Set Saluki

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The Seth-Animal:a Dog and its Master

As depicted in ancient Egyptian paintings, reliefsand sculpture, the head of the god Seth is takenfrom the shape-shifting Seth-animal. More than

twenty animals have been suggested as having been theinspiration for the Seth-animal, including the ass, oryx,aardvark, giraffe, pig and an extinct dog. Others havesuggested a composite animal, a mix of real or imagi-nary beasts.

Many Egyptologists agree that the Seth-animal wasnever a real creature. Even the form and meaning ofSeths hieroglyphic determinative changed. At first adog-like form (see below), utilised in words denotingaggression and storms, it later became a seated figurewith the characteristic features of Seth and signified ill-ness.

Most gods retained their faunal characteristicsthroughout history (like the Horus falcon and Thoth ibisand even true composite animals like Ammit, theDevourer), but Seth and the Seth-animals appearancechanged more than once. From the earliest times to theMiddle Kingdom there are no representations of Sethin his god form, and the older the depiction, the moreobvious the dog-like appearance of the head. The pro-nounced sharply-curved beak-like nose was a late arti-fact, but it was this particular shape that became theaccepted form of Seth.

The basic reason why there has always been such con-fusion about the Seth-animal is simply because all ver-sions of the beast have been conflated, with little regardfor the age of the representations. To find an origin, onemust look to the time of origin.

Generally, the earliest Seth-animal is claimed toappear on ivory labels or combs of the Naqada Period,but these figures are usually missing some of the classicfeatures. Until recently, the true Seth-animals first cer-tain attestation is from standards on the famous KingScorpion macehead. This ceremonial macehead, c.3100 BC, features a king wearing the White Crown ofUpper Egypt. At the least, this is unequivocal evidence

that followers of Seth supported a royal clan at this earlytime. A drawing of these tiny figures shows two dog-likeanimals with erect feathered tail, erect square-tipped

Top: an image of Seth from an Eighteenth Dynasty relief in the Open AirMuseum at Karnak. Photo: RP.

Above: the changing hieroglyphs of Seth over time, from proud dogto stick-figure, to seated hook-nosed god, to a dead ass.

Images: courtesy Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden.

Seth, one of Egypts earliest gods, has always been a conundrum; originallybenign, he came to represent chaos and war. What has always been uncertain isthe exact nature of the Seth animal.Ken Moss suggests a likely candidate.


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ears, and a snout with the same kind of stripes as theears (see above).

An even older Seth-animal was found in 1995, aboutforty kilometres northwest of Luxor at Gebel Tjauti (seebelow). It is a rock carving, c. 3180 BC, which is part ofa memorial tableau to King Scorpion that appears torecord the conquest of the Naqada region.

In addition to the Seth-animal, there are many realis-tic animals on the rock inscription, and even a depictionof a ruler with a falcon above his head, possibly the firstuse of the Horus title. As for the Seth-animal, the dis-coverers tell of a protodynastic depiction of the strangeanimal of the god Seth, the earliest certain depiction ofthis beast from the vicinity of Seths cult center atOmbos. The carving clearly depicts a sleek type of dogwith erect tail and the distinctive square-tipped ears ofthe Seth-animal. The snout mimics the ears shape aswell and this may relate to the macehead depictionswhere the ears and snout had something in common,

which the artists tried to replicate. Perhaps the livinganimal had a squarish muzzle, or the snouts fur patternwas similar to its ears. Note also how this portrayal ofthe head shares similarities with the early stick-figurestyle of the Seth hieroglyph.

These oldest representations of the Seth-animal areclearly of a dog, but with two unique features: an erecttail and erect squared-off ears. The body of the Seth-animal has in fact always been that of a canine, withpaws, and even the head was dog-like in the beginning.It was only over time that the head became exaggeratedwith a long, narrow, down-turned snout. This change

accounted for the guesses of aardvark, tapir etc. as pos-sible candidates for the Seth-animal and caused some ofthe confusion surrounding the Seth-animals identity.

As for the tail, it too changed over time. From an erect,smooth, or fur-tipped tail it become portrayed as aforked rod and finally an actual feathered arrow. It hasbeen suggested that the Egyptians used the erect tailmotif for the aggressive god Seth because it is a sure signof aggressive behaviour in certain animals such asgiraffes and dogs. However, it is the square-tipped earsthat have always been the key identifier of the Seth-ani-mal as well as the major stumbling block in identifyingthe animal it was based upon. No animal has ever hadears that naturally ended in squared tips, but it was pre-cisely this characteristic that led to my fortuitous discov-ery of the real Seth-animal.

While researching the god Seth, I happened upon aNational Geographic program called The HuntingHounds of Arabia, and there on the screen was a livingSeth-animal. It was a streamlined dog with erect feath-ered tail and erect square-tipped ears running in thedesert scrub after a desperate rabbit. The answer to thesquare-tipped ears was explained by the narrator. The

dogs ears were cropped, that is the tips of the ears hadbeen cut off by their owners. This is a long-standing tra-dition, still carried out in Syria and elsewhere, that isdone in the belief it helps the dogs avoid being snaggedon branches while pursuing their game. The breed is themagnificent Saluki, the quintessential Arabian hound ofthe Bedouin and others.

Focusing now on the Seth-animal, I was delighted todiscover that my old friend (in spirit) E.A. Wallis Budge

Above: a Middle Kingdom representation of the God Seth, from the throne-base of a statue of King Senusret I, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Photo: RP.

Above: an early representation of the Seth animal, from a rock carvingat Gebel Tjauti.

Image: courtesy of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.

Above: representations of the Seth-animal from the macehead of KingScorpion. Image: courtesy Dr. Angela McDonald.


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pre-empted my discovery by some seventy years. In hisvery last book, he not only concluded that a dog was thebasis of the Seth-animal, he even guessed correctly that

it was the fleet and aggressive Saluki hunting dog.In 1934 Budge wrote that although this dog does not

keep his ears pointed or his tail erect when he is lyingdown, no one who has ever lived in tents with Arabswho keep Salukis, and seen him frequently, can fail toidentify the Seth animal with the Saluki.

Dogs are often touted as being the first domesticatedanimal and some even claim the Saluki itself is the old-est domestic dog. The body can be either smooth like aGreyhounds or with feathered tails, ears, and legs. Thedogs of the feathered variety are the ones most likely tohave their ears cropped. The photos on this page show

Saluki and the reader is encouraged to visit Saluki web-sites to see them running and hunting. Note especiallythe arched snout in the photograph above and the tri-angular shaped head and slanted eyes of the dog on theright. Does not this latter picture compare favourablywith both the petroglyph of the Gebel Tjauti and thestick-figure Seth-animal determinative?

The erect status of both the tail and ears of the Seth-animal is also now clear. The animal was portrayed in itshunting state rather than while resting like most dogs orcanine deities (Anubis, for example, who was a dog saidby some to have been fathered by Seth). This fits per-fectly with the god Seth himself, the all-powerful god of

action, a hunter and perpetual dispatcher of the serpentApep [Apophis]. Abu Nuwas, a ninth century Arab poet,wrote of a hunting Saluki: Like an arrow it was sent,tearing away from his own skin, lightning like a cloud.

The Saluki is a dog of the desert, bred mainly forhunting gazelles, foxes and hares. Hunting by sight,these sighthounds can run down their prey at somesixty-five kilometres an hour. The Saluki is the singlesacred exception to the Muslim convention that dogs areunclean beasts, and they share their masters homes anddinner tables.

Today, in Arabia and Syria, they are often accompa-

nied by falconers, and the falcons and Saluki combinetheir talents in the hunt for game. The falcon can spot adistant gazelle and, in diving towards it, acts as a beacon

for the long-distance-running Saluki. They also tradejobs, with the Saluki flushing out hidden birds that arethen pounced upon by the falcon. Like the Saluki, thefalcon is another accepted creature within Islam. Thisaspect of the Saluki, a desert hunting animal that isassociated with another desert hunting animal, the fal-con, melds nicely with their respective gods. Dog-Sethand falcon-Horus were inseparable in Egypts mytholo-gy. Toby Wilkinson states that the pairing of Horus andSeth is attested from the middle of the First Dynasty. Weknow, too, that the Pyramid and Coffin Texts constant-ly refer to Horus and Seth in one breath. One won-ders if there is any philological connection between the

Arabic term for the Saluki as el hor, the noble one, andthe Egyptian Hor, meaning Horus. And is the strangedual Horus-Seth, with two heads sharing one body,related to this question?

A revival of sorts concerning this association occurredduring the New Kingdom. As Herman Te Velde noted:This motif of falcons and Seth-animals is brought

together in the description of a hunt of Rameses III,where the king is compared to Seth trampling down thegame and to a falcon on the watch for birds.

The identity of the Seth-animal as the Saluki huntingdog offers a further unexpected surprise it may explainwhy the god Seth has seemed somehow foreign to theland of the Nile. Although Seth undoubtedly was animportant early god, only two kings took him as theirpatron deity and one of these shared the honour withHorus. This and the fact that the origin of the Seth-ani-mal, the Saluki hunting dog, was lost early on in Egyptshistory leads me to suspect that the dog, and possibly

also the god, originated in a foreign land.Seths home town, his Nome, was Nubt (GreekOmbos) in Upper Egypt and it is located by the WadiHammamat, the most direct route from the Nile Valleyto the Red Sea. From the coast it is a short journey tothe Gulf of Aqaba with access to Syria andMesopotamia. Nubt, the golden, the ancient name ofNaqada, controlled access to the Wadi Hammamat andits importance as a gold-mining area and travel routehas been documented in Genesis of the Pharaohsby TobyWilkinson. As he stated: Naqada may have played akey role in the political consolidation of Upper Egyptthat preceded the unification of the whole country ... .The later importance of Horus and Seth in the doctrine

Above: Salukis in the snow. Note the erect tail of the dog on the right, andalso the slightly arched nose. Photo: Petri Nokelainen, Finland.

Below right: a Saluki at full speed, showing clearly the ears and the tail.


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of divine kingship points to the significance ofHierakonpolis and Naqada in the process of unifica-tion.

In other words, the creation of ancient Egypt tran-spired here, along the one-hundred-mile WadiHammamat and the adjoining region of the Nile. Thiswadis significance is found in its rock-art, which por-trays domestic scenes, hunting (often with dogs), andsemi-nomadic cattle-herding. Most significantly, thereare carvings of Mesopotamian-style boats and one ofthe first images of a falcon surmounting a serekh, similarto the later ubiquitous sign of royalty, the Horus falcon.Serekhsthemselves seem to be based on Sumerian tem-ples an important indication of the high-level influ-ence of outsiders upon early Egypt (although recentexcavations and discoveries at sites such asHierakonpolis in Egypt are pushing back the dates ofthe origins of the Egyptian civilisation within Egyptitself).

Indications of a foreign contact through this wadi are

in the following material goods: Red Sea shell jewelleryis found in Badarian excavations north of Naqada; lapislazuli, from Naqada II gravesites, is said to have come allthe way from Afghanistan, by way of Sumer; the famouscosmetic palettes of the Predynastic Period are made ofschist from the Wadi Hammamat; the common palettemotif of animals with long entwined necks a form thatwas unknown in Egyptian art before or after may havecome from Mesopotamia. One final datum of interest isthat the prime example of the Seth-animal, theScorpion Kings mace, is in the bulbous pear-shape ofmaces from Mesopotamia and not the thick disc mace of

ancient Egypt.Most of the foreign influx during this time was volun-tary and welcomed. Besides traders, craftsmen of manyspecialties are likely to have entered through the EasternDesert and accelerated changes in the PredynasticPeriod. Some of these visitors may also have broughttheir favourite animal companions, their Saluki huntingdogs. Hamad Al Ghanem, a historian of the Saluki,believes that this breed did indeed originate inMesopotamia.

This was also the time of Seths ascension. FirstDynasty Queen Merneith was She who sees Horus andSeth, and King Hetepsekhemwy was The Two Powers

are at Peace. Thus this pair were already principal godsat the beginning of Dynastic Egypt, and an earlier con-flict between the followers of Horus and those of Sethmay have been reconciled. In the Second Dynasty, thenormal use of a Horus title briefly changed and thespeculation is that Seths adherents gained royal recog-nition or at least formed a temporary alliance with theHorus royal family. Sekhemib changed his name toPeribsen and his serekhbecame topped by the Seth-ani-mal (clearly a dog-shaped creature). The following kingwas Khasekhemwy, The Two Powers Arise, and hisserekhhas both the Horus hawk and Seth dog. This is a

unique instance, not repeated throughout Egypts verylong history. Something else which is strange, and unre-marked, is that the Seth-animal and the Horus falcon

face each other. Hieroglyphs are normally composedwith the characters facing in the same direction. TheKhasekhemwy serekhis therefore doubly extraordinary.

The popularity of Seth did not last long however, asthe very next ruler was again a Horus king and Seth fellout of favour for over a thousand years, as far as royalnames are concerned. And so, too, began a dramaticchange in the Seth-animal. But why did it somewhatparallel the change in fortune of the god Seth? Othergods waxed and waned in prestige over time, but theseother gods depictions and avatars did not change withthem. Only the Seth-animal underwent this bizarreprocess.

One possibility is that the foreigners brought in boththe god Seth and the Saluki that became its icon, theSeth-animal. Or they just had the dog and the indige-nous people came to associate the dog with Seth pos-sibly because, as a desert hunter, it was a natural com-panion to the already revered Horus hawk. Once theforeigners abandoned hunting with clip-eared dogs, theSeth = Seth-animal link had been forged, but the ori-gin of the live Seth-animal, the Saluki, was forgotten.

The Saluki, however, did not become extinct only its

association with the god Seths symbol died out. In fact,around 2,000 BC, the Saluki began replacing the Tesemhound as the most portrayed dog in Egyptian art. But as

Above: images of the hawk Horus and of Seth, from an EighteenthDynasty block in the Open Air Museum in Karnak. Photo: RP.


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the ears are never shown as being cropped, this distinc-tive link to the Seth-animal must have been largelyabandoned, and this factor aided the disconnectionbetween Saluki and symbol.

Another cause for the loss of the Seth-animals Salukiorigin may have been the attitude of the earliestDynastic rulers. First Dynasty King Den is shown on anivory label subjugating the people of the Eastern Desert.The supreme irony, as Wilkinson notes, was that as soonas an all-powerful Dynastic Egypt came into being, oneof its first acts was to vilify, not only true foreigners, butthe peoples of the Red Sea hills, the very people whosedistinctive lifestyle had helped to fashion pharaoniccivilisation. The keepers of the clip-eared Salukis mayhave become the enemy. Support for this scenario comesfrom the peculiarity that, of all the desert lands of theMiddle East, falconry never took hold in Egypt. Thereason may be that the foreign falconers and Salukiowners traditions eventually died out, or falconry nevercaught on precisely because it was a foreign sport and

therefore tainted.Another hint as to the foreign origin of Seth is that the

Egyptians themselves used the Seth-animal determina-tive to write the names of other foreign gods. TheLibyan Ash, Semitic Baal, and Hittite Teshub were allconsidered to be forms of Seth, whereas identificationsof Seth with other typical Egyptian gods are rare. Sethsname in the oldest pyramid texts is always written withthe Seth-animal dog; however, in later pyramids the godSeth is only written with phonograms. By the first mil-lennium BC, the dog-like glyph disappears entirely andthe Seth-animal symbol is changed to an ass with a knife

sticking in its head or body. Not only was the god Sethnow anathema, even his symbol was ridiculed andkilled.

Of all the avatars of Egypts gods, the Seth-animalwas the only one that changed in appearance (or wasportrayed differently) over time. The link to the primae-

val Seth-animal, the Saluki, was broken and forgotten.The fact that, today, the Saluki, with its all-importantcropped ears, calls Syria and the Arabian peninsulahome is perhaps the sign of the foreign origin of EgyptsSeth-animal, if not the god Seth himself.

This new perspective on early Egyptian history willhopefully interest others to pursue the issue further.Study of the relationships between the early peoples ofthe Wadi Hammamat, both indigenous and foreigners,will undoubtedly increase our knowledge of the myste-rious god Seth and his counterpart Seth-animal, theSaluki hunting dog.

Ken Moss

Ken majored in Psychology at the University of BritishColumbia many years ago. It was his secondary exposure toworld history that led to a compelling life-long interest in theorigins of civilisation, with a special emphasis on ancientEgypt.

Further ReadingSee the previous AE articles on Seth (by Birgit Schoer,AE24, Jun. 2004) and on Dogs in Ancient Egypt (by MalcolmHobson AE28, Feb. 2005).

Above: a detail of a statue of Seth, dating to the reign of Rameses IIIand now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Photo: RP.


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