Talk About an Old Dog…(ca. 6000 BC – present)
The Saluki is possibly the oldest known breed of domesticated dog, and its origins are traceable back to the time of the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt… and even further back than that. They seem to have originated in the Fertile Crescent area of Mesopotamia, and carvings from the Sumerian period around 7000-6000 BC have produced what appear to be images of Saluki dogs working alongside humans.
Saluki are ‘sighthound’ dogs, meaning that they hunt by sight instead of scent. With a powerful build and the modern nickname ‘Persian Greyhound’, the Saluki may actually be ancestors to today’s greyhound breeds. Another very early instance of sighthounds in ancient art comes from around 3000 BC, where the image of a dog resembling a Saluki was found on a stamp seal near Nineveh.
Egyptian tombs as early as 2100 BC have revealed paintings of Saluki dogs, including the tomb of an Egyptian governor named Rekh-ma-re, whose tomb images show a procession of people bringing him offerings. Among the offerings are three Saluki dogs of different colors: red, white, and golden. On the wall of a tomb for an Egyptian named Nebamun, dating around 1490 BC, there is an image of a multi-colored Saluki wearing a broad collar. Many other tomb carvings – such as the images of the young Tutankhamun riding in his chariot on a hunt – include depictions of dogs accompanying the Pharaohs as they hunted for sport or went into battle, and it is widely believed that these dogs were the domesticated Saluki.
Due to the great respect and reverence for this breed, the breeding line continued for thousands of years, stringently kept pure by royal dog breeders and even the nomadic Bedouin! Bedouin tribes often owned Salukis and kept them apart from their other dogs, not only to preserve their genetic purity, but also to ensure their behavior and effectiveness in hunting was not tainted. Later during the Roman period, it is suspected that the Romans brought back Saluki from their conquests in Egypt – and then proceeded to crossbreed the dogs into today’s modern greyhounds.
Evidence for the continual respect held for Salukis since ancient times also survives in the form of a poem, written by an Umayyad poet sometime between 661-750 AD: “They have with them their hounds of Saluq, like horses wheeling in battle, dragging on their halters.” Pretty intense for a dog now kept as a typical household pet…
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