Does anyone have any photographs of pigs in AE contexts that they would be willing for me to use? I want to write an article on the subject of how pigs were used in the Egyptian agricultural mix, and need photographs to illustrate the article which may appear online. You would need to own the copyright, which probably means that you took the photograph/s yourself. Tomb paintings, amulets, etc – anything would be welcome.
It would also be nice to use any that are contributed into a gallery for the Photo Album page. Depictions of pigs are so unusual that it would great to assemble them in one place for widespread viewing.
You can email them to me: andrea [at] egyptologicalonline.net or post a link if you have the image on a website by replying to this post.
Many thanks.
Andie
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Hi Andrea,
Sorry I didn’t have photos of pharaonic pigs, just a reference to an excellent article from Pascal Vernus in the Bestiaire des Pharaons p. 556-561 with a couple of interesting photos. Also a rare Middle Kingdom title (year 17 of the reign of Senwosret) : imy-r SAw = Overseer of the Pigs on the stele of Montuweser, Metropolitan n° 12184 (it’s on the website of the Museum). More references in Porter & Moss, V, p. 102 in fine.
When desperate, use a pic of one of those faience sow amulets (with or without piglets) – they stem from all periods and always look neat. ;) And surely some of the online museum databases will have one “under fair use”.
You are out of luck for pigs in scenary on wall paintings
before the NK, and photos of NK tomb scenes (TT24 has a depiction of a herd) will not be easy to get. Don’t we all miss Jon’s Archive?!
Thanks Aayko – good advice. And yes, Jon’s archive is a serious loss. I do wish that we could convince him to resurrect it in some way! We would be happy to host it on Egyptological but I suspect that he has other plans.
There is a pig spearing scene in a Book of the Dead in the British Museum. I could send you a copy if I could find how to make an attachment here.
Tony
Hello Tony. Thanks very much for bringing this to my attention. I would love to see a copy if you don’t mind emailing me the attachment? andrea [at] egyptologicalonline [dot] net. Andie.
Thanks very much to Barbara O’Neill, one of Edition 1′s writers, for sending me a link to a wonderful photograph of a Naqada I period boar in a private collection. It is probably unprovenanced but it is so lovely in its own right that I thought that others might like to see it (on the Lessing Photo Archive website):
http://www.lessing-photo.com/dispimg.asp?cr=1&i=080114+3+&d=3&p=1&a=s1&hr=0
I’ll dig around in my photos to see if I can spot something for you.
Thanks James. Unfortunately pigs are very rare in tomb and temple scenes, but if you have anything that would be great.
Andie, Sorry I don’t have any pictures of pigs. But I think you can find so pictures in the following books:
Animal world of the Pharaohs by Patrick F Houlihan published by Thames & Hudson 1997. & probably in the Shire Egyptological Series of books there is also one on Animals in Ancient Egypt.
I hope that helps you.
good luck
Thanks David. I was taking the easy line – asking if anyone could help out – before going directly to museums and publishers to request/purchase permission to use theirs. Thanks for the Houlihan tip.
Sadly, the lowly pig/hog never attracted much attention from Ancient Egyptian artists which means that representations are few and far between, and photos are correspondingly difficult to source. I only have two photos myself, neither of them great.
Fortunately there is a lot of archaeological evidence for pigs so even if the article is a bit short on images there’s a lot of data to play with.