es had succeeded in domesticating some
species, nowadays rebels to restraint. It is my belief that
the animals represented were tamed, but not domesticated,
and were the result of great hunting expeditions in the
desert. The facts which Lenormant brought forward to support
his theory may be used against him. For instance, the fawn
of the gazelle nourished by its mother does not prove that
it was bred in captivity; the gazelle may have been caught
before calving, or just after the birth of its young. The
fashion of keeping flocks of animals taken from the desert
died out between the XIIth and XVIIIth dynasties. At the
time of the new empire, they had only one or two solitary
animals as pets for women or children, the mummies of which
were sometimes buried by the side of their mistresses.

Experience alone taught the hunter to distinguish between those species
from which he could draw profit, and others whose wildness made them
impossible to domesticate. The subjection of the most useful kinds had
not been finished when the historic period opened.

[Illustration: 082.jpg A SWINEHERD AND HIS PIGS. 2]

2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painting in a Theban tomb
of the XVIIIth dynasty.

The ass, the sheep, and the goat were already domesticated, but the pig
was still out in the marshes in a semi-wild state, under the care of
special herdsmen,[*] and the religious rites preserved the remembrance
of the times in which the ox was so little tamed, that in order to
capture while grazing the animals needed for sacrifice or for slaughter,
it was necessary to use the lasso.[***]

* The hatred of the Egyptians for the pig (Herodotus, ii.
47) is attributed to mythological motives. Lippert thinks
this antipathy did not exist in Egypt in primitive times. At
the outset the pig would have been the principal food of the
people; then, like the dog in other regions, it must have
been replaced at the table by animals of a higher order--
gazelles, sheep, goats, oxen--and would have thus fallen
into contempt. To the excellent reasons given by Lippert
could be added others drawn from the study of the Egyptian
myths, to prove that the pig has often been highly esteemed.
Thus, Isis is represented, down to late times, under the
form of a sow, and a sow, whether followed or not by her
young is one of