Abstract
The origin of domestic donkeys (Equus asinus dom.) appears to lie in northeastern Africa, somewhere in the region of Somalia, Sudan, and Ethiopia. They were domesticated from the Nubian ass (Equus asinus fer.) sometime early in fourth millennium b.c.e., or around the end of the Chalcolithic (Kimura et al. 2010; Milevski 2009: 251; Rossel et al. 2008). The donkey rapidly spread into Egypt where it was considered a valuable animal and incorporated into the royal grave goods during the First Dynasty (Rossel et al. 2008). Subsequently, domesticated donkeys spread across the southern Levant (as early as the Chalcolithic) and the rest of the Near East during the Early Bronze Age (Grigson 1993, 1995; Hesse and Wapnish 2002).
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 202-211 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Near Eastern Archaeology |
| Volume | 81 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2018 American Schools of Oriental Research. All rights reserved.
Funding
We would like to acknowledge the following organizations for generously funding our research: The Tell es fi/Gath Archaeological Project and its staff and team members, the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (PG# 895‐2011‐1005), The University of Manitoba, St. Paul’s College and Near Eastern and Biblical Archaeology Laboratory of the University of Manitoba, and a host of colleagues and students without whose unstinting support this research would not have been successfully carried out.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University | |
| University of Manitoba | |
| Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada | 895‐2011‐1005 |