized much of the eastern Mediterranean world.
CHAPTER 9
