The Intimate Bond (16 page)

Life was good—until the Sahara began to dry up, around 5000
BCE
. Both grazing and water became harder to find, except in widely scattered locations across the arid landscape. Instead of staying in small territories, the herders now followed food and water, which meant they had to cover long distances and move at frequent intervals. Cattle are demanding beasts, for they dehydrate easily and require water at least once a day, especially in hot environments such as the Sahara. Each group would have relied heavily on younger men, who would have moved adult beasts to outlying grazing and water supplies. The groups would have turned to the donkey to transport families, firewood, and other essentials.

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”).