Abuwtiyuw

The ancient Egyptian dog Abutiu (often in English transliteration Abuwtiyuw quotes ) was one of the earliest domestic, whose name has been handed down.

The one in the 5th or 6th Dynasty ( 2504-2216 BC ) live dog received after his death on the orders of the then ruling Pharaoh a ceremonial burial in a private grave in the necropolis of Giza. To which Pharaoh it was doing, is unknown.

Find situation

Neither the grave nor the mummy of the dog have been preserved. The Egyptologist George A. Reisner believed that Abutiu was not the dog of the pharaoh, but one of his servants was one who had risen through Abutiu in the favor of the king. The dog is known by a panel, which probably comes from the grave chapel of the owner of the dog Abutiu that no longer is but just like the dogs grave even detectable. This inscription panel represents the only source of to Abutiu and is now under the inventory number JE 67573 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

The stone with this inscription was apparently after the destruction of the grave chapel as spolia in another grave ( Mastaba G 2188 ) built from the 6th Dynasty and found in 1936 in studies by George A. Reisner.

Because of the material and the workmanship of the inscription block can be dated to the 5th or 6th dynasty.

Grave chapel Text

The stone with the inscription is made of white limestone and has dimensions of 54.2 cm × 28.2 cm × 23.2 cm. The inscription consists of ten vertical rows of hieroglyphics, which are separated by vertical lines. In the upper right corner is a part of a line can be seen, suggesting that the panel originally was part of a representation of Abutiu and its owner.

The text describes which contributed gifts of Pharaoh Abutius burial:

Translation by Reisner

" The dog, who was guardian of his Majesty, Abutiu is his name. His Majesty ordered that he would [ ceremonially ] buried that a coffin from the royal treasury be given him, fine linen in large quantity, [ and ] incense. His Majesty's [ also ] gave him perfumed oils, and [ ordered ] that a grave be built for him by the Masons teams. His Majesty did this so that he was honored [ the dog ] [ before the great god Anubis ]. "

With the arranged funeral from Pharaoh Abutiu was an honor to be part of that usually received only higher ranking people. The gifts of the pharaoh for burial of the dog suggest that the corpse of a mummification was subjected, as was common in a human deaths in that time. Through the ceremonial burial and which allows the Ka of the dog to enter the afterlife.

Notes on Appearance

Although no illustration Abutius preserved, it can be opened up to a certain type by means of the dogs text assignment. The text describes him as TSM ( Tjesem ), which stands for a light, wind -like dog -built hunting dog with erect ears and a tail. This type of dog is already known on pictures from prädynastischer time and thus one of the oldest known types of dogs. Representations of Tjesem dogs are commonly found in all periods of ancient Egyptian history.

Name Meaning

The name itself is not clearly translatable, but Reisner believed that the name component bw ( "bu " ) onomatopoeic the dog's barking describes as more times will this name component in ancient Egyptian dog name. Jozef Janssen takes into consideration the possibility that the name can also be read as ' BW3, which is also known as a personal name.