Not a German hippo - a ancient Nile horse

[Erpingham]

Here's something for those interested in chariot horses.

[Duncan Head]

Initially the date is given in terms of Egyptian history - "Third Intermediate Period" - and there is a reference to the New Kingdom; then in the last sentence we get "the post-colonial Napatan Period", a reference to Nubian chronology. I think the message is that this horse belonged to the Napatan Kushite kingdom.

We do know that the Kushite kings were fond of their horses.

[Jim Webster]

Initially the date is given in terms of Egyptian history - "Third Intermediate Period" - and there is a reference to the New Kingdom; then in the last sentence we get "the post-colonial Napatan Period", a reference to Nubian chronology. I think the message is that this horse belonged to the Napatan Kushite kingdom.

We do know that the Kushite kings were fond of their horses.

what intrigued me when I read up on the Kushites was that they were major horse breeders

[Patrick Waterson]

The dating is a bit curious.  The article begins with "a window into human-animal relationships more than 3,000 years ago" before defining the timespan involved as "the Third Intermediate Period, 1050-728 B.C.E.," all but 40 years of which is less than 3,000 years ago and all of which is pre-Kushite as far as Egypt itself is concerned.

Tombos itself has yielded the following (I quote the Wikipedia summary):

A statue to the 25th Dynasty Pharaoh Taharqa, abandoned for over 2700 years, contains inscriptions. Around 3000 years ago, there were pyramids dedicated to ten noble Egyptians.

In 2000, several discoveries were made by archaeologist Professor Stuart Tyson Smith of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Smith and his team discovered the remains of a pyramid more than 3,500 years old, and the buried remains of an Egyptian colonial administrator named Siamun and his mother, Wernu. The two mummies were intact, and were buried with Ushabti figurines, a boomerang, and painted Mycenaean terracotta. The burial chamber includes a series of rooms, some plundered by thieves, while others were undisturbed in whole or in part. Also, an epigraphic survey by the British Museum uncovered pharaonic rock-inscriptions.

Taharqa is very definitely Kushite period, being the next-to-last of the Kushite rulers of the Ethiopian Dynasty, and I would be tempted to place the burial in that time rather than in the 3,000+ year bracket.

There are two 'Napata Periods', one in 1550-1069 BC, which would accord with the dating hints in the early part of the article, and one in about 700-300 BC, which would be the one Sarah Schraeder refers to, Duncan selects, and, given the presence of the Taharqa statue at Tombos and the tie-in with Lisa Heidorn's article, would be my choice also.  I suspect the reporter may have confused the two Napata Periods.

We do know that the Kushite kings were fond of their horses.

And one may wonder whether the 'large horses' of Kush (presumably similar to the later Dongola breed) were limited to pulling vehicles or whether they helped to carry the additional armour for man and mount which seems to have characterised later Assyrian cavalry.

[Erpingham]

I hadn't realised this was quite such an important find.  I also confess not to have read the full article.  Does it tell us about the size of this "large horse"?

[Patrick Waterson]

Not explicitly, but there is a black-and-while measuring stick next to the skeleton.  If one knew the size of the stick ...

[Duncan Head]

On re-reading, I see the article gives a link to the original Antiquity report, and that one can freely download that report as pdf. Figure 4 of that download gives a photo of the horse with a metre scale next to it. Hard to tell, especially with the forelegs not laying straight, but maybe 1.6-1.7 metres at the shoulder, say somewhere about 15-16 hands. So quite big, if I've measured it anything like right - the more horsey amongst you may be able to do better.

[Erpingham]

On re-reading, I see the article gives a link to the original Antiquity report, and that one can freely download that report as pdf. Figure 4 of that download gives a photo of the horse with a metre scale next to it. Hard to tell, especially with the forelegs not laying straight, but maybe 1.6-1.7 metres at the shoulder, say somewhere about 15-16 hands. So quite big, if I've measured it anything like right - the more horsey amongst you may be able to do better.

I had a go at measuring long bones and applying one of the archaeological formulae (Witt's) and, presuming I measured the femur correctly at 37cm, gives a height between 1200-1280 cm at the withers (shoulder).  11-13 hands.  Using Kiesewalter's formula, 1300 cm - 13 hands.

With a full skeleton and lab measurement, it should have been easy to use multiple reference points and get an accurate estimate.  Presumably they did but didn't report it.

Good colour reference for those painting up Kushite chariots - chestnut with white socks.

[Patrick Waterson]

My own attempts at pasting the picture into Paint and measuring from there give measurements more in line with Duncan's, albeit with similar caveats.  I wonder if the breed had a slightly short femur relative to those Witt takes as standard, or whether there is some other reason why equine formulae and direct measurement seem to give differing results.

[Erpingham]

My own attempts at pasting the picture into Paint and measuring from there give measurements more in line with Duncan's, albeit with similar caveats.  I wonder if the breed had a slightly short femur relative to those Witt takes as standard, or whether there is some other reason why equine formulae and direct measurement seem to give differing results.

The formulae do seem to have been based on samples using several different breeds of horse, so I doubt it is a conformation issue.  I've no guarantee that my measurements are accurate - as I say, we really need the bone report, where the dimensions of the bones as measured in the lab would be laid out.