Domestic Animals

Abstract

Domestic animals were tried in the common criminal courts, and their punishment on conviction was death. Though regarding the Ancient Egyptians as definitely totemistic, so painstaking an investigator as Professor Seligman failed to find“ any evidence suggesting that animals were associated with the social organization or with the worship of the pagan Beja, nor have any traces of animal cult been discovered among the Beja of the present time. The ‘Ababda sometimes dedicate the milk of a beast to their patron saint, Shadli, and the milk of such beasts is always milked into separate basketwork vessels lest it become mixed with the milk of some other animal. Milk possesses some sanctity among the Arabs of Sinai, because they told Palmer that the leopard had been formerly a man, who, for washing himself with milk, was turned into a beast and became the enemy of mankind.