General Dog History

This last appears to have been regarded as an especial household pet,for it was admitted into the living rooms and taken as a companion for walks out of doors. It was furnished with a collar of leaves, or of leather, or precious metal wrought into the form of leaves, and when it died it was embalmed. Every town throughout Egypt had its place of interment for canine mummies.

The dog was not greatly appreciated in Palestine, and in both the Old and New Testaments it is commonly spoken of with scorn and contempt as an "unclean beast." Even the familiar reference to the Sheepdog in the Book of Job--"_But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock_"--is not without a suggestion of contempt, and it is significant that the only biblical allusion to the dog as a recognised companion of man occurs in the apocryphal Book of Tobit (v. 16), "_So they went forth both, and the young man's dog with them_."

The pagan Greeks and Romans had a kindlier feeling for dumb animals than had the Jews. Their hounds, like their horses, were selected with discrimination, bred with care, and held in high esteem, receiving pet names; and the literatures of Greece and Rome contain many tributes to the courage, obedience, sagacity, and affectionate fidelity of the dog. The Phoenicians, too, were unquestionably lovers of the dog, quick to recognise the points of special breeds. In their colony in Carthage, during the reign of Sardanapalus, they had already possessed themselves of the Assyrian Mastiff, which they probably exported to far-off Britain, as they are said to have exported the Water Spaniel to Ireland and to Spain.

It is a significant circumstance when we come to consider the probable origin of the dog, that there are indications of his domestication at such early periods by so many peoples in different parts of the world. As we have seen, dogs were more or less subjugated and tamed by primitive man, by the Assyrians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans, as also by the ancient barbaric tribes of the western hemisphere. The important question now arises: Had all these dogs a common origin in a definite parent stock, or did they spring from separate and unrelated parents?

Dog History Page (2)             Dog History Page (4)

Go back to General Dog History Home Page