Dogs in History Part 1: Dogs of Ancient Egypt — Hunters, Companions and Guardians of the Dead

When we think about animals in Ancient Egypt, cats usually steal the limelight. Yet dogs had been living alongside people in the Nile Valley for thousands of years before many of Egypt’s most famous monuments were built. They hunted with humans, guarded homes and property, travelled with their owners and appeared beside people in tomb paintings and reliefs. Some were given names, some were buried, and during later periods of Egyptian history millions of dogs and other canids were mummified as part of religious practices connected with one of Egypt’s most recognisable gods: Anubis.

The relationship between dogs and the Ancient Egyptians was therefore far more complicated than the popular idea that Egyptians simply “worshipped” animals. Dogs could be workers, hunting partners, companions, status symbols and religious offerings, while canids also became closely associated with the world of the dead. Their place in Egyptian society changed according to period, circumstance and purpose, making their history much more interesting than the simple label of “pet”.

Dogs Were in Egypt Before the Pharaohs

Dogs appear in Egypt’s archaeological record before the beginning of the dynastic period. Evidence of domestic dogs has been found at prehistoric Egyptian sites, while dogs and dog-like animals also appear in Predynastic art. At Hierakonpolis, an important settlement in southern Egypt, dogs were among the domestic animals buried within the elite cemetery known as HK6. Archaeologists have identified dozens of dog burials there alongside the remains of both domestic and wild animals, suggesting that dogs already occupied an important place within human communities long before Egypt became the kingdom of pharaohs and monumental pyramids.

Dogs were also represented in some of Egypt’s earliest ceremonial artwork. The remarkable Two Dog Palette, dating to approximately 3300–3100 BCE and now held by the Ashmolean Museum, is framed at the top by two large dogs. Its decoration contains a mixture of real and fantastic animals, showing that animals could possess symbolic meanings as well as practical importance. By the time the great dynasties of Ancient Egypt developed, dogs were therefore hardly newcomers. They had already been living and working alongside people for generations.

Working Dogs of Ancient Egypt

One of the clearest roles for Egyptian dogs was hunting. Tomb paintings and reliefs repeatedly show lean, athletic dogs pursuing desert animals or accompanying hunters. A Middle Kingdom relief from the tomb of Khety at Deir el-Bahri, for example, preserves the head of a large dog beside a hunter, while New Kingdom artwork shows dogs involved in the pursuit of animals such as gazelle and ibex. The Metropolitan Museum of Art summarises their roles as including hunting, guarding, status and companionship, suggesting that dogs could occupy a number of practical and social positions within Egyptian life.

It is easy to understand why dogs would have been useful to early human communities. Their acute hearing and sense of smell could alert people to approaching strangers, predators or other dangers. Speed and stamina made certain dogs valuable when pursuing game, while their ability to cooperate with humans offered advantages that few other domesticated animals could provide. Dogs were not merely decorative additions to Egyptian households; many would have had genuine working functions.

Ancient Egyptian dogs were also unlikely to have formed one uniform population. Artwork shows considerable variation in their appearance. Some were slender, long-legged animals with narrow heads and bodies apparently suited to chasing game, while others were more heavily built. Ears could be erect or dropped, and tails might be straight, curved or tightly curled. These differences suggest that Egyptians recognised and perhaps deliberately selected dogs for particular physical and behavioural characteristics.

The Egyptian term often written today as tesem or tjesem is associated with a lean hunting-dog type familiar from Old Kingdom representations. From the Middle Kingdom onwards, Egyptian artwork appears to show an increasingly varied range of canine forms. However, this brings us to one of the biggest problems with the way Ancient Egyptian dogs are sometimes described today.

Were These Basenjis, Salukis or Pharaoh Hounds?

Pictures of Ancient Egyptian dogs are frequently shared online with captions claiming that they depict particular modern breeds. A prick-eared dog with a curled tail may be identified as a Basenji, while a long-legged hunting dog might be labelled a Saluki. Other Egyptian dogs are regularly described as Pharaoh Hounds.

The resemblance can certainly be striking, but we should be extremely cautious about applying modern breed labels to animals that lived thousands of years ago. Modern dog breeds are populations created and maintained through organised selective breeding, pedigrees and relatively closed gene pools. The formally recognised breeds we know today did not exist in Ancient Egypt in the modern kennel-club sense.

Ancient Egyptians undoubtedly selected dogs for useful characteristics, and different populations or recognisable physical types certainly existed. Hunting dogs with particular builds may have been deliberately bred because their shape, stamina, speed or temperament made them effective at a particular job. However, appearance alone cannot demonstrate that a dog painted or carved several thousand years ago belonged to the same genetically defined population as a modern breed.

Rather than describing an Egyptian tomb dog as “a Basenji” or “a Pharaoh Hound”, it is therefore more accurate to describe the animal by its physical type, perhaps as a prick-eared, curled-tail dog or a long-legged hunting hound. The resemblance between ancient and modern dogs can still tell us something interesting. Similar body shapes may repeatedly appear because they are effective for similar purposes. What it does not automatically prove is an unbroken breed lineage stretching back five thousand years.

They Gave Their Dogs Names

Perhaps one of the most relatable pieces of evidence about dogs in Ancient Egypt comes from something surprisingly simple: the Egyptians gave some of their dogs names. Around seventy canine names are known from Egyptian texts and inscriptions. Some appear to describe appearance or personality, while others sound remarkably similar to the kinds of names people might still give dogs today.

The Metropolitan Museum’s research records examples translated as names such as Blacky, Trusty, Son-of-the-Moon, North-wind and even Good-for-Nothing. Dogs can also appear close to their owners in tomb scenes rather than simply being shown as anonymous working animals. This does not mean we should assume every Egyptian household treated dogs exactly as modern families do. Ancient Egyptian civilisation lasted for thousands of years, and relationships with dogs undoubtedly varied according to period, wealth, occupation and individual circumstance.

Nevertheless, naming an individual animal is significant. It suggests that at least some dogs were recognised as individuals rather than being regarded simply as interchangeable livestock or working tools. Occasionally, the archaeological evidence goes even further and reveals just how highly an individual dog could be valued.

The Remarkable Burial of Abuwtiyuw

One of Ancient Egypt’s most famous named dogs was Abuwtiyuw, whose name is also transliterated in several slightly different ways. A limestone inscription discovered at Giza records an extraordinary honour granted to this dog during the Old Kingdom.

Abuwtiyuw apparently belonged to an unidentified man associated with the royal court rather than directly belonging to the king. The inscription describes the dog as a guard of His Majesty and records that the king ordered an elaborate ceremonial burial for him. Abuwtiyuw was to receive a coffin from the royal treasury, large quantities of fine linen and incense, along with perfumed ointment, and arrangements were made for his burial. Egyptologist George Reisner, who published the inscription, dated it broadly to the Fifth or Sixth Dynasty.

It is important not to turn Abuwtiyuw’s story into a modern sentimental account that goes beyond the evidence. We cannot know exactly what his everyday relationship with his owner looked like, how he was treated in life or whether his owner felt about him in precisely the same way that a modern person might feel about a beloved family dog. What we can say is that royal resources were spent on providing an individual dog with an elaborate burial. Whatever his exact role and relationship with the people around him, Abuwtiyuw clearly mattered.

Dogs and Death

Ancient Egyptian attitudes towards death were extraordinarily complex. Death was not necessarily understood as the complete end of existence. Correct preparation of the body, appropriate ritual behaviour and religious knowledge could allow the deceased to continue into another state of existence. Burial practices, mummification, tomb construction and funerary texts were all connected with the hope of preserving and protecting the individual beyond death.

Dogs and wild canids became deeply entangled with this funerary world, and the most famous example is Anubis. He is usually described today as a jackal-headed god, although identifying the precise species represented by the Egyptian divine canid is not straightforward. Ancient artists were creating the image of a supernatural being rather than producing a zoological field guide, and attempts to identify the animal as one exact modern species can therefore be misleading.

Anubis was closely associated with cemeteries, embalming, mummification and the protection of the dead. He could be represented as a black canid lying alert or as a human figure with a canine head. His connection with burial grounds may have had some basis in the Egyptian landscape itself. Wild canids frequented the desert margins where cemeteries were situated, and scavenging animals could potentially pose a threat to buried human remains.

Egyptian religion frequently transformed dangerous or potentially destructive forces from the natural world into protective supernatural ones. A creature capable of disturbing the dead could symbolically become the creature that guarded them. In this sense, the canine form associated with Anubis may have represented both the danger posed by the desert scavenger and the protection required to keep the deceased safe.

The familiar black colour of Anubis was also symbolic rather than an attempt to portray the normal colour of a jackal or wild canid. Black carried powerful associations within Egyptian religion, including regeneration and the rich, fertile black soil deposited by the Nile. Anubis was therefore far more than simply “the dog god”. He belonged to a much larger religious system concerned with death, preservation, transformation and rebirth.

Were Pet Dogs Mummified?

Some pet or companion dogs appear to have been mummified and buried, but animal mummification in Ancient Egypt did not have one single purpose. Understanding the difference between the various forms of animal burial is essential if we want to avoid creating an overly romanticised picture of Egyptian relationships with dogs.

An animal might be preserved because it had been a valued companion. Other animals could represent manifestations of particular gods, while some were intended as provisions for the deceased. Vast numbers of animals were also produced as votive offerings connected with particular deities. These different practices could look superficially similar archaeologically, but they represented very different relationships between humans, animals and religion.

A carefully buried individual dog that had lived alongside a person should therefore not automatically be placed in the same category as a dog bred specifically to become a religious offering. The scale on which animals were eventually produced for the votive trade demonstrates just how important this distinction is.

The Millions of Dogs Beneath Saqqara

At Saqqara, south of modern Cairo, an enormous network of underground galleries was associated with the cult of Anubis. Inside these catacombs were the remains of extraordinary numbers of mummified canids. Research led by Paul Nicholson, Salima Ikram and colleagues estimated that the larger catacomb may once have contained approximately seven to eight million animals, most of them domestic dogs, although other canids and occasional individuals from other species were also present.

These were not simply millions of elderly pets that had lived long lives before being lovingly mummified by grieving owners. Many of the dogs were extremely young. Sampling revealed a high proportion of immature animals, including newborn puppies, leading researchers to conclude that dogs must have been bred on a very large scale in order to supply the religious economy surrounding the cult. Some older animals received more elaborate treatment and may have occupied different roles within the temple environment.

For modern dog owners, this can be uncomfortable to read, but it is also an important reminder that we should not romanticise the past. The claim that Ancient Egyptians “loved dogs so much that they mummified millions of them” badly misunderstands what the archaeological evidence tells us. The enormous Saqqara deposits were primarily part of a religious votive system, rather than a gigantic cemetery containing millions of treasured family pets.

People could apparently obtain a mummified animal associated with a particular deity and dedicate it as an offering, perhaps in the hope that the offering would carry a prayer or request to the god. The animals therefore possessed enormous religious significance, but religious significance does not necessarily mean that each individual dog had previously been a cherished companion.

So Did the Egyptians Worship Dogs?

Not exactly. Saying that Ancient Egyptians “worshipped dogs” is another modern simplification that fails to reflect the complexity of Egyptian religion. Ordinary household dogs were not generally worshipped simply because they were dogs.

Egyptian religion frequently expressed divine qualities through animals. A god might be represented in animal form, human form or as a combination of human and animal characteristics because particular qualities of that animal helped communicate something about the deity. The canine appearance of Anubis therefore did not mean that every dog was considered divine.

Similarly, the existence of sacred animals and animal offerings does not mean that every individual belonging to a particular species was treated in the same way. The same society could use dogs for hunting, keep them as guards, value particular individuals as companions and breed large numbers of animals for use in religious rituals. These ideas may appear contradictory from a modern perspective, but within Ancient Egyptian society they could exist alongside one another.

Dogs as Companions

Among the spectacular tombs, mummies and representations of gods, some of the smallest surviving objects may offer particularly interesting glimpses into the everyday relationship between dogs and humans. A Middle Kingdom faience dog figurine held by the Metropolitan Museum was deposited as part of burial equipment. Although such objects could carry symbolic meanings, the museum has suggested that the dog may have represented a wish for companionship.

Other surviving objects show collared dogs, resting dogs and dogs accompanying their owners. An Eighteenth Dynasty ivory carving even depicts a leaping hunting dog with a movable jaw. A lever beneath its body causes the animal’s mouth to open and close. It is both a remarkably observant representation of canine movement and an object capable of carrying wider symbolic meaning.

Objects such as these can make Ancient Egyptian dogs feel surprisingly familiar to us. That does not mean their owners necessarily thought about dogs in exactly the same way that modern people do. What they reveal is that humans were already paying close attention to individual dogs: how they ran, how they hunted, how they rested and what made one animal different from another.

A Relationship Lasting Thousands of Years

Ancient Egypt existed for such an enormous span of time that there was never one single Egyptian relationship with dogs. A Predynastic hunting animal from the fourth millennium BCE, an Old Kingdom court dog such as Abuwtiyuw and a puppy bred for the Anubis cult more than two thousand years later belonged to very different societies and religious worlds. Treating all of those animals as though they had identical roles would flatten thousands of years of social and cultural change.

That distinction matters, but throughout Egyptian history dogs repeatedly appear close to humans. They hunted beside people, guarded homes and property, were given names and wore collars. They appeared in paintings, reliefs and carved objects, and some individual dogs received burials that suggest they were highly valued. At the same time, dogs and other canids acquired powerful religious significance, particularly through their association with Anubis and with one of the most important boundaries imaginable: the boundary between life and death.

Ancient Egypt therefore gives us something much more interesting than the familiar claim that “Egyptians worshipped dogs”. It reveals an animal capable of occupying many different roles at once. A dog could be a worker and a hunter, a guardian and a companion, a marker of status or part of a religious offering. Through the image of Anubis, the canine form could even become a supernatural protector of the dead.

Thousands of years later, we may not share the beliefs of the people who lived beside the Nile, and we should be careful not to project our modern idea of pet ownership backwards onto them. Yet one part of their world remains instantly recognisable. Wherever humans built their lives, dogs were rarely very far away.