« Le culte des canidés dans la région de Hardaï/Cynopolis. Enquête épigraphique et archéologique »

International audienceThis paper aims to clarify the religious role and the funerary treatment of the canids in the region of Hardai, the Greek Cynopolis. Indeed, though the cult of canids has strongly developed in Ancient Egypt from the Late Period onward, it is quite poorly documented in Hardai/Cynopolis. An analysis of the Egyptian and Greek epigraphic sources together with an examination of the modern travellers’ records and the local archaeological sources enable us to suggest new hypotheses regarding this cult.The religious role assumed by the canids in the region of Hardai/Cynopolis is only known through the Jumilhac Papyrus and Strabo’s Geography. Different canids (the wenesh-jackal and two types of tjesem-dogs) were worshipped in the town of Hardai and some were even buried in the local necropolis. They were regarded as manifestations of Anubis and Horus, the two chief gods of this town and of the XVIIIth Upper Egyptian province. These three specific types of canids could therefore correspond to sacred animals whose sole representatives lived in the temple of Hardai, were revered in their lifetime and could each have an individual burial. Strabo’s testimony and the discovery of numerous canid remains on the entire archaeological site of Umm Raqaba/Arab Hamada could also testify to the existence of another religious practice regarding canids in this town. It is indeed possible that most of them were “sacralised” animals gaining importance only after their death by becoming votive mummies. Whether they were bred in farms or brought by devotees, these animals were likely gathered in collective burials and interred in reused and reconsecrated human tombs. The study and comparison of data from the writings of Claude Sicard, the John Murray and Karl Baedecker travel books and the archaeological works undertaken in the region of Hardai/Cynopolis seem to confirm the existence of these two types of canid burials. It also provides the first information on the mummification techniques used on the local canids, which were probably immersed in a mixture of asphalt, resin and myrrh before being wrapped in cloth, while awaiting results of the future archaeozoological study planned by the University of Vienna