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T h e D o n k ey i n H um a n H i s t o ry
The Donkey in
Human History
An Archaeological Perspective

Peter Mitchell

1
 1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
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© Peter Mitchell 2018
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First Edition published in 2018
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 Acknowledgments

Books have multiple origins. In this case they include donkeys seen at the
seaside when very young, others observed carrying heavy loads or pulling
carts in Greece and Turkey as a student, those visited at the Island Farm Donkey
Sanctuary near Oxford with an enthusiastic small child, and still more encoun-
tered on a variety of holidays in the Mediterranean and beyond. From them,
and from a growing realization of the donkey’s marginalized status not only
within the contemporary world, but also that of the past, including far too often
the writings of archaeologists and others, this book has grown.
Numerous people have helped it to do so. First of all I should like to thank
those who provided me with additional reference material or images or facili-
tated my access to them: Matthew Adams, Guy Bar-Oz, Paul Collins, Mike de
Jongh, Frank Förster, Haskel Greenfield, Henriette Hafsaas Tsakos, Ana Lúcia
Herberts, Vasalia Isaakidou, Rudolph Kuper, Jürgen Lippe, Aren Maeir, Siyakha
Mguni, Chris Morton, David O’Connor, Eliezer Oren, Evangelia Pappi, John
Powell, Father Peter Powell, Mary Prendergast, Mesa Schumacher, Glenn
Schwartz, Alexandros Tsakos, Marijke van der Veen, and Andrew Wilson.
Wikimedia Commons and Flickr and their many contributors have provided
the majority of the illustrations that I have used and it is thus appropriate to put
on record my gratitude to them as organizations and as individuals. Thanks as
well to the generosity of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library for making so much
of their holdings freely and straightforwardly available online, something that
many British institutions could usefully emulate.
Several colleagues kindly commented on part or all of the text ahead of pub-
lication, making suggestions that have enriched the final product, removing
errors and confusions along the way: Patrick Alexander, Christoph Bachhuber,
John Baines (who also kindly translated the hieroglyphic text in Figure 3.16),
Paul Collins, Amalia Nuevo Delaunay, Helena Hamerow, Vasalia Isaakidou,
Alistair Paterson (particularly for his final comment on Chapter 7), Patrick
Roberts, Bert Smith, Eleanor Standley, Angela Trentacoste, and Andrew Wilson.
Fiona Marshall, who may justly be called the doyen of donkey archaeology,
provided important comments that improved the paper on the impact of dis-
ease on the distribution of donkeys in sub-Saharan Africa that informs the last
section of Chapter 3. Sol Pomerantz constantly enquired after the book’s pro-
gress, and I am grateful to him for teaching Archaeology and Anthropology
undergraduates at St Hugh’s College so that I could focus on writing this book,
even if it does not bear the title that he (and Patrick Roberts) initially suggested.
vi Acknowledgments

Those who did not receive tutorials from me in Michaelmas 2016 and Hilary
2017 now know what I was doing with my time.
Additionally, I should like to thank Sam Lunn-Rockliffe for producing a ser-
ies of excellent maps with remarkable speed and efficiency; St Hugh’s College,
Oxford, the School of Archaeology of the University of Oxford, and the School
of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Studies of the University of the
Witwatersrand for the grants that covered the costs of reproducing many of the
illustrations that I have used; and everyone at Oxford University Press, especially
Georgina Leighton, Charlotte Loveridge, Clare Kennedy, Charles Lauder, Emma
Slaughter, and Gail Eaton, for the book’s transition from manuscript to what you
have before you. This is also the place to recognize with gratitude all those at the
Donkey Sanctuary (https://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk) and in similar
organizations worldwide for the remarkable work that they undertake.
Running through all these acknowledgments are two threads: the good-
naturedness and generosity of scholarly collaboration across frontiers (discipli-
nary and national) and the benefits accruing from having the good fortune to
work in a setting where intellectual enquiry is prized and students of the high-
est quality arrive from all over the world. At a time when international partner-
ships, academic freedom, and even the very notion of belonging to a common
civilization that transcends political borders are threatened by nativism, nation-
alism, and the disparagement of scientific research, that generosity and those
benefits are all the more to be valued and defended. So, too, are the warmth and
support that come from family. This book would never have been begun with-
out the prompting and encouragement of my wife, Gloria, and it would not
have been completed without her comments (and drawings) or her always-
helpful critique. Like her, our daughter Chiara bravely endured countless even-
ings discussing one ‘donkeyfact’ after the other over the dinner table while
inputting observations of her own. Finally, even if they have yet to encounter a
donkey in the flesh, Falco and Luna provided considerable distraction and
guidance from behind my desk. To my family, as always, I am profoundly grate-
ful. Grazie mille, vi voglio tanto bene.
 Contents

List of Figures viii

List of Colour Plates xi
List of Tables xii
A Note on Nomenclature and Dating xiii

1. Why Donkeys? 1
2. Origins 14
3. Along and beyond the Nile 40
4. The Ancient Near East 72
5. The Classical World 108
6. The Triumph of the Mule 148
7. New Worlds for the Donkey 187
8. The Donkey’s Tale 224

Classical Authors Cited 245

References 246
Index 293
 List of Figures

Jacket image: An Attic Red Figure Ware rhyton (a ceremonial vessel for pouring libations)
in the form of a donkey’s head painted in the manner of the Sotades Painter
in Athens c.460–450 bc. Donkeys were strongly associated with the god
Dionysus and thus with the consumption of wine, making them an excellent
choice of motif for this kind of vessel. Photographed by Marie-Lan Nguyen
and courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
1.1. Donkeys: a resource for the poor. 2
1.2. Evidence of the ‘animal trace’: (a) mule track, St Gotthard Pass;
(b) a post-medieval crotal bell. 8
2.1. Equid evolutionary relationships. 15
2.2. Map of wild ass populations. 18
2.3. The Nubian wild ass.  21
2.4. Generalized equid biology. 23
2.5. The mule.  27
2.6. Map of sites relevant to early donkeys in Africa. 38
3.1. Map of sites in Egypt. 41
3.2. The Libyan Palette. 42
3.3. Donkey burials, Abydos. 43
3.4. Donkeys working on an Egyptian farm.  45
3.5. Donkeys with packsaddles.  47
3.6. Riding a donkey.  47
3.7. Donkeys in the tomb of Ti.  48
3.8. Deir el-Medina.  50
3.9. A receipt for a donkey.  51
3.10. Riding the Seth animal. 53
3.11. Piercing the ‘donkey’, Edfu.  55
3.12. An Egyptian ship. 61
3.13. Donkey tethering holes.  62
3.14. Muhattah Yaqub. 64
3.15. Map of the donkey’s expansion in Africa. 67
3.16. Donkeys in the land of Punt. 69
3.17. The Lake Eyasi Basin. 70
4.1. Map of the Near East. 73
4.2. An Early Bronze Age donkey figurine. 75
 List of Figures ix

4.3. Donkey and rider near the Dead Sea.  76

4.4. Donkeys in Gujarat.  77
4.5. Eastern Iran.  78
4.6. Donkeys in Chinese medicine.  80
4.7. The Taurus Mountains.  82
4.8. An onager rider. 88
4.9. Onagers.  88
4.10. A rein-ring, Ur. 91
4.11. The Umm el-Marra equid installations. 93
4.12. The Tel Haror bridle bit. 96
4.13. Tutankhamun in his chariot.  101
4.14. Refugees fleeing Lachish on mule-back.  103
4.15. An Iron Age camel.  104
4.16. Bronze Age tombs, Oman.  105
5.1. Map of the Mediterranean Basin. 109
5.2. The archetypal Greek landscape.  110
5.3. Donkey deposit at Dendra. 112
5.4. Cancho Roano sanctuary, Badajoz.  115
5.5. Map of the Roman Empire. 117
5.6. Pack-mules on Trajan’s Column.  120
5.7. The Biriciana fortress.  121
5.8. A Gallic reaping machine.  123
5.9. Pompeian flour mills.  124
5.10. The monument of Eurysaces. 125
5.11. A North African oil press.  127
5.12. The Roman walls, Tours.  130
5.13. The Mont Cenis Pass.  132
5.14. An Athenian wedding procession.  135
5.15. A Greek mule-cart.  136
5.16. A muleteer’s gravestone.  137
5.17. Mosaic from the Baths of the Carriage-Drivers, Ostia. 138
5.18. The Pantheon.  139
5.19. Donkey and camel dung, Myos Hormos. 140
5.20. Mons Claudianus.  141
5.21. An Olympic mule-cart victory. 143
5.22. A satyr on a donkey.  146
6.1. Christ’s entry into Jerusalem.  150
x List of Figures

6.2. The Nativity.  152

6.3. The Alexamenos Graffito.  153
6.4. The Flight into Egypt. 155
6.5. A Muslim shaykh on his mule.  156
6.6. Map of the medieval world. 158
6.7. The value of the mule.  160
6.8. A Poitou donkey.  161
6.9. A donkey carrying wood.  162
6.10. A Roman streetscape.  167
6.11. Donkey deliveries, Marrakech.  170
6.12. A pozo de nieve, Valencia.  172
6.13. Spanish muleteers.  176
6.14. Maragatos.  177
6.15. The Trebbia Valley.  178
6.16. Map of the Silk and Salt Roads. 181
6.17. The Tea Horse Road.  183
6.18. Donkeys in the Sahara.  184
6.19. A donkey transporting salt.  185
7.1. Map of the Americas. 190
7.2. Potosí.  193
7.3. The Camino Real de Panamá.  195
7.4. A Brazilian mule train. 200
7.5. Map of the Caminho das Tropas. 201
7.6. A wagon on the Oregon Trail.  204
7.7. Mules and the mining industry.  206
7.8. Map of Indigenous North America. 207
7.9. Navajo mules.  208
7.10. Yellow Horse capturing mules. 211
7.11. Mules in the Andes.  213
7.12. Map of southern Africa. 214
7.13. Rural transport in Botswana.  217
7.14. An Australian donkey team. 219
7.15. Wild donkeys in Nevada.  221
8.1. Donkeys as an aid to development.  232
8.2. Donkey market, Kashgar.  233
8.3. The Animals in War Memorial.  234
8.4. Donkeys in modern Afghanistan.  243
 List of Colour Plates

1. The Somali wild ass. 

2. Donkeys among Sahelian pastoralists. 
3. Tomb reliefs, Beni Hasan. 
4. Jebel Uweinat.
5. The Abu Ballas Trail.
6. The North African ass.
7. An Ethiopian donkey depot. 
8. Kanesh. 
9. The Royal Standard of Ur. 
10. A donkey burial, Gath.
11. Timna. 
12. An Indian mule as tribute, Persepolis. 
13. A pack-donkey from Phaistos. 
14. Donkeys ploughing. 
15. Donkeys threshing fava beans. 
16. Feeding a donkey. 
17. A donkey harvesting grapes. 
18. Donkeys as pack animals. 
19. The procession of Dionysus. 
20. Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. 
21. The Nativity. 
22. Anglo-Saxon donkeys.
23. Renaissance pack-mules. 
24. Sogdian merchants in China. 
25. Arrieros in Mexico. 
26. Wine merchants in Argentina.
27. The Monumento ao Tropeiro. 
28. Wayúu women on donkeys, Colombia.
29. Mule-drawn wagons, Stompiesfontein.
30. Karretjiemense. 
31. Tutankhamun’s mask. 
32. The Corsa degli asini, Ferrara. 
 List of Tables

2.1. African and Asian wild ass subspecies. 19

5.1. The relative efficiency of movement by donkey and boat in
the Bronze Age Aegean. 113
5.2. Comparative performance of animals using a packsaddle. 131
5.3. Comparative potential force and power of the
principal Old World portage and draught animals. 133
7.1. European imports traded at the fair of Xalapa (Jalapa),
Mexico, in the eighteenth century. 197
8.1. A donkey’s periodization of world history. 235
 A Note on Nomenclature and Dating

D onkeys and their offspring

The literature on donkeys is sometimes confusing because of the multiple

meanings held by some English words. In this book, ‘donkey’ is used solely with
reference to the domesticated form of Equus africanus. When bred with a horse
the resulting offspring are either mules or hinnies. I explain the difference
between the two in Chapter 2, but otherwise use ‘mules’ throughout. I refer to
the offspring of a donkey and an onager by the Sumerian word kúnga, as
explained in Chapter 4. I employ ‘wild ass’ when writing about the donkey’s
ancestors and their non-domesticated descendants in North Africa, and also
use this as a generic term for their close relatives, the non-domesticated Asiatic
wild ass (Equus hemionus) and kiang (Equus kiang). ‘Ass’ without further quali-
fication encompasses both donkeys and mules.

Native North Americans

How those of European descent refer to individuals and communities of

Indigenous (i.e. non-European) ancestry in the Americas, Australia, and
southern Africa is a vexed question. To distinguish humans from plants or ani-
mals I capitalize Indigenous and Native whenever they are employed for the
former, while recognizing the difficulties that their usage entails. I thus also prefer
‘Native American’ to ‘Indian’, even though the latter is used by some activist
groups and is not always offensive. For ease of comprehension I use the familiar
English names for individual groups where they exist, but provide below the
self-designations of those Native American populations north of the Río
Grande mentioned in Chapter 7.

Name as used in the text Self-designation(s)

Apache Ndé
Arapaho Inuna-Ina
Arikara Sahnish
Blackfoot Niitsítapi; Saokí-tapi-ksi
Cheyenne TsisTsisTsas
Comanche Nɨmɨnɨ
Crow Apsáaloke
Flathead Séliš
Hidatsa Hirá·ca; Awaxá?wi; Awatixá
xiv A Note on Nomenclature and Dating

Kiowa Ka’igwu
Lakota Lakota
Mandan Rųwą́?ka·ki
Naishan (Kiowa Apache) Na-I-Sha
Navajo Diné
Nez Perce Nimi’ipuu
Osage Wažáže
Shoshone Nɨmɨ, Nɨwɨ
Zuñi A·šiwi

Radio carb on dating

Radiocarbon dates underpin much of the chronology for the early part of the
donkey’s history. Because the amount of radiocarbon in the atmosphere has
not remained constant, it is necessary to calibrate ‘raw’ radiocarbon determin-
ations in order to convert them into calendar years. The resulting calibrated
dates remain a probability distribution, rather than an absolute certainty, and
are normally expressed as a range such that there is a 95% chance of a sample’s
true age lying within the limits stated. Wherever possible, when directly citing
radiocarbon dates I provide the ‘raw’ date, its laboratory number, and the cali-
brated range according to the OxCal 4.2 program.
Plate 1. A Somali wild ass (Equus africanus somaliensis) photographed in the Basel
Zoo, Switzerland. Courtesy of Flickr and Tambako The Jaguar. CC-BY-ND 2.0.

Plate 2. Donkeys continue to be a vital mode of transport for many Sahelian and
Saharan pastoralists, as here in Chad. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and
Photokadaffi. CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Plate 3. The arrival of an Asiatic group using donkeys to transport some of their pos-
sessions and children in the nineteenth-century bc tomb (BH3) of Khnumhotep II,
governor of the Oryx Nome at Beni Hasan, south of Cairo (after Lepsius 1849–59,
­volume 2, plate 133). Courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Plate 4. The approach to Jebel Uweinat at the joint border of Egypt, Libya, and Sudan.
An Eleventh Dynasty inscription confirms an episodic Egyptian presence here at the
possible terminus of the Abu Ballas Trail. Courtesy of Frank Förster and copyright
R. Kuper, University of Cologne.
Plate 5. An ancient donkey path leads travellers toward an upright stone slab, one of
many cairns that guide movement along the Abu Ballas Trail in Egypt’s Western Desert.
Courtesy of Frank Förster and copyright R. Kuper, University of Cologne.

Plate 6. A North African wild ass (Equus africanus ‘atlanticus’) in a Roman mosaic now
in the Bardo Museum, Tunisia. Wild asses survived in the Maghreb until the early cen-
turies ad, although their contribution to the domestic donkey’s ancestry remains
unknown. Copyright Peter Mitchell.
Plate 7. A donkey depot in Ethiopia. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Rod
Waddington. CC-BY-SA-2.0.

Plate 8. A view of the archaeological mound of Kültepe from the lower town (the
karum inhabited by Old Assyrian merchants) at the ancient site of Kanesh, central
Turkey. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Anadolu. CC-BY-SA-3.0.
Plate 9. The Royal Standard of Ur, showing multiple elite individuals going into battle
in war-carts pulled by kúnga (donkey–onager) hybrids. Dating to c.2600–2500 bc, this
shell and stone mosaic set in bitumen was probably originally attached to a wooden
box. It is now on display in the British Museum. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Plate 10. The Early Bronze Age III articulated donkey skeleton found in situ in a pit
beneath the floor of a house at ancient Gath (Tell eṣ-Ṣāfī), Israel, with legs bound and
the head and neck removed and placed on its stomach. Copyright of the Tell eṣ-Ṣāfī/
Gath Project and published with permission of Haskel J. Greenfield and Aren M. Maeir.
Plate 11. A view of the Timna Valley in southern Israel, where donkeys were once essen-
tial to the large-scale mining of copper, delivering fuel for smelting, as well as food for
the miners and themselves, and transporting both the ore and the metal extracted from
it. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Mboesch. CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Plate 12. Indian tribute-bearers, one leading a mule or donkey, on the Apadana Staircase
at Persepolis, the ceremonial centre of the Achaemenid kings of Persia c.521–331 bc.
Mule trains helped provision the palace and its occupants. Courtesy of Wikimedia
Commons and A. Davey. CC-BY-2.0.
Plate 13. Ceramic figurine of a donkey carrying two large pots from the palace centre
of Phaistos in southern Crete, c.1350–1200 bc, now in the Archaeological Museum of
Heraklion. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Zde. CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Plate 14. Donkeys and mules have long

been used for ploughing in the Mediter­
ranean, especially on lighter soils where
less force is needed. Here, two donkeys
pull a plough at Tidzi, Morocco, in
2011. Courtesy of Flickr and meshugas.
CC-BY-SA-2.0.
Plate 15. Teams of donkeys continue to thresh crops in parts of the Mediterranean, in
this case fava (split peas, Pisum sativum) at Emporio on the Greek island of Santorini
(Thera). The puree made from them is the island’s signature dish. Courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons and Klearchos Kapoutsis. CC-BY-SA-2.0.

Plate 16. A boy feeding a donkey in a fifth-/sixth-century Byzantine mosaic now

­displayed in the Great Palace Mosaic Museum, Istanbul. Courtesy of Wikimedia
Commons and Laurom. CC-BY-SA-3.0.
Plate 17. A donkey helps to harvest grapes from a vineyard in a sixth-century Byzantine
mosaic from the Church of St Lot and St Procopius, Khirbet Mukhayyat, Jordan.
Courtesy of Flickr and Alex Brey. CC-BY-SA-2.0.

Plate 18. Donkeys and mules have been a longstanding feature of land transport in the
Mediterranean world, notwithstanding a widespread scholarly emphasis on connec-
tions by sea. Here a group of five is loaded with wood in eastern Albania. Courtesy of
Flickr and Rob Hogeslag. CC-BY-ND 2.0.
Plate 19. Two satyrs and a bacchante (a female devotee of the god) support Dionysus’
drunken teacher Silenus as they prepare to place him on the back of a donkey in a
mosaic from the Roman city of Thysdrus, Tunisia. Courtesy of Flickr and Dennis Jarvis.
CC-BY-SA-2.0.

Plate 20. Conforming to Messianic expectations, Christ entered Jerusalem at the

beginning of Holy Week on ‘an ass, the foal of an ass’, seen here in a Byzantine-style mosaic
(note the Greek inscription) in the Palatine Chapel, Palermo, Italy, built by King Roger
II of Sicily in the 1140s. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and The Yorck Project.
Plate 21. The Nativity with a donkey in attendance in a fresco in the Capella degli
Scrovegni, Padua, Italy, painted by Giotto between 1303 and 1305. Courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons and José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro/CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Plate 22. A herd of donkeys appears

in the lower register of this page (folio
49v.) from the eleventh-century Old
English Hexateuch, an Anglo-Saxon
translation of the first six books of the
Bible. Copyright The British Library
Board, Cotton Claudius B. iv.
Plate 23. Mules became an increasingly important part of overland trade in medieval
Europe. In Benozzo Gozzoli’s recreation of the Journey of the Magi of 1459–64 from
the Cappella dei Magi of Florence’s Palazzo Medici-Riccardi a line of mules ascends
a hill. Several of the Medici family, which commissioned the work, are also portrayed:
its head, Cosimo di Medici, rides a donkey in imitation of Christ at bottom left.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Plate 24. Donkeys in a scene showing merchants operating along the Silk Road of
Central Asia in a Tang Dynasty (ad 618–907) fresco from Cave 45 at the Bezeklik
Thousand Buddha Caves, East Turkestan. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Plate 25. A group of arrieros try to control a bolting mule as drawn by Carl Nebel, who
travelled in Mexico between 1829 and 1834. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Plate 26. A convoy of mules carrying casks of wine near Buenos Aires in 1820 using a
technique identical to that employed for moving the wine and brandy produced in
Peru’s Moquegua Valley. Courtesy: The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford
(2098 b.6, facing page 91 (Facsimile)).
Plate 27. The Monumento ao Tropeiro (Monument to the Mule-Drivers) by Brazilian
artist Poty Lanzarotto in Lapa, Paraná, Brazil. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
and Deyvid Setti and Eloy Olindo Setti.

Plate 28. Wayúu women on donkeys, their faces painted black as protection against the
sun, Portete, La Guajira Peninsula, Colombia, photographed by Brian Moser and Donald
Tayler in 1960–1. Copyright the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2007.28.4773).
Plate 29. Mule-drawn wagons painted in red at Stompiesfontein in the Koue Bokkeveld,
South Africa, part of a complex scene of later eighteenth-/early-nineteenth-century
date (Yates et al. 1993). Copyright Siyakha Mguni.

Plate 30. Karretjiemense on trek near Victoria West in South Africa’s Karoo.
Photograph by Michael de Jongh.
 Plate 31. The funeral mask of
Tutankhamun (c.1336–1327 bc)
in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
Donkeys were fundamental to its
manufacture, transporting gold
from Nubia and turquoise from
Sinai, as well as supplying those
who mined them. The lapis lazuli
on the headdress and the obsidian
employed for the eyes were proba-
bly also carried by donkeys for all
or part of their journeys, the former
from over 5,000 km away in
Afghanistan, the latter most likely
from highland Ethiopia. Courtesy
of Wikimedia Commons and
Roland Unger. CC-BY-SA-3.0.

Plate 32. The Corsa degli Asini (donkey race) in the Salone dei Mesi, Palazzo Schifanoia,
Ferrara. This fifteenth-century fresco by Francesco del Cossa shows the race as part of
the broader celebrations of the Palio di San Giorgio, initiated in 1259. Competitions
between the city’s subdivisions (contrade) still include an annual donkey race and
today’s costumes are based on those depicted in del Cossa’s paintings. Courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons and Sailko. CC-BY-SA-3.0.
 1

Why Donkeys?

Donkeys carried Christ into Jerusalem, transported the Greek god Dionysus
to his childhood home on Mount Nysa and into battle against the Giants, and
provided a mount for Muhammad, who supposedly used it to summon his
companions.1 Long before the arrival of the horse, they were ridden by kings
in the Near East, buried near Egypt’s first pharaohs, and sacrificed to ancient
gods across the Fertile Crescent and as far beyond it as Baluchistan and
Badajoz.2 Along with their hybrid offspring, the mule, donkeys formed—and
in places still form—a core technology for moving goods at both local and
international levels, especially in areas of rugged or mountainous terrain:
agricultural produce throughout the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East,
and beyond; tin and wool for Bronze Age merchants between Assyria and
Anatolia; supplies for the Roman army; New World silver to Caribbean ports
for shipment to Spain; salt in contemporary and medieval Ethiopia; house-
hold necessities and even the dead in the modern Moroccan city of Fez.3 Their
muscles ground flour in the Classical Mediterranean, powered water wheels
in Islamic Andalucía, and helped deliver stone columns from Egypt’s deserts
to build the Pantheon in Rome.4 Today, they remain a critical resource for
many of the world’s poor (Figure 1.1), their use promoted by numerous devel-
opment projects. At the same time, conservation authorities in places as dis-
tant from each other as Australia and the United States seek to control the
numbers of feral donkeys using means that pose impossible-to-resolve ethical
questions.5

1 For Christ see Lafont (2000: 219–20) and Power Bretton (2008), for Dionysus Freeman (1945:
38) and Vassileva (2008: 242), and for Muhammad Bashear (1991). Mount Nysa has many possible
locations, from northern Greece and Bulgaria to India and Arabia.
2 Potts (2006); Rossel et al. (2008); Way (2011); Cabrera Diaz and Pérez (2014).
3 Mesghinna (1966); Braudel (1972); Dercksen (1996); Davis and Frappier (2000); Roth (2012);
Barragán-Álvarez (2013).
4 Glick (1995: 82); van der Veen (1998); Curtis (2008).
5 Fernando and Starkey (2004); Starkey and Fernando (2004); Starkey and Starkey (2004);
Bleisch (2005); Bough (2006).
2 The Donkey in Human History

Fig. 1.1. Donkeys, which were domesticated in Northeast Africa, remain a vital resource
for many rural populations across the world. Here, two donkeys transport straw near
the monastery of Tatév in Armenia. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Moreau.
henri. CC-BY-SA-3.0.

And yet, for most twenty-first-century individuals in the Western world,

donkeys are among the least considered of the animals that people have domes-
ticated.6 Tellingly, for example, a recent overview of the archaeology of animals
completely omits them, while nevertheless including the Muscovy duck (Cairina
moschata), a tree-nesting bird kept by Pre-Columbian Native Americans, in its
table of ‘major domestic animals’. Rarely seen and even more rarely eaten, don-
keys are perhaps met with on foreign holidays or encountered as unusual com-
panion animals, participants in school Christmas celebrations, or seaside
attractions for small children. Much more often, such meetings lie in the realm
of fiction, whether in the gloomily endearing form of Eeyore in A. A. Milne’s
classic Winnie-the-Pooh or in that of the cynical—but only too clairvoyant—
Benjamin in Animal Farm.7 Significantly, however, the wisecracking Donkey of
the Shrek movies has no other name.8 Lacking this key attribute of individual
identity, he can stand for all donkeys and mules, but, as Jill Bough notes, that
same lack of a name implies his—and their—unimportance in the greater
scheme of things.9
Donkey’s quasi-anonymity is symptomatic of a much wider neglect by
those concerned with writing about human–donkey interactions in the past.
That is not to say that historians or archaeologists have not undertaken such
investigations. Recent advances in understanding the donkey’s domestication

6 Russell (2012: 208, emphasis added).    7 Milne (1926); Orwell (1945).

8 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_(Shrek)>   9 Bough (2011a: 144).
 Why Donkeys? 3

in Northeast Africa,10 Kenneth Way’s magisterial Donkeys in the Biblical World,11

and the many other studies on which I shall call attest to this. But whether
approaching the past from a primarily textual angle or from one grounded in
material culture and bones, historians and archaeologists have, on the whole,
emphasized horses and camels12 when investigating how people moved them-
selves and their possessions; livestock when researching past agricultural sys-
tems; and horses, cattle, and other species when using animals as signifiers of
social rank, bases of political power, or means of communicating with the
divine.13 There is good reason for all this, but the diverse ways in which people
and donkeys have interacted over the 7,000 years since their mutual domesti-
cation began,14 and the importance that donkeys and mules have had—and
continue to have—for millions of people around the world, also demand recog-
nition. In the words of a recent paper, ‘the impact of the domestication of the
donkey . . . on the development of human culture cannot be underestimated’,15
even though they are, at the same time, ‘among the least studied of the widely
distributed large domestic mammals of the world’.16
According such recognition is not just a matter of correcting an imbalance
in overviews of how people relate to domestic or other animals. Nor is it simply
a question of considering how far and in what ways the behavioural propensities
and characteristics of donkeys and mules have helped shape human history, a
step towards a more inclusive version of the past that acknowledges that ani-
mals too have a degree of agency. Rather, taking donkeys and mules into
account also contributes to repairing a broader omission for, forced to engage
in hard labour for their human masters and frequently accorded a lower status
than their cousin, the horse, the ‘lowly ass’17 also provides an entry point into
the past of subaltern human groups, i.e. those without agency because they are
outside prevailing power structures.18 As Sandra Swart puts it, ‘If one really

10 See Chapter 2. Kimura et al. (2013) provide the most recent discussion.
11 Way (2011). And see also Shai et al. (2016).
12 And camelids more generally, given the importance of llamas and alpacas in the pre-His-
panic and colonial Andes (Capriles and Tripcevich 2016).
13 For just a few examples out of many, consider for cattle Evans-Pritchard (1940) on the Nuer
of South Sudan and Huffman (2007) in Bantu-speaking southern Africa. For horses, Ferret (2010)
in Siberia and my own work on their post-Columbian impact on Indigenous societies in the
Americas and elsewhere (Mitchell 2015) make similar points.
14 I deliberately write ‘mutual domestication’ since one focus of my argument is the demands
that living with donkeys and mules placed on people, just as much as the (typically much more
arduous) demands that people imposed upon them. The relationship may not be contractual, still
less equal, but neither is it, nor can it have been at the outset, wholly one-sided or lacking in ben-
efit for donkeys as a species, if not always as individuals (cf. O’Connor 1997; Budiansky 1999). By
way of a modern example, Fijn (2011) argues that herd animals in Mongolia are active agents in
their own domestication.
15 Shai et al. (2016: 1).    16 Marshall (2007: 372).
17 Zechariah 9.9; Matthew 21.5. This, like all subsequent biblical quotations, is from the King
James Bible.
18 After Spivak (1988).
4 The Donkey in Human History

wanted to tell a “bottom-up” social history of the marginalized, donkeys

[­provide] a better vehicle than horses’ precisely because where both animals are
present it is the latter that are favoured by the rich, the powerful, and the socially
dominant.19 Though it remains a challenge to see history through the eyes of a
donkey,20 focusing on them and their offspring offers us an opportunity to divert
attention away from headline-grabbing, self-publicizing elites and consider also
other marginalized sections of society and aspects of social life—the poor, the
rural, the female, or simply the everyday and the commonplace. In this respect,
the donkey, as ‘the symbol of everyday life’,21 can provide a biological equivalent
of the everyday artefacts of ordinary folk celebrated by Jim Deetz in his pioneer-
ing study of the archaeology of early American life, In Small Things Forgotten.22
But at the same time, because donkeys originally had a much higher status in
Egypt and the Near East and because mules and donkeys have themselves often
been viewed in quite different ways, we can also use their history to understand
more about how and why people attribute different meanings to different kinds
of animals and how, instead of being universal and immutable, those meanings
have been, and remain, contextually specific and open to debate.

D onkeys and the ‘animal turn’

Growing recognition of these points forms part of a wider movement over the
past quarter of a century in all three of the key disciplines on which this book
draws—history, anthropology, and archaeology—as well as in geography and
cultural and literary studies.23 Collectively, this movement has acquired the
name of the ‘animal turn’.24 As one of its leading practitioners, Harriet Ritvo,
notes ‘learned attention to animals is far from new’ and is certainly traceable as
far back as Aristotle in the fourth century bc.25 However, there is no doubt that
animals—and indeed plants—are now a much more common theme for his-
torical and anthropological enquiry than was the case just a few decades ago,
and one that may demand its own theoretical paradigms and methodologies.26

19 Swart (2010).
20 But see, for example, Geiger and Hovorka’s (2015) exploration of this theme in contemporary
Botswana.
21 Braudel (1972: 226).    22 Deetz (1977).
23 For example, Philo and Wilbert (2000), McHugh (2009, 2011), Hurn (2012), Nance (2015a).
24 As coined by Sarah Franklin at the 2003 meeting of the Cultural Studies Association of
Australasia (Armstrong and Simmons 2007).
25 Aristotle, History of Animals. Leroi (2014) sets Aristotle’s work into the broader development
of the Western scientific tradition.
26 Pedersen (2014: 13). Examples are increasingly numerous. Anthropological studies are criti-
cally discussed by Hurn (2012). Major recent historical works of note regarding animals include
Anderson (2006), Greene (2008), and Mikhail (2014), while for plants see Pollan (2002) or Beinart
and Wotshela (2012).
 Why Donkeys? 5

This development takes as read the presence of animals in human societies in

both practical and metaphorical ways, but goes beyond this to investigate how
human and non-human species find themselves entangled, often to the point
that the one co-constitutes the other.27 Raising animals for meat or the many
‘secondary products’ and services obtained from them while they are still alive
(milk and its derivatives, wool, traction, transport, etc.)28 is just one part of this.
So, too, is acquiring food, fur, and other tissues that people value by capturing
and killing animals that are not kept under close human control. Whether wild
or domesticated (and the boundary can, at times, be blurred),29 animals form
an inescapable component of people’s lives, just as people—as predator, guard-
ian, carer—enter into those of other species.
That engagement involves not only acquiring and transforming animal body
parts into human-usable food or artefacts, but also subordinating animal
capacities for strength and movement into human-used and human-directed
labour. All three actions imply relations of power: of people over animals as a
whole; of specific human individuals over specific animal individuals in par-
ticular; and—tellingly—of some people over others, for the acquisition and
employment of animals is never something in which all humans engage equally.
Animals, then, and human relations with them, link directly into more
­traditional historical, archaeological, and anthropological concerns with rela-
tions between people within and among human societies. At the same time,
focusing on the animal dimension of those relations may provide novel per-
spectives on how those relations were constituted, represented, questioned,
changed, and given meaning. It is therefore vital to recall Claude Lévi-Strauss’
famous dictum that ‘species are chosen not because they are good to eat, but
because they are good to think’.30 Animals, in other words, ‘play a crucial role
in cultural metaphors, myths, and identity-making, in which they function as
objects of both fear and desire’,31 to the point where the ways in which people
speak and think, as well as the objects that they make, inescapably carry an animal
dimension with them.32 Put another way, ‘The construction of principles of
metaphoric analogy between the domains of humans and the domains of ani-
mals forms a fundamental basis for self-understanding and the construction of

27 Overton and Hamilakis (2013), including, in particular, the comment by Pluciennik (2013).
This is written in full acknowledgement of the biological fact—increasingly grounded in studies
of behaviour and cognition, and not just of genetics and physiology—that humans are themselves
animals, a point well made by McFarland and Hediger (2009) in the introduction to their volume
on Animals and Agency.
28 Sherratt (1981, 1997).
29 Famously, for example, with respect to the reindeer herded by Sami pastoralists in northern
Scandinavia (Ingold 1980).
30 Lévi-Strauss (1962: 128).    31 Cederholm et al. (2014: 5).
32 For an excellent example of how artefacts made from animals (in this case, eland (Taurotragus
oryx), a large antelope) retain a degree of animation and supernatural potency, see Lewis-Williams
and Pearce’s (2005: 120) discussion of the skin bags used by Bushman hunter-gatherers in south-
ern Africa and of the paintings that often depict them.
6 The Donkey in Human History

meaning in all known societies.’33 As we shall see, donkeys and mules offer
excellent examples of this, not least because of their frequent (and thoroughly
misplaced) characterization as foolish, stubborn, stupid, or—with perhaps
greater justification—plain stoical. And such characterizations inevitably feed
back into how people then behave toward those animals, as well as toward
other humans whom they label as donkeys, asses, mules.
The question has been posed ‘Why animals?’34 to which the answer is surely
and necessarily ‘How not?’ In other words, how can we attempt an intellectually
satisfying understanding of human history, whether at global or more local
scales, that does not include animals as active players in the drama that is the
shared account of how they and people have collectively shaped and structured
the world in which both live. With the opportunity to observe interactions
between people and animals in the here-and-now, anthropologists may find
tackling this challenge more straightforward than is the case for archaeologists.
Likewise, cultural and social historians able to derive insights into the same
interactions from works of literature or the details of contemporary documents
may find they occupy privileged positions in pursuing fine-grained analyses vis-
à-vis prehistorians, but, as we shall see shortly, archaeological data also offer
distinct advantages of their own. Moreover, within the archaeological study of
animal remains there has long been a growing recognition that the utilitarian
dimensions of food and secondary products sensu Sherratt have been unduly
privileged and that the time is overdue ‘to place the social at the centre’ of arch-
aeological faunal analyses.35 In employing archaeological evidence in what fol-
lows, I hope that this book makes some small contribution to that goal.

D onkeys in a material world

But why emphasize the contributions and perspectives of the archaeologist?

The answer to this question derives from the fact that past actions, like those of
today, almost always took a material form, one that can, in favourable circum-
stances, survive into the present. Donkeys, like people, exist in a world within
which they have physical presence and leave enduring marks of their existence.
Such traces take varied form, from the remains of their bodies and the tracks

33 Tilley (1999: 49–50, emphasis added). Noting its universality, American zoologist Edward
Wilson (1984) has even suggested that this special interest in animals, which he terms, ‘biophilia’,
may be genetically grounded.
34 Berger (2007) when advocating analyses of the presence and significance of animals in his-
torical research.
35 Russell (2012: 9); Hill (2013); Overton and Hamilakis (2013). Archaeological studies of fau-
nal remains are variously described as archaeozoology and zooarchaeology. I use both terms here
as synonyms of each other.
 Why Donkeys? 7

that they produce on the landscape to the structures in which they are kept, the
materials they move, the harnesses and bridles they wear, and the whole range
of visual imagery by which people portray them.36 Collectively, such material
forms the bread-and-butter of archaeological research and its variety and
abundance is such that no investigation of the history of human–donkey ani-
mal interactions can be complete without it (Figure 1.2). As veterinary historian
Lisa Cox notes, material objects ‘are sources that are shaped by the sentience
and physicality of animals in ways that documents are not’37 and these objects
both challenge and complement the written record. Moreover, for the first half
at least of their history as a domesticated animal it is also archaeologists who
have been responsible for recovering and interpreting most of the written
material that does mention donkeys and their offspring—hieroglyphic inscrip-
tions, cuneiform tablets, and Roman epigraphy alike.
This is not to say, of course, that archaeologists’ views of donkey–human
history should be uniquely privileged over those of other disciplines. Nor
should we forget that archaeological materials come with reservations, among
them the difficulty of recognizing individual animals. Typically, too, archae-
ologists struggle to speak deeply about the intentionality of actions and must
operate, even within historical periods, at a significantly coarser level of tem-
poral resolution than that available to historians, let alone anthropologists.
But while I therefore also draw heavily on historical and anthropological data
in what follows, weaving between them and the material record to develop as
clear an image as I can of the donkey’s impact on human history, and of
­people’s on that of the donkey, archaeology offers four distinct advantages.
First, it allows us to reach beyond the spatial and temporal limits of writ-
ten sources and explore that history over the long term, to track change and
continuity, similarity and difference, at centennial and millennial scales and
in places that escaped the notice of literate observers. Moreover, whether in
Northeast Africa where donkeys were likely domesticated for the first time,38
or in places to which they were subsequently introduced, archaeology can
give us a sense of what went before and thus of the difference that their
­adoption made.
Second, although visual representations, like texts, are readily subject to
conscious manipulation, it is difficult to believe this of the bones and teeth
of the animals themselves, the material equipment used to control and dir-
ect them, the physical structures in which they operated (mills, roads, etc.),
or the goods that they carried. Without in any way ignoring David Clarke’s
observation that archaeology is ‘the discipline with the theory and practice
for the recovery of unobservable hominid behaviour patterns from indirect
traces in bad samples’,39 the material manifestations of the ‘animal trace’

36 Kean (2012: S64).    37 Cox (2015: 101).

38 Kimura et al. (2013).   39 Clarke (1973: 17).
8 The Donkey in Human History

Fig. 1.2. The “animal trace” left by donkeys and mules manifests itself at multiple levels:
(a) a cobbled mule-track on the St Gotthard Pass, Switzerland, a major route connect-
ing central Europe to Italy, along the Ticino Valley. Additional routes leading to the
Rhône and Rhine Valleys lie nearby, making the pass one of the most strategic locations
in the Alps. Opened to traffic by Milanese merchants in the thirteenth century, by the
mid-1500s this was one of the two principal routes across the Alps (Braudel 1972:
207–8). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Paebi. CC-BY-SA-3.0. (b) A post-
medieval copper alloy crotal from Wiltshire in southern Britain dated to between 1650
and 1850 complete with internal iron pea. Crotals were used as bells on the harnesses of
both donkeys and oxen. Courtesy of the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
 Why Donkeys? 9

may often give us a more transparent view of past processes and events.40
Along with the social structures within which animals were employed, many
of those manifestations form technologies vital in facilitating human
engagement with animals, so-called ‘quiet technologies’ that ‘enabled the
entire idea of a riding horse, for instance, but which were not the horse
itself ’.41
Thirdly, it follows from these two previous points that by focusing on the
longer term and on as wide a variety of societies as possible we may learn
something about the historical background and particularity of human–
animal interactions within contemporary Western society, thereby bringing
a much needed appreciation of other value systems into current attitudes
and debates about how those interactions should be structured in the
future.42
Finally, archaeology’s ability to interrogate the physical remains of once-­
living creatures (bones, teeth, soft tissues, tracks) and their impact on the land-
scape provides us with a (the?) critical means of addressing claims (by text-based
historians) that the historical study of animals and of human–animal relations
is inherently compromised because ‘we never look at the animals, only ever at
the representation of the animals by humans’43 and ‘all of the available records
of [their] lives have been produced by humans’.44 From an archaeological
standpoint, both statements are patently flawed.
With these perspectives to offer and a wealth of material to discuss, it is
both strange and striking that archaeologists have thus far refrained from
engaging in the wide-ranging overview of asinine history to which this book
aspires. Such studies as have been undertaken have often been period- or
region-specific.45 Alternatively, though highlighting donkeys in their titles,
they have in practice overwhelmingly emphasized the horse.46 General sur-
veys written by non-archaeologists, on the other hand, are now dated,47
concentrate on the donkey’s portrayal and symbolic significance in litera-
ture, film, and art,48 or engage little with the archaeological record for all
that they are beautifully illustrated.49 Studies by historians have also empha-
sized regional coverage at the expense of the global50 and none has produced

40 Writing as a historian, Cox (2015: 117) similarly notes that while texts ‘may indicate an ideal
or professionally accepted way that animals interacted with people’, artefacts ‘illustrate what was
actually practiced’ (emphasis in the original).
41 Shaw (2015: 143).    42 Jennbert (2014: 183) and see also the discussion in Chapter 8.
43 Fudge (2002: 6).    44 Brantz (2010: 5), emphasis added.
45 Notably Janssen (2005) for pharaonic Egypt and Way (2011) for the Ancient Near East as
a whole.
46 Clutton-Brock (1992).
47 Dent (1972) and Brookshier (1974), though both are still of interest.
48 Merrifield (2008), which comes highly recommended and helped inspire my own interest.
49 Bough (2011a).
50 For example, Griffith (2006) for Classical Greece, Gibson (2015) for the American West, and
Clarence-Smith (2015) for Southeast Asia.
10 The Donkey in Human History

anything comparable in its breadth of coverage to Pia Kelekna’s The Horse in

Human History.51

Approaching the donkey: structure

and organization

Having explained why I believe the donkey warrants more attention as part
of an integrated view of the human past, it is time to set out the structure of
how that view will be delivered. As I have already indicated, donkeys have
specific physical, physiological, and behavioural characteristics, character-
istics that affect what people can—and cannot—do with them. Importantly,
those characteristics are not identical to those of horses and the first part of
Chapter 2 therefore looks both at the evolutionary history of equids as a
whole and at what is unique about donkeys in particular. This includes dis-
cussing the genetics of donkey/horse hybridization, the distinctive qualities
of the offspring that result, and the difficulties of distinguishing clearly
between all of these groups in the archaeozoological record. This done, I
move on to explore the work of geneticists—including those studying
ancient DNA—archaeologists, historical linguists, and zoologists for assess-
ing when and where donkeys (Equus asinus) were domesticated from their
ancestor, the African wild ass (Equus africanus). A key feature of this involves
employing anthropological insights from contemporary East African, donkey-
keeping pastoralists to model how donkeys may have come under at least
partial human control and the challenges that this posed.52
Once domesticated at the end of Chapter 2, the stage is ready for the don-
key’s debut in the archaeological record of the Nile Valley, its earliest identifi-
able home. Because of the wealth of material available, it is the northernmost
part of that valley and the civilization that formed there that provides the bulk
of the material discussed in Chapter 3. Alongside its role as the quintessential
means of land transport for people and goods in the Egypt of the pharaohs, I
look at the donkey’s religious associations, particularly its importance as a
metaphor for the wild and untamed world beyond the Nile Valley, the abode
of the god Seth, with whom donkeys were frequently identified. That non-
Egyptian world was, however, also one that the Egyptians themselves were
keen to visit in order to extract valuables such as copper, turquoise, and gold
from more distant lands. Donkeys provided the means to do this, either dir-
ectly via overland expeditions, or indirectly by linking the Nile to harbours on

51 Kelekna (2009).
52 Marshall (2007); Marshall and Weissbrod (2009); Marshall et al. (2014).
 Why Donkeys? 11

the shoreline of the Red Sea from which ships could cross to Sinai or depart
southward to the land of Punt (northern Eritrea and the adjacent part of
Sudan). The significance of these caravans for Egyptian society introduces us
to the donkey’s role in building complex systems of long-distance trade and
appropriation, nowhere more dramatically than in the evidence for donkey-
borne expeditions hundreds of kilometres into the Sahara.53 Such forays far
beyond the confines of the pharaonic state are matched by the donkey’s
importance for other early African societies. I therefore end Chapter 3 by tra-
cing the archaeological evidence for donkeys in Sudan and Ethiopia and
among early pastoralists in East Africa and the Sahara, before considering
how far infectious disease helped constrain their spread into southern Africa
and the forests of West and Central Africa.
But donkeys did not only move within Africa. Archaeology shows that
they were being employed to carry olive oil and other commodities in
Palestine before 3000 bc, with hints of yet earlier use (and perhaps even
separate domestication) elsewhere in the wider region still not entirely dis-
pelled. Chapter 4 therefore follows the donkey into Western Asia, from
which it ultimately spread as far as India and China. Within the Ancient
Near East, three themes stand out: the donkey’s role as an indispensable
vehicle for moving goods over both short and long distances, most con-
spicuously in the trade of metal and textiles between Assyria and Anatolia in
the early second millennium bc; its elite associations as a prized riding ani-
mal; and its religious significance as reflected in rituals governing the con-
clusion of treaties, the celebration of festivals linked to individual gods, and
the curing of illness. As will become clear, however, the material I discuss
does not inhabit three entirely discreet universes, something most readily
apparent when considering the relationships between donkeys and the other
animals that people adopted as beasts of burden and sources of motive
power. Thus, from quite early in their history in Mesopotamia donkeys were
bred with indigenous wild asses or onagers (Equus hemionus) to produce
highly valued hybrids capable of drawing chariots into battle. However, it
was the accelerating introduction of the horse from late in the third millen-
nium bc that not only offered new versions of the same (mules and hinnies),
but also posed an existential threat to the donkey’s elite connections, con-
nections that horses ultimately devalued and replaced.
From the Near East to the far west. Chapter 5 traces the donkey–human
associ­ation across the northern shores of the Mediterranean from the Greek
Bronze Age to those of Italy and Spain, where new research attests to a sur-
prisingly early presence while simultaneously disproving the survival (and
domestication) of another wild ass (Equus hydruntinus) on the Iberian

53 Förster (2013).
12 The Donkey in Human History

Peninsula. Literary references even more extensive than those surviving

from Egypt or the Near East greatly amplify the material record available
from the later Classical world and enrich our understanding of the contribu-
tion that donkeys and mules made to Greek and Roman history. In part, this
involved supplying many of the logistical demands of Rome’s armies and
those of its ruling elite, but donkeys and mules also formed the backbone of
much of the rest of the Classical economy—transporting crops and manu-
factures, pulling carts and wagons, helping to build city walls. The invention
and proliferation of new technologies, often donkey-powered, for grinding
flour or drawing water for irrigation further underlines their importance. At
the same time donkeys retained religious associations, whether in the rites
associated with Dionysus or the claims made about Judaism by Hellenistic
and Roman writers. In both cases, those associations carried further conno-
tations about the social status of those with whom donkeys and mules were
most tightly linked.
The transition into the world of Late Antiquity and then into what Europeans
typically call the Middle Ages reaffirmed and extended the role of the donkey and
the mule. One dimension of this is neatly captured by Richard Bulliet’s contention
that across the Middle East and North Africa wheeled vehicles were replaced by
the camel.54 Though his thesis completely overlooks the continued role of donkeys
and mules in both long and short distance movements,55 the general principle that
the extended millennium between the fall of Rome and the beginnings of indus-
trialization saw an increased role for pack animals of all kinds is readily translat-
able to large parts of Europe too.56 The increasing globalization of trade and
intersocietal contact that marked much of this period also brings the role of the
donkey into sharper focus in areas not yet touched on, whether in the trans-
Saharan movement of gold, salt, and other high-value commodities, or in the
caravans that connected China with Central Asia or the uplands of South Asia.
At the same time, archaeological evidence documents the donkey’s increasing
importance in transport and agriculture in more northerly parts of Europe, as
well as highlighting its continuing significance in the Mediterranean and Middle
Eastern worlds. Finally, across all of these regions, and in ways that drew on already
ancient Jewish and Bronze Age traditions linking them with religious prophecy,
royalty, and piety, donkeys and mules found new associations with the two great
monotheisms of the last two millennia, Christianity and Islam. Collectively, these
themes form the heart of Chapter 6.
Other authors, working primarily with textual rather than material sources,57
have looked in detail at how donkeys and mules expanded globally from the

54 Bulliet (1992).   55 Serjeant (1976: 663).

56 Braudel (1972: 254–5); McCormick (2001: 76).
57 For example, Barragán-Álvarez (2013); Clarence-Smith (2015); Gibson (2015).
 Why Donkeys? 13

end of the fifteenth century as part of the so-called ‘Columbian Exchange’.58

The relative lack of archaeological work on sites of colonial and post-colonial
age in many parts of the world means that my treatment of the past 500 years in
Chapter 7 necessarily draws more from historical than archaeological sources,
but several topics stand out. Paralleling their significance for the integration of
Old World empires like those of Rome or the Ottomans, I emphasize the role of
mule trains and the road networks and trails associated with them in tying
together Spain’s American colonies and in the consolidation of Euro-American
control of the western United States. The prior absence, or limited usefulness,
of beasts of burden in southern Africa, Australia, and the Americas only rein-
forces the scale of the transformation that donkeys and mules helped to bring
about once Europeans had introduced them. But in opposition to their partici-
pation in the colonial enterprise, both animals also moved into the hands of
Indigenous peoples for whom they opened up new possibilities, often in ways
that facilitated resistance to European advance and domination. Chapter 7 then
ends by exploring another aspect of the donkey’s role in the Columbian
Exchange, its impact on the new ecologies, continental and island, to which it
was introduced after 1492 and the political and ethical challenges of subsequent
attempts to control donkey numbers in those environments.
Finally, Chapter 8 draws together and evaluates the wide range of material
and historical situations reviewed in the preceding pages. First, it makes the
point that the donkey’s story did not end with Europe’s post-Columbian expan-
sion for donkeys have been—and continue to be—memorialized and remem-
bered in material form today, whether at the level of individual donkey and
human lives in Britain’s first donkey sanctuary at Sidmouth, Devon,59 or at that
of the nation-state in monuments dedicated to their part in twentieth-century
human conflicts at the global scale.60 As part of what Nancy Jacobs has termed
discourses ‘on the ass and the politics of class’,61 they also remain strongly
implicated in several ongoing or recent human conflicts. The salience of all
these issues even in the twenty-first century reiterates the value of exploring the
part played by the donkey in human history. Chapter 8 therefore also looks
again at how far we can usefully advance the concept of animal agency in
exploring the history of interactions among human, donkey, and mule, and at
the difference that trying to look at that history from an asinine perspective
may make. Finally, it suggests some of the trails along which future research
might be directed into the character and significance of an association that is
already some 7,000 years old.

58 After Crosby (2003).    59 Williams (2011).

60 For example, Australia’s national war memorial in Canberra (Bough 2011a).
61 Jacobs (2001).
 2

Origins

Over 50,000 years ago a Neanderthal hunter approached a wild ass on the
plains of northeastern Syria. Taking aim from the right as the animal nervously
assessed the threat, he launched his stone-tipped spear into its neck, penetrat-
ing the third cervical vertebra and paralyzing it immediately. Butchered at the
kill site, this bone and most of the rest of the animal were taken back to the
hunter’s camp at Umm el Tlel, a short distance away.1
Closely modelled on archaeological observations of that vertebra and the
Levallois stone point still embedded within it, this incident helps define the
framework for this chapter. At the start of the period it covers, human inter-
actions with the donkey’s ancestors were purely a matter of hunting wild
prey, but by its end the donkey had been transformed into a domesticated
animal. Chapter 2 thus looks at how this process came about, where it did so,
and what the evolutionary history of the donkey’s forebears had been until
that point.

Evolution

Donkeys and the wild asses that are their closest relatives form part of the equid
family to which zebras and horses also belong. Collectively, equids, like rhi­
noceroses and tapirs, fall within the Perissodactyla, the odd-toed division of
hoofed mammals or ungulates. Though this might suggest a close connection
with the much larger order known as the Artiodactyla, the even-toed antelopes
(including deer, cattle, sheep, and goats), their superficial resemblances may

1 Boëda et al. (1999). The ass concerned was the African wild ass (Equus africanus). The rele-
vant archaeological assemblage was probably made by Neanderthals, rather than by anatomically
modern humans. Other finds from Umm el Tlel show that Neanderthals fixed the stone points of
their spears to the wooden hafts using bitumen (Boëda et al. 1996).
Another random document with
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 Milloin, Hiljainen Tuomari, milloin velkani maksan ja nukkua
saan? Valkeat hattarat, niin olen illoin väsynyt kuohuja
kuuntelemaan!
METSÄLÄHDE

Läpi lehtiholvin kuvaimeesi kuultaa kultaläikät auringon. Mitä

kätket mustaan syvyyteesi, metsälähde mykkä, pohjaton?

Suven suomaa onnea et nauti,

silmäsi on itsees kääntyneet,
karvas, uuvuttava unitauti
kietoo suoniesi raikkaat veet.

Yhden suuren, yksinäisen lumpeen

kaihollasi juotat, kasvatat,
sammaleet ja vesiruohot umpeen
samenevan silmäs saartavat.

Ei sen tummaan, pohjattomaan tuskaan

virvoitusta aamun tuuli tuo,
suvipäivän lämmin punerruskaan
ilon syvää vapahdust' ei suo.

Metsälähde, unten kammitsoima, päästä musta muras

kuohumaan — avaa suoniesi raikas voima, vyöry
vaahtoaalloin halki maan!
LENTOTÄHTI

Ma vanki kaipuun kumman syysiltaan harhailin. Yö valoi

taivaan tumman jo tähdin välkkyvin.

Kuin usein tuskan illoin,

loin katseen niitä päin —
sun valopiirtos silloin
ma leimahtavan näin.

Se halki avaruuden
löi valkein salamoin —:
oi vanki hiljaisuuden,
ma sielus nähdä voin!

Jos sammui liian varhain

sun säihkykatsehes,
kautt' öisten tähtitarhain
teit huiman kaarrokses.

Se hetki vaikka tuhlas kaikk' ilot tähtivyön, sa vietit kerran

juhlas, oi liekkisydän yön!
MYRSKY KUUTAMOLLA

Kiiluu taivas tumma,

välkkyy kuollut maa,
kuu, yön silmä kumma
talveen tuijottaa.
Villi vihuri pauhaa.

Pilvet vasten tuulta

repee, halkeaa,
metsäin harjat kuulta
aaveloiston saa.
Lasinen maailma nukkuu.

Pasuunaan soi suureen

myrskyn puhallus,
tunkee sydänjuureen
tuska, autius!
Yötä ja myrskyä kestää.

Sisintään ei koskaan
sielus antaa voi,
syvin taisteloskaan
sydämiin ei soi.
Kylmät on elämän muurit.

Pakkashanget loistaa —
uhka sydämein
tuulen huudon toistaa
hurjin sävelein.
Myrskylle mieleni annoin.

LENTÄVÄ HOLLANTILAINEN
LENTÄVÄ HOLLANTILAINEN

»Mun poikani, vuossata taasen on vaipunut unhohon,

kädenlyöntihin nuorekkaasen niin rakas vastata on. Taas
istumme yhdessä pöytään, ja juttu luistamaan! Kai
köykäiseksi löytään, mitä teistä on tullutkaan.»

Ja Lentävä Hollantilainen näin haastoi pojilleen, ja partansa

hopeainen se tutisi harvakseen. Oli Uudenvuodenyönä hän
laskenut satamaan, unet vuossadan vaahtovyönä kun raukeni
nukkumaan.

»Isä», virkkoi veljistä toinen, mihin pyrkinyt matkall' oon,

avomielin sen kertoa voinen, isä huoleti kuunnelkoon! Ylös
vain uni rintani nuoren on maaliin tähdännyt, kuin rinteeltä
siintävän vuoren näen maita ja meriä nyt.

Ovat kaukana lapsuuskunnaat, nyt harva mun tuntee vain,

minä maksoin kallihit lunnaat, mut määrän ma nähdä sain.
Pois kohtalon painon alta, yli tuskan synkeän yhä kutsuvi
kaipuun valta mua huipuille elämän!»

Niin ihmeen ääneti kuullut oli veli veljeään, ett' ois hänet
kateeksi luullut, mut lausui hän mietteissään: »Ah, isäni, valta
ja maine, mitä niiltä sieluni saa, jos musta, pohjaton laine
minut kuitenkin upottaa!

Ei huipuille siintäville, vaan vuoren uumeniin ylin kutsumus

kaikuu sille, ken usko ei valheisiin. Kaikk' armotta, ansiotta jää
edessä kuoleman, ah, kärsimys yksin totta on ajasta
aikahan!»

Mut Lentävä Hollantilainen niin kauas katsoi vaan, ja parta

hopeainen hänen tutisi puhuessaan, ja vavahti karhea ääni:
»Ah, milloin tullut on se hetki, kun vanhan pääni saan laskea
lepohon?

Te merelle lähtekäätte nää jättäen kotoiset maat, niin

turhiksi kerran näätte kaikk' unelmat nuorekkaat. Yö pimeä
yllä, ja alla vedet valtavat vaahdossaan, eikä tähteä
taivahalla, joka johtaisi satamaan.

Minä muistelen honkatupaa salon helmassa sinisen, elon

rauhan ja suojan se lupaa, jos vielä löytäis sen! Mut ei, niin
turha ja pieni on elämä sielläkin, meren tuulet vie minun tieni
yhä uusiin tyrskyihin.

Ah, rauhaa ja voimia antaa se tunne ainoastaan: meri

ääretön meitä kantaa kuin äiti lapsiaan. Me lapset keinumme
yksin vain tähdestä tähtehen yhä iäisin ihmetyksin ja iäti
kaivaten.»
PROMETHEUS

Poikani, veljeni, minä hylkään isäinne suvun, sillä he uhraavat

Zeulle kultaiset istuimet allaan! Kevätmyrsky viuhuu, ja
auringon purjeet palavat kasteisten aamujen yli. Kenestä aika
jättää ja kenelle kohtalo nukkuu, hän on tomua ylitse paisuvan
mullan. Nuoret, syttyvät, alttiit ja hehkuvat sydämet: minä
kastan ja poltan teidät ikuisessa virrassa auringon hengellä!

Niinkuin on itkunne, niin on ilokin omanne! Kalliimpi on se

kuin heidän. Syntyen uudesti hetkestä hetkeen sillä on
äärettömyyden lupaus. Kotkat liitävät avaruuden kylmässä
sinessä, siivissä välke kuin ylpeä nauru, ja mittaavat matkaa
huipulta huipulle kuilujen yli. Varjossa, yksin, varmalla oksalla
istuvat huuhkajat vaanien samein, unisin silmin läheistä
saalista.

Kellä on valta, hän hallita tahtoo ja käyttää herruutta

mielensä mukaan. Katselin kauan vuorilta vuosien kiertoa —
vanhojen pyökkien alla on paljon kuolleita lehtiä! Leveät
lehvät ja lahonneet oksat kaartavat korkean, kuoleman
kostean, tappavan siimeen nuorten latvojen yli. Älköön teidän
vihanne sammuko tai rakkautenne ruostuko! Nuoret tammet
tunkevat juurensa syvälle maahan ja nostavat voittavan
elämän voimasta latvansa päivää ja sadetta kohti.

Tyytymystä en teille ma anna, raukean kaihon mieltä en

myöskään. Täysi ja syvä tunteenne olkoon! Tyynenä päilyy
vierelläni hiljainen, nukkuva vuorijärvi unessa nähden
sieluunsa satavan sinisen taivaan ja valkeita pilviä —.
Kaukana vyöryvät nousten ja laskien vapaat, väkevät aallot
aavan, välkkyvän valtameren matkaten äärettömyyttä kohti.

Siellä on paikkanne! Ikuisen matkan annan minä teille! Te

olette itse matka tuskasta tuskaan puhtaampaan, riemusta
riemuun kirkkaampaan! Siellä on silmiinne nouseva kerta
auringonnousun ja auringonlaskun toisella puolen, ylitse elon
ja kuoleman harhan himmeä saari, unenne kaltainen, vapaa
ja korkea, henkenne asunto kuolematon.

Kaikki minä annan valituilleni, riemun ja tuskan, sateen ja

auringonpaisteen. Kutsun ja valitsen teidät kulkemaan kohti
uutta ja ennentuntematonta. Turhaan en tultani taivaasta
tuonut lapsille pimeän maan. Turhaan en huutanut ihmisen
nimeä ylitse kukkivan maan.
ISÄNMAALLE

Pois ulapoille, pois! Sa olet vapaa, niin kerskaa perintösi

tuhlaajat, ei enää Sua sorron miekka tapaa, kun itses
suurempihin uskallat! Mut Sielu, joka epätoivon yöstä vain
yksinään voi voiton lunastaa, ei kaikkein pienten huudoista ja
työstä Sua tunne, ei, Sua kallist' Uinujaa! Sun havahduttaa
vain se, ken voi vuottaa vain tietäjä, ken heimon sielun luo,
ken siihen, mitä hiljaa kylvi, luottaa, ja mitä vuosisatain kasvu
tuo.

Sa olit neito aamun punertuvan, jok' arastellen syömen

unelmaa vait hämärässä pyhäpuhtaan tuvan sai toisen lasta
lepoon liekuttaa, tai impi illan — koivuin suhinalle ja vetten
apeutehen auenneen —! Niin avaa unesi jo maailmalle ja astu
kansakuntain perheeseen! Niin uskollisna tunteellesi hohdat
Sa yli intohimon itsekkään ja lailla itse luonnon rauhan johdat
meit' yhä Iäisemmän ikävään.

Sa olet tulisielu nuorukaisen, jok' on kuin talvi tyyni,

hiljainen — nyt katkeruuden mustan, uhmaavaisen luot
kirkkaaks alttiuden onnehen ja vihdoin tunnet kesken
murheen, harmin Sa neros kirpoavan kahleistaan! Oi
 Yksinäinen! Rauhasi on varmin, mut aikas astua on
toimintaan! Nyt kantain koko ihmiskunnan surun Sa suureks
oman kohtalosi luot ja keskeen ilon ilkkuvaisen turun elämän
tuskan, ihanuuden tuot.

Oi Synnyinmaa! Sai vaivaas Golgatalla yösynkkä

vuosituhat todistaa, mut valtain herjaavaisen piinan alla Sa
kannoit iäisyyden unelmaa. On aika tullut pääsinpäivääs
nousta, katoovain toivojemme Messias, Sa jännitä jo
valkeuden jousta, suus hengellä Sa tapa pilkkaajas! Suo
kuuma sydänveri kaipuullemme ja teon voima voimastasi
myös, suo osa ihmisyyden omaksemme ja ikuisuutta varten
vaadi työs!

MELANKOLIA
ENSI LUMI

Ensi lumet! Kuinka luo ne kylmän hohteen yli maan! Kuinka

suuri kuolinhuone suven toivon sulkeekaan! Kaikk' on uutta.
Samaa untaan sydän yksin unelmoi, unho kaikkeen valaa
luntaan, murhe vain ei mennä voi.

Syttyy suuret, heljät valot tummain metsäin äärihin, puhteen

pitoon mökit, talot vaipuvat kuin ennenkin. Valot vain ei
myöhään, varhain syty sieluun kulkijan, ken käy eespäin,
kautta harhain, halki aavan maailman.

Kuule, ääni ensi tiukuin kaikuu illan hämärään! Reki

nopsaan ohi liukuin jättää miehen miettimään: kaukaa tieni
tulla taitaa, kauemmas se vielä vie, kosk' en tunne pellon
aitaa, kosk' on outo kotiin tie.
UOLEVIN LAULU ELINALLE

Lumet yössä lankee. Ihmisäänt' ei mitään. Läntehen ja itään

hiljaisuus niin ankee. Katsoo kaukaa varmaan silmät
samettiset, suuret, surulliset Elinani armaan.

Samoin nyyhkytyksin siunattu on tiemme, sielunsairaat,

yksin usein, usein liemme. Tupa sentään parhain sulle kodin
tavoin myöhään sekä varhain etähäll' on avoin.

Tuska siell' ei paina, kohtalo ei vainoo — kaunein, pyhin,

ainoo olet aina, aina…. Aamun suuri rusko, yötä ikuisempi —
itse elon usko, toivo sekä lempi!
ASEPOIKA

Olet haltijatar linnan, ma asepoika vain, vain miekan ja

hehkuvan rinnan ma isiltä lahjaks sain. Niin tummat on
kulmies kaarteet, niin tummat ja korkeat, helyt, kullat ja
maailman aarteet sa kaikki omistat.

Kun nouset Sefirin selkään ja auttaa vierellä saan, ma

usein kättäsi pelkään, jos viittaasi koskenkaan. Ja yötkin
umpeen yhä ma sinust' uneksin, kuin Jumalan Äiti pyhä sa
nouset haaveihin.

Pian tulla voi trubaduuri kera harpun linnahan, tuo

lempensä liian suuri hänet teiltä maailman. Olen katsonut
illoin tulta hänen tummissa silmissään, kun saaden suosion
sulta hän koskee kieliään.

Niin pitkä on vuosi, mi vaipuu, ja niin lyhyt kuitenkin, yhä jää

poven polttavin kaipuu mun unteni kätköihin. Mut ehkä
kalliimpi kerta ma sinulle sentään lien, kun poissa, ah,
vuodatan verta ma retkellä ristin tien.

Kunis kunniall' isien miekkaa käsivarteni käyttää voi, kunis

astun ma aavikon hiekkaa ja taistelun myrsky soi, sinis pääni
on kruunua vailla ja mun rintani rauhaton, sinis pyhän
kaupungin lailla kuvas liian kaukana on.
CONSOLATIO

Ikuinen uni, kangastus ikuisen kevään tuo, sen ensimmäinen

kimallus jo hanget loistoon luo! Kuink' ilmeen armaan,
kotoisen nyt tumma metsä saa ja kylmän huurteen häipyen
puunlatvat punertaa!

Mut pirstat nuoren uskon vain, ah, iäks rauenneen nyt

syttyy, palaa pilkahtain taas sielun kuvaimeen. Povea kuinka
kuuntelen, ei synny sävelet, maan ikikurjuus sointujen vei
saatot keväiset.

Ah sinä, jota rakastan enempi elämää, kuin valkeutta

taivahan sa taidat ylistää? Jo löytänyt maan tyynen liet, sen
saaren kaukaisen, mist' elon häipyy erhetiet ja ilkku ikuinen.

Ikuinen hellyys sydämen, jot' epätoivo syö, jo tykkien, jo

tyyntyen sun veres kuumat lyö! Ma syvän lähtees unhotin, ah,
vertaust' on vain sen kierrost' yö ja päiväkin, kaikk' kuvat
unelmain.

Ikuinen talvi milloinkaan ei kajoo siemenees — kuin

keväällä käy ainiaan yöst' aamu kullansees, Hyvyyden
voimaan, valohon tuo oman kamppailus Ikuinen
Saavuttamaton, Ikuinen Valkeus!
KEVÄTYÖ LUODOLLA

Yö kuvaamaton, hiljainen, maan kuulas kevätyö, vain laineet

lyijynraskahat nyt kallioihin lyö ja metsän tummaan
huminahan pauhaa. Ei häily haavanlehtikään, hääpuku helee
puun, on luonto kaikki vaipunut yön kumman kuunteluun. Mun
sydämeni vain ei löydä rauhaa.

Tuoll' läikyntään miss' ulappain yön rusko raukenee ja

turviss' siniauteren maan silmää suutelee, tien kaihollensa
nuori sydän avaa. Ah, kerran purjein paisuvin pois lähdin
maailmaan ma taistoon kaikki kumppanit ja voittoon
kutsumaan vain laulain riemun virttä vapahtavaa.

Kas, tuonne kuinka viittookaan mua vilkkuvalo pois kuin

mieli saattaa satamaan mun purtein sillä ois ja tuoda poika
tuhlaajana kotiin. Ah, turhaan, katse äitisen, yl' öisten vetten
käyt, sun valvattis on vaatineet jo kaukorantain näyt, on voima
mennyt meren suuriin sotiin.

Oi armahani, ainoain, sun luokses halaan taas, voi sielun

terveeks tehdä vain sun kirkas keväänmaas ja ikävöintis
onnensaari tyyni! Sun kasvojasi milloinkaan ma enkö nähdä
saa ja nuorta olentoas sun ma enkö puristaa saa lujaan,
lämpimähän syleilyyni?

Vain laulu aaltoin korvissain soi alakuloinen, mut mieleni

mun murheestaan kuin tähti hopeinen nyt lentää siivin
kaipuun polttavimman. Pois luokse vuotees valkoisen ma tulla
tahtoisin, sun hengitystäs kuunnella vain syömin sykkivin ja
tuta unes voiman ihanimman.

Niin lepoos toisin, toivoisin, ma kauniin peittehen, kuin

meren aarteist' autuaan, kuin meren ikuisen, kuin tarut
kevääs tarhojen ja puistoin! Ma meille aaltoin helmasta maan
uuden kohotan, miss' unikot ja liljat kasvaa mullast' unelman
ja siemenestä aavistusten, muistoin.
ALAKULOINEN RAKKAUDENLAULU

Jos voimat, armas, vaipuu ja nukut multa pois, on unelmaini

kaipuu, ne että multas ois! Kuin äidin helmass' suo ne sun
tyynnä levähtää, ja ikävöintis huone yön unhohämyyn jää.

Vaikk' kuolee kukat puiston, sun lepoon laulatan kuin suven

suuren muiston, sen kaikkein kauneimman. Kun siintää
haudallemme taas kevään heleys, niin helkkyin ylitsemme soi
toivon liverrys.

Lie, armas, suotu siellä, mi täällä kiellettiin, ah, polttavalla

miellä sun suljen suudelmiin! Maan nurmen raskas uudin on
meidät kätkenyt, ja povellain sua tuudin kuin unelmaani nyt.

Kun voimat, armas, vaipuu ja nukahdamme pois, maan

multaan mun ois kaipuu, sun aurinkohon ois! Niin tullen
nuoren kevään sa mulle sätees suot ja muistoon
himmenevään elämän kauniin luot.

Taas vuokot avaa luomen ja tummat orvokit, näät jasmiinit

ja tuomen, nuo vaikka hylkäsit! Niin hellyytein kuin ennen tuo
sulle rauhas tuon ja aikain, Suvun mennen ma sinun kauttas
luon.