The camel
Terracotta camel head, Late PeriodSource of the picture: Jon Bodsworth
Domesticated and used in the east - according to the Bible Arabs crossed the desert with dromedaries in the 'time of Jacob' - camels, mostly the one-humped dromedary but also the two-humped Bactrian camel, were introduced into Egypt in significant numbers only under the Persians. Both hieroglyphic and hieratic have no sign for camel, in Demotic the semitic loanword gm(w)l is used, such as in the Tale of the Armour of Inaros:
... the bank was [crowded] with horse riders pressed together, their chariots, the camels and the footsoldiers...The Egyptians on the whole seem to have preferred the hardy donkey for their journeys into the Red Lands.After the transliteration and German translation on the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae web site
G. Vittmann ed., Demotische Textdatenbank, Akademie für Sprache und Literatur Mainz => literarische Texte => Erzählungen u.ä. => Inaros/Petubastis-Texte => Kampf um den Panzer des Inaros (P. Krall etc.) => P. Krall (Kampf um den Panzer des Inaros) [XIV,10]
