AN OSTRACON DEPICTING A RED JUNGLE-FOWL.
(The earliest known drawing of the domestic cock.)
By Howard Carter.
Plate XX, fig. 1.
Among the numerous limestone ostraca found in Lord Carnation's excavations in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, No. 341[1] may be said to be of exceptional interest. It depicts in black linear drawing upon a splinter of limestone a male-bird of the genus Gallus of ornithologists, and it appears to represent in its early domestic form Gallus ferrugineus ferrugineus Gmelin, the Red Jungle-fowl.
It was discovered during the winter season 1920–21, with numerous other ostraca—comprising notes and sketches upon limestone splinters of the workmen of the royal hypogea, in the lower undisturbed stratum between the tomb of Ramesses IX and the Eighteenth Dynasty tomb-chamber wherein the cache of Ikhnaton (Amenophis IV)[2] was made.
By the various strata above the thin crust of natural detritus covering the bed-rock, strata which comprise chiefly debris from the ancient excavation of the surrounding royal tombs[3], this ostracon may be dated as not earlier than the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty and not latnr than the period of the tomb of Ramesses IX of the Twentieth Dynasty, or in other words circa 1425–1123 B.C. Certainly it is very improbable that it dates before or after the Theban New Empire (circa 1580–1090 B.C.) as the royal and private tombs in this particular locality, Bibân El-Mulûk, belong solely to that epoch, the earliest tomb in the valley being that Tuthmosis I and the latest the last of the Ramessides.
Thus, we have before us not only the earliest drawing of the domestic cock, but absolute authentic evidence of the domestic fowl in the form of the Red Jungle-fowl being known to the ancient Thebans between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries before our era. And, in all probability, this ostracon depicts the genus if not the actual species of fowl referred to in the famous Annals of Tuthmosis III[4]; wherein are mentioned birds that "bear every day" coming to Egypt among tribute from a country somewhere between Syria and Sinear, i.e. Babylonia.
The Galli are of purely Asiatic origin, and Gallus ferrugineus ferrugineus Gm. appears with little doubt to be the parent stock of the domestic fowl[5]. Its habitat is Farther India and Malaysia. i.e., Sumatra, Malay Peninsula. Hainan westwards to Burma[6].
- ↑ Sequence number in those excavations.
- ↑ Called by Theo. M. Davis the tomb of Queen Tiy.
- ↑ The tombs in the near vicinity belong to: Ramesses II; Meneptah; Ramesses VI; a tomb-chamber of the Eighteenth Dynasty made for the cache of Akhenaten; and Ramesses IX.
- ↑ 1501–1447 B.C. according to Breasted's chronology.
- ↑ Vide Darwin, Animals and Plants under Domestication, 1, pp. 233–246.
- ↑ Dr P. R. Lowe. of the British Meuseum (Natural History), has kindly given me the following distribution of the different species and forms of Jungle-fowl: 1. Gallus ferrugineus ferrugineus Gmelin. Sumatra, Malay Pen. to Hainan westwards to Burma (introduced to Tahiti, Tonga, and other South Sea
