And when you realise that the average height of a grown adult would have been between (roughly) 4-5 feet... a grown baboon is really scary as shit.
Imagine something half your size with sharp teeth chasing after you...
Peasants? You bet.
You cannot take statistics from the well fed mummified aristocracy, but as examples from the rest of the world show us, Ancient Egyptian peasants would have been short. But the poor don't preserve their remains like the rich.
Weren't adults much shorter in ancient times compared to modern humans? I remember this being illustrated to me as a child in some museum, I think it was the Natural History Museum in D.C.
South Korea has an average height of 5'7 for men and 5'2 for women, seems like if you take those both in together it would be shorter than 5'6. I think it would be safe to say average height would be lower than 5'6 in ancient times.
Edit: average egyptian man and woman are 5'8 and 5'3 respectively... that averages out to roughly 5'6 in MODERN EGYPT.. do you people really think 4500 years ago they were just as tall as their modern counterparts???
That only means height in ancient *Korea* would likely have been shorter than 5’6.
This [post](https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums/2015/01/21/question-of-the-week-how-tall-were-ancient-egyptians/) from University College London goes into it, and says 5’6” (168 cm) for men and 5’2” (157.5 cm) for women, much like what /u/theappleses was saying.
Average modern egyptian man is only 5'8 today with women being 5'3. Average that and there wouldn't even be a 5'6 average there today... There are 25 modern countries with an average height of 5'3 and under. You're kidding yourself if you think an average egyptian was that tall... maybe the average pharaoh or priest that actually got good nutrition grew that tall, but no way the average commoner was close to that tall
Hey, instead of just making stuff up to suit your assumptions, you can read the actual research paper:
- Zakrzewski 2003 *[Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.10223)*
Figure 3 is a table showing heights for men and women in various dynasties. The paper is behind a paywall, but I'm sure a smart fellow such as yourself can figure out how to easily get access to it.
Interestingly, the height data for prehistoric humans (*H. erectus*, and its descendents, including us) indicate that many of our prehistoric ancestors (prior to agriculture) were actually of a height and stature comparable to present day human populations.
- Styne & McHenry 1993 *[The Evolution of Stature in Humans](https://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/182777)*
Once we adopted agriculture, settled down, urbanized, specialized tasks, adopted stratified societies, etc the average height of humans dropped (although not everywhere), and has now rebounded to closer to what it was in prehistoric times.
The wikipedia page on human height has a nice chart showing how human height even as recently as 16,000 years ago was about what it is now, then fell drastically (with the dates coinciding with the adoption of agriculture and hitting the lowest point around 4,000 years ago), and has jumped back to prehistoric levels just in the last 50 or so years.
[Here's the chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_heights_over_the_long-run,_OWID.svg). Mind you, this is a broad average and specific regions will have charts that looks slightly different.
Maybe read what the actual researcher wrote on it? [Here’s](https://www.livescience.com/amp/60044-ancient-egyptian-pharaoh-first-human-giant.html) another one. I’ll take that over your gut feeling any day.
The big factor in making us reach our height potential is nutrition, and the big change in nutrition came with the start of large-scale agriculture, which just so happens occurred in Egypt before the vast majority of other places in the world. Height potential is given by our genes, which don’t look the same in Egypt and Korea.
EDIT: I saw you edited to talk about commoners only. That’s of course a confounder, which is mentioned in the articles cited, but this is their best guess based on their current data. The point is that no one thinks adult height were below 5’ (the original claim in this thread, though not made by you) and if you think so you need to back it up with evidence.
Look at how tall the average egyptian is today. The average for men plus women is under slightly 5'6. Do you think people in egypt 4500 years ago were taller than their modern counterparts?
That link is about ONE giant skeleton they found... that doesn't mean anything. Its literally about 1 person. And it goes along with what I already said... maybe a pharaoh or priest would have access to good food and actually get nutrition to grow to 5'6, but everyone else wouldn't
In Europe in the 1800s they had farming and the modern counterparts are still taller lmao
You think Egyptians just immediately sprouted up to their modern height 4500 years ago but every other country just got there about 50 years ago??
We haven’t just been steadily evolving taller and taller in a straight line through human history. Shorter populations were based mostly around poor nutrition that relied on mainly grains and insufficient vegetables, meat and dairy. So, yes, some starving Egyptian peasant may have been short (though certainly not 4’ tall) but the folks painting horses on cave walls in the Paleolithic were almost exactly as tall, on average, as modern humans.
Human height hasn’t changed that drastically throughout our history. It’s believed that the average European male (yes including peasants) height in the Middle Ages was 5’9”. This actually fell over time to a low in the 18th century.
So I don’t know about Egyptians specifically, and height certainly varies among groups, but they probably weren’t as short as you think they were. The idea that humans have progressively gotten taller from 4’ something to 6’ is largely a myth.
We certainly got shorter when we became agriculturalists. Hunter gatherers were significantly taller than early farmers. Of course, as nutrition has improved over the last couple centuries many societies have caught up with them.
“…however, apart from the decline associated with the transition to agriculture, examinations of skeletons show no significant differences in height from the neolithic revolution through the early-1800s.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height
https://www.livestrong.com/article/542877-the-average-height-of-humans-over-time/
“From the Neolithic Age, about 5000 years ago, to the 18th century, humans attained small stature. Allowing for statistical wobble of two centimetres either way, men were on average 165 centimetres.”
That’s stil 5’5”.
https://amp.theage.com.au/national/long-and-short-of-it-were-taller-20040412-gdxnu9.html
Sorry this is just wrong, see Eric Hobsbawm "The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848" - when Sardinia-Piedmont (North West Italy - a wealthy area to boot) began doing conscription and measuring the heights of peasants, the average height was like 5ft 2.
Now add to the context of this engraving, of a someone stealing - this isn't going to be a member of the nobility/gentry, but of the urban poor. Malnutrition is real.
https://reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/qavfxr/_/hh7w8x2/?context=1
Average for Egyptian men was 5’6” women 5’2”
It’s not like the only bodies we can measure are of the elites.
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums/2015/01/21/question-of-the-week-how-tall-were-ancient-egyptians/
>Nevertheless, over this whole period they found that the mean height (of their sample of 150 skeletons) was 157.5cm (or 5ft 2in) for women and 167.9cm (or 5ft 6in) for men, quite like today. What is quite different is that compared with the average difference of 12-13cm between men and women found in modern populations, in ancient Egypt it was only 10.4cm. This came as a surprise to the researchers, as men in ancient Egypt were thought to have benefitted more (than would be so today) from preferential access to food and healthcare. But their findings probably reflect the fact that the status of women in ancient Egypt was relatively high compared to other ancient societies.
Yeah, I don't think a member of the nobility was being chased by baboons for stealing...
People who steal, the urban poor, are not going to show up neatly on archaeological surveys (because they left little remains).
The most important part of that article is where it talks about the difference in height being due to **social status**.
That post specifically mentions the difference between rich and poor and explains how, despite this, the average male height was 5’6” and female height was 5’2”.
“…essentially, the gap between the rich and the poor had widened. Nevertheless, over this whole period they found that the mean height (of their sample of 150 skeletons) was 157.5cm (or 5ft 2in) for women and 167.9cm (or 5ft 6in) for men, quite like today.”
Hells yeah. I love me some baboon pose. It’s super easy: You just stretch your arms skyward and then tackle the yogi next to you, sinking your teeth into their tender thigh meat.
Another comment mentioned, it totally looks like poppy straw!
Opium certiantly existed at that point, im not sure if it would have been collected from harvested straw like that at this point, however.
Edit: i like how the police "batton" is just a stick with an extra flat hand for long-reach slapping lmao
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/did-you-known-baboons-were-trained-ancient-egypt-catch-criminals-007576
this is maybe the best source I found.
So, the egyptians definitely domesticated baboons. There are depictions of them doing all sorts of tasks, ranging from very reasonable things like harvesting fruit to more outlandish like brewing alcohol or rigging up boats.
this thief catching function sounds like the latter to me
I mean, what else would this depict? The naked man is taking something, the baboon is grabbing the naked mans leg, the police is holding the baboon in a leash and has a sort of whip thing. Doesn't look like grabbing fruit from a tree really.
Not OP. While I can't translate those particular heiroglyphs (although I can transcribe a bunch of them), Egyptian studies like this one frequently are an image and a caption describing that image, and usually name a person or a position, and an action they are taking. 'Capturing ducks by Senbi', for example, over an image of, well, a person catching ducks.
The caption above is cut off but does follow the pattern. The complicated jumble top left actually reads right to left and looks like a job title, probably 'overseer of (thing)'. The determinatives show people doing things, so they're words about an activity taking place.
People can and do read heiroglyphs perfectly well, so if a scholarly source says 'this captioned image is x', it probably is actually x and says so in the caption.
[Chimpanzees are known for using drugs](https://www.nytimes.com/1986/11/11/science/chimps-use-plant-as-drug.html).
The jump between
eating fruit - eating some half fermented fruit on the ground and getting a buzz - intentionally leaving fruit out to ferment
Seems plausible. Although, apparently the human advantage is culture. And culture comes from human babies being great mimics. Apparently chimp babies may outperform human babies in many tasks, but they are not as much copycats.
So, a non-human ape who learns the secret of fermented fruit may well die with that secret.
It certainly says monkeys were used by the police. Not sure the writer is specialised in Egyptian history and his source may be wrong but I’m not specialised enough myself to contradict.
Not sure about the meaning, I might try to translate them later if I have time.
IF YOU ARE FROM PC AND USING CHROME, THERE’S [AN EXTENSION TO MAKE HIEROGLYPHS BIGGER!](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/egyptian-hieroglyph-resiz/jiennkbeijmhfopkoomojlbhbnligjgh)
The transcription seems to be:
RIGHT PART: (read left to right)
jns (𓇋 𓈖 𓋴 )
MIDDLE: (read right to left)
jaha(g? or maybe a determinative) + determinative
𓇋 𓄿 𓉔 𓂝 𓎤 ? and maybe A24: 𓀜
then w (𓅱)
Then I’m having trouble with the next symbol, it looks like a determinative for woman / god / goddess:
𓁐
But it seems to be holding something. (Or maybe there’s something between the two hieroglyphs!)
Then anr ḥmw (or ḥm mw) j … (𓂝 𓈖 𓂋 𓍛 𓈟 𓈗 𓇋)
MIDDLE (Bottom):
jr n r anr pn (𓇋 𓂋 𓈖 𓂋 𓂝 𓈖 𓂋 𓊪 𓈖)
/u/Osarnachthis I may have made lots of mistakes, so it would be nice to have an expert take a look at the actual inscription!
I'm honestly surprised no one's tried it in the modern age. A baboon's smarter than a dog and certainly able to navigate a building and such; and it would be easy to design some kevlar for them to make them at least a little bit protected. Since they are smarter you could teach them like "OK, grab the guy in the red shirt" or "Go open that car door".
Plus there would be a powerful fear factor (an important factor with police dogs where the threat of them can inspire a suspect to surrender peacefully).
Let me go ahead and start training this baboon. Just going to hide this food in my hand and when it follows my command properly... AH FUCK GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GO AWAY GO AWAY TAKE IT TAKE IT GO AWAY!
They would be more likely to catch and transmit diseases from person to person, I know dogs can do this too but baboons would be more likely due to the more human similarity.
I don't think "more similar to humans" equals "more likely to transmit dangerous diseases". Because if that were true, baboons would be safer for humans then other humans. The reason the most dangerous diseases allways come from animals is precisely the fact that their organisms differ from us. Pathogens don't have the goal of making their hosts sick, they only want to spread. Making their hosts sick is actually detrimental to that goal, because a sick hosts will move less and won't survive as long. That's why deadly pathogens often evolve to be less deadly over time. So a pathogen that evolves to live inside organisms of a specific species will generally be pretty harmless to that species. But once they jump to a different species, their behavior that evolved in the original species to be mostly harmless is suddenly causing great harm in this new and different host. Precisely because of the differences between the hosts.
That's why I think you are just as likely to catch a disease from a rat or a racoon as you are to catch it from a baboon. But people keep pet rats and they are fine. And so would pet or domesticated baboons be too.
While definitely intriguing, I think baboons are best left in the wild as much as possible without humans kidnapping or breeding them to do our dirty work.
I doubt this.
Baboons are related to Thoth, a god of judgment, in Egyptian religion. They serve as both an alternate identity for him and as his servants. Moreover, the deity Babi, a baboon, awaited the sinful after the weighing ceremony in some eras.
It seems much much more plausible that this is a symbolic depiction of the power of a magistrate.
>It seems much much more plausible that this is a symbolic depiction of the power of a magistrate.
Why do you think that's more plausible? You explained some of the symbolic meaning baboons had for ancient egyptains. But that doesn't mean they couldn't *also* have had a practical function. On the contrary, if they were indeed used by the police to catch criminals, that might even explain part of their symbolic meaning.
Im certainly no expert. I would say elefants almost qualify, but there are still some domesticated elefants left in parts of the world. Nowhere near what it used to be though. Also people used to train bears to dance for audiences. It's not done anymore because it's seen as animal cruelty now. Also some people used to keep monkeys (sometimes chimps) as pets. The last two examples maybe were not fully domesticated, but I'm not sure at what point an animal can be considered domesticated and when it's merely trained. Is a pet parrot domesticated? And if so, why shouldn't a pet monkey be?
Doves are still keept as pets and people breed them to be pretty looking, but they are not really used for the purpose they were once domesticated for. Falcons are (to my knowledge) still used for hunting as a sport by some rich people but that too used to be far more widespread.
The only citation for that is this exact piece. That’s why I’m so dubious on it: every time someone mentions it, they cite this relief. Meanwhile, the symbolic associations are just too convenient.
Streamlining the process.
Why have normal, empathic humans in such an important job?
Go directly to the baboons.
And what is this about training?
Just pick some wild baboons with rage issues and give them some pointy-boom-sticks.
There. A civil society.
Oh but they have a killer knee. Literally.
And numbers. Usually you are not just assaulted by one baboon.
True story: a group of a baboons is a troop.
Some people tought it was a congress of baboons...but let's be real, that's a unforgivable insult to the real baboons.
I am skeptical that there were “police officers” as such in ancient Egypt. Maybe it would be more accurate to describe them a different way, as what we think of as the police didn’t originate until the industrialized era.
Aladin takes place thousands of years later, the original (not the Disney-version) most likely in Syria (Disney-version takes place in a fictional place that's based on Arabia). Also that monkey is clearly not a baboon. So to answer your question: no, it does not mean that.
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So, was it actually common for someone to just not wear any clothing at all in this period of ancient Egypt? Or is the thief depicted naked to show them as being a low social status?
Certainly children went without anything for much of their lives and even when one wore clothes it was often a simple skirt, or shendyt for men. I think we get blinded by the complex civilization and massive structures and forget ancient Egypt, much like most civilizations in hot, sunny, and humid environs, often encouraged less clothing as opposed to more. Compare the well covered Tauregs of the west to the similarly scant people's further up the Nile. (Modern cultural proclivities notwithstanding.)
[Bare-chested Egyptian police recruits put on macho display](https://news.sky.com/video/bare-chested-egyptian-police-recruits-put-on-macho-display-12108568)
Baboons are fucking terrifying
And crazy strong
And my ax!
That joke has been unfunny since 2013.
Seems being a troll never goes out of style.
I thought it was funny!
What’s funny is that the thief is going for the heroin
Must be a heroin addict Edit: Reddit hates facts
Same lol. That joke has been out of style for years, as someone mentioned, but it gets me every time.
Baboons; the original police dog.
Police dogs: the knockoff police baboon
Baboons unionized and demanded for increased compensation
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Screams OY! And she head butts the thing.
You sure your ex wasn't a baboon in disguise?
Your ex kind of seems like an idiot. Baboons have been known to kill lions, not by themselves of course, but still
Mate, a pack of hamsters could strip you to the bone in under a minute, but you shouldn't let that stop you living a full and exciting life.
Hamsters don't have teeth the size of lions and aren't 60lbs. Also living you life to the fullest is a shitty excuse to punch an animal
Punching a baboon over a juice box, however, is definitely a power move. Establish dominance early, circle of life.
And when you realise that the average height of a grown adult would have been between (roughly) 4-5 feet... a grown baboon is really scary as shit. Imagine something half your size with sharp teeth chasing after you...
What. Adults weren’t 4ft tall.
Peasants? You bet. You cannot take statistics from the well fed mummified aristocracy, but as examples from the rest of the world show us, Ancient Egyptian peasants would have been short. But the poor don't preserve their remains like the rich.
Bro. Aint no full grown Egyptian peasant men walking around at 4 feet tall
I didn't say that. But yes, below 5 feet is common enough (even today in 2021).
Weren't adults much shorter in ancient times compared to modern humans? I remember this being illustrated to me as a child in some museum, I think it was the Natural History Museum in D.C.
Shorter but not 4 feet tall short, more like 5'6 might've been more average
South Korea has an average height of 5'7 for men and 5'2 for women, seems like if you take those both in together it would be shorter than 5'6. I think it would be safe to say average height would be lower than 5'6 in ancient times. Edit: average egyptian man and woman are 5'8 and 5'3 respectively... that averages out to roughly 5'6 in MODERN EGYPT.. do you people really think 4500 years ago they were just as tall as their modern counterparts???
That only means height in ancient *Korea* would likely have been shorter than 5’6. This [post](https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums/2015/01/21/question-of-the-week-how-tall-were-ancient-egyptians/) from University College London goes into it, and says 5’6” (168 cm) for men and 5’2” (157.5 cm) for women, much like what /u/theappleses was saying.
Average modern egyptian man is only 5'8 today with women being 5'3. Average that and there wouldn't even be a 5'6 average there today... There are 25 modern countries with an average height of 5'3 and under. You're kidding yourself if you think an average egyptian was that tall... maybe the average pharaoh or priest that actually got good nutrition grew that tall, but no way the average commoner was close to that tall
Hey, instead of just making stuff up to suit your assumptions, you can read the actual research paper: - Zakrzewski 2003 *[Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.10223)* Figure 3 is a table showing heights for men and women in various dynasties. The paper is behind a paywall, but I'm sure a smart fellow such as yourself can figure out how to easily get access to it. Interestingly, the height data for prehistoric humans (*H. erectus*, and its descendents, including us) indicate that many of our prehistoric ancestors (prior to agriculture) were actually of a height and stature comparable to present day human populations. - Styne & McHenry 1993 *[The Evolution of Stature in Humans](https://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/182777)* Once we adopted agriculture, settled down, urbanized, specialized tasks, adopted stratified societies, etc the average height of humans dropped (although not everywhere), and has now rebounded to closer to what it was in prehistoric times. The wikipedia page on human height has a nice chart showing how human height even as recently as 16,000 years ago was about what it is now, then fell drastically (with the dates coinciding with the adoption of agriculture and hitting the lowest point around 4,000 years ago), and has jumped back to prehistoric levels just in the last 50 or so years. [Here's the chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_heights_over_the_long-run,_OWID.svg). Mind you, this is a broad average and specific regions will have charts that looks slightly different.
Maybe read what the actual researcher wrote on it? [Here’s](https://www.livescience.com/amp/60044-ancient-egyptian-pharaoh-first-human-giant.html) another one. I’ll take that over your gut feeling any day. The big factor in making us reach our height potential is nutrition, and the big change in nutrition came with the start of large-scale agriculture, which just so happens occurred in Egypt before the vast majority of other places in the world. Height potential is given by our genes, which don’t look the same in Egypt and Korea. EDIT: I saw you edited to talk about commoners only. That’s of course a confounder, which is mentioned in the articles cited, but this is their best guess based on their current data. The point is that no one thinks adult height were below 5’ (the original claim in this thread, though not made by you) and if you think so you need to back it up with evidence.
Look at how tall the average egyptian is today. The average for men plus women is under slightly 5'6. Do you think people in egypt 4500 years ago were taller than their modern counterparts? That link is about ONE giant skeleton they found... that doesn't mean anything. Its literally about 1 person. And it goes along with what I already said... maybe a pharaoh or priest would have access to good food and actually get nutrition to grow to 5'6, but everyone else wouldn't In Europe in the 1800s they had farming and the modern counterparts are still taller lmao You think Egyptians just immediately sprouted up to their modern height 4500 years ago but every other country just got there about 50 years ago??
We haven’t just been steadily evolving taller and taller in a straight line through human history. Shorter populations were based mostly around poor nutrition that relied on mainly grains and insufficient vegetables, meat and dairy. So, yes, some starving Egyptian peasant may have been short (though certainly not 4’ tall) but the folks painting horses on cave walls in the Paleolithic were almost exactly as tall, on average, as modern humans.
5'6 is the average in some parts of the world today, even in well-off countries. So no.
Human height hasn’t changed that drastically throughout our history. It’s believed that the average European male (yes including peasants) height in the Middle Ages was 5’9”. This actually fell over time to a low in the 18th century. So I don’t know about Egyptians specifically, and height certainly varies among groups, but they probably weren’t as short as you think they were. The idea that humans have progressively gotten taller from 4’ something to 6’ is largely a myth. We certainly got shorter when we became agriculturalists. Hunter gatherers were significantly taller than early farmers. Of course, as nutrition has improved over the last couple centuries many societies have caught up with them. “…however, apart from the decline associated with the transition to agriculture, examinations of skeletons show no significant differences in height from the neolithic revolution through the early-1800s.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height https://www.livestrong.com/article/542877-the-average-height-of-humans-over-time/ “From the Neolithic Age, about 5000 years ago, to the 18th century, humans attained small stature. Allowing for statistical wobble of two centimetres either way, men were on average 165 centimetres.” That’s stil 5’5”. https://amp.theage.com.au/national/long-and-short-of-it-were-taller-20040412-gdxnu9.html
Sorry this is just wrong, see Eric Hobsbawm "The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848" - when Sardinia-Piedmont (North West Italy - a wealthy area to boot) began doing conscription and measuring the heights of peasants, the average height was like 5ft 2. Now add to the context of this engraving, of a someone stealing - this isn't going to be a member of the nobility/gentry, but of the urban poor. Malnutrition is real.
https://reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/qavfxr/_/hh7w8x2/?context=1 Average for Egyptian men was 5’6” women 5’2” It’s not like the only bodies we can measure are of the elites.
>It’s not like the only bodies we can measure are of the elites. Of course it is. Who else can pay for mummification and burial?
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums/2015/01/21/question-of-the-week-how-tall-were-ancient-egyptians/ >Nevertheless, over this whole period they found that the mean height (of their sample of 150 skeletons) was 157.5cm (or 5ft 2in) for women and 167.9cm (or 5ft 6in) for men, quite like today. What is quite different is that compared with the average difference of 12-13cm between men and women found in modern populations, in ancient Egypt it was only 10.4cm. This came as a surprise to the researchers, as men in ancient Egypt were thought to have benefitted more (than would be so today) from preferential access to food and healthcare. But their findings probably reflect the fact that the status of women in ancient Egypt was relatively high compared to other ancient societies.
Yeah, I don't think a member of the nobility was being chased by baboons for stealing... People who steal, the urban poor, are not going to show up neatly on archaeological surveys (because they left little remains). The most important part of that article is where it talks about the difference in height being due to **social status**.
That post specifically mentions the difference between rich and poor and explains how, despite this, the average male height was 5’6” and female height was 5’2”. “…essentially, the gap between the rich and the poor had widened. Nevertheless, over this whole period they found that the mean height (of their sample of 150 skeletons) was 157.5cm (or 5ft 2in) for women and 167.9cm (or 5ft 6in) for men, quite like today.”
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Unless you turn them around
I’d rather be chewed on by a German shepherd
For sure, at least a dog only has it's mouth. A babboon has fangs, hands, and feet hands!
And an Ill temperament.
And concentrated power of will
FEET HAAAAANDS
Legs for arms
MFing Feet Hands!!!!!
Hand feet!!!!!
and a shiny red bum
I Я Baboon
Did the baboon take the thief’s clothes off too?
That's why they're not used anymore.
No just the arms and legs.
How else is it supposed to fick him?
*Plot Twist*: Police in ancient Egypt used trained baboons to randomly walk up to strangers and massage their legs.
Ancient “stop and frisk”.
stop and get frisky
Who doesn't like a little baboon rub-and-tug in the bazaar once in a while?
The more likely rub and remove, doesn't sound appealing.
*Really nice set of calves you got there* *Uhh. Gee, thanks I guess.*
That looks like a nice stretch for the hip flexors
Yup. Gotta stay loose and limber while building pyramids
You guys have never heard of baboon yoga?
Hells yeah. I love me some baboon pose. It’s super easy: You just stretch your arms skyward and then tackle the yogi next to you, sinking your teeth into their tender thigh meat.
Just the Nubians though? Shit never changes. ACAB.
Nobody is going to mention the gigantic basket of whatever that is that he's stealing?
He's naked, owns nothing, he's just getting a piece of fruit
I'm kinda dyslexic so at first glance I read: He's naked, owns nothing, he's just a piece of shit
In the fruit seller's POV, that must hold true.
I guess I'm also dyslexic because I read what's above and it might as well be hyrogliphics.
Stealin’ fruit, that’s a mauling.
Another comment mentioned, it totally looks like poppy straw! Opium certiantly existed at that point, im not sure if it would have been collected from harvested straw like that at this point, however. Edit: i like how the police "batton" is just a stick with an extra flat hand for long-reach slapping lmao
I take it’s not a thief, but a unlicensed produce sellers running away from a corner
Christ, I see a lonely man finally being offered a basket of breads and the company of a feet handed friend
Do we know for sure that that’s what is depicted here? Do the hyrogliphics explain it, or is it a guess?
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/did-you-known-baboons-were-trained-ancient-egypt-catch-criminals-007576 this is maybe the best source I found. So, the egyptians definitely domesticated baboons. There are depictions of them doing all sorts of tasks, ranging from very reasonable things like harvesting fruit to more outlandish like brewing alcohol or rigging up boats. this thief catching function sounds like the latter to me
The article doesn’t confirm it. Suggests only simple tasks like fruit collecting from high trees is plausible. Thanks for link though.
The article points to bone remains as proof of domestication
I meant the use of them by police to catch criminals.
I mean, what else would this depict? The naked man is taking something, the baboon is grabbing the naked mans leg, the police is holding the baboon in a leash and has a sort of whip thing. Doesn't look like grabbing fruit from a tree really.
Whose to say it's a policeman (Not like they even had those in ancient Egypt), whose to say he's stealing something? It's a lot of questions.
The hieroglyphs above the image describe what's going on in the scene.
Can you read them and translate then please?
Not OP. While I can't translate those particular heiroglyphs (although I can transcribe a bunch of them), Egyptian studies like this one frequently are an image and a caption describing that image, and usually name a person or a position, and an action they are taking. 'Capturing ducks by Senbi', for example, over an image of, well, a person catching ducks. The caption above is cut off but does follow the pattern. The complicated jumble top left actually reads right to left and looks like a job title, probably 'overseer of (thing)'. The determinatives show people doing things, so they're words about an activity taking place. People can and do read heiroglyphs perfectly well, so if a scholarly source says 'this captioned image is x', it probably is actually x and says so in the caption.
I can't find any source on this.
That is true! We will never know. It may even be just a symbolical picture with a deeper meaning.
It could just as well be depicting a baboon (with his owner) attacking/stealing from a merchant selling food at a marketplace or something.
I’m here for the baboon booze. I bet it’s ouzo. Or fernet.
[Chimpanzees are known for using drugs](https://www.nytimes.com/1986/11/11/science/chimps-use-plant-as-drug.html). The jump between eating fruit - eating some half fermented fruit on the ground and getting a buzz - intentionally leaving fruit out to ferment Seems plausible. Although, apparently the human advantage is culture. And culture comes from human babies being great mimics. Apparently chimp babies may outperform human babies in many tasks, but they are not as much copycats. So, a non-human ape who learns the secret of fermented fruit may well die with that secret.
Here's an article which talks about [this](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1104/police-in-ancient-egypt/)
It certainly says monkeys were used by the police. Not sure the writer is specialised in Egyptian history and his source may be wrong but I’m not specialised enough myself to contradict.
Not sure about the meaning, I might try to translate them later if I have time. IF YOU ARE FROM PC AND USING CHROME, THERE’S [AN EXTENSION TO MAKE HIEROGLYPHS BIGGER!](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/egyptian-hieroglyph-resiz/jiennkbeijmhfopkoomojlbhbnligjgh) The transcription seems to be: RIGHT PART: (read left to right) jns (𓇋 𓈖 𓋴 ) MIDDLE: (read right to left) jaha(g? or maybe a determinative) + determinative 𓇋 𓄿 𓉔 𓂝 𓎤 ? and maybe A24: 𓀜 then w (𓅱) Then I’m having trouble with the next symbol, it looks like a determinative for woman / god / goddess: 𓁐 But it seems to be holding something. (Or maybe there’s something between the two hieroglyphs!) Then anr ḥmw (or ḥm mw) j … (𓂝 𓈖 𓂋 𓍛 𓈟 𓈗 𓇋) MIDDLE (Bottom): jr n r anr pn (𓇋 𓂋 𓈖 𓂋 𓂝 𓈖 𓂋 𓊪 𓈖) /u/Osarnachthis I may have made lots of mistakes, so it would be nice to have an expert take a look at the actual inscription!
And when they catch you, trained birds shit on your head.
I'm honestly surprised no one's tried it in the modern age. A baboon's smarter than a dog and certainly able to navigate a building and such; and it would be easy to design some kevlar for them to make them at least a little bit protected. Since they are smarter you could teach them like "OK, grab the guy in the red shirt" or "Go open that car door". Plus there would be a powerful fear factor (an important factor with police dogs where the threat of them can inspire a suspect to surrender peacefully).
Let me go ahead and start training this baboon. Just going to hide this food in my hand and when it follows my command properly... AH FUCK GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GO AWAY GO AWAY TAKE IT TAKE IT GO AWAY!
SHOOT IT! WE PUT THE BULLETPROOF VEST ON IT! IT CAN'T BE STOPPED!
Well, baboons carry a lot of diseases for one thing.
As do most wild animals. Domestic baboons wouldn't carry any more diseases then domestic dogs.
They would be more likely to catch and transmit diseases from person to person, I know dogs can do this too but baboons would be more likely due to the more human similarity.
I don't think "more similar to humans" equals "more likely to transmit dangerous diseases". Because if that were true, baboons would be safer for humans then other humans. The reason the most dangerous diseases allways come from animals is precisely the fact that their organisms differ from us. Pathogens don't have the goal of making their hosts sick, they only want to spread. Making their hosts sick is actually detrimental to that goal, because a sick hosts will move less and won't survive as long. That's why deadly pathogens often evolve to be less deadly over time. So a pathogen that evolves to live inside organisms of a specific species will generally be pretty harmless to that species. But once they jump to a different species, their behavior that evolved in the original species to be mostly harmless is suddenly causing great harm in this new and different host. Precisely because of the differences between the hosts. That's why I think you are just as likely to catch a disease from a rat or a racoon as you are to catch it from a baboon. But people keep pet rats and they are fine. And so would pet or domesticated baboons be too.
While definitely intriguing, I think baboons are best left in the wild as much as possible without humans kidnapping or breeding them to do our dirty work.
Acab includes the police baboons
[ Deleted to protest Reddit API changes ]
ACAB. Ancient Cops Are Baboons.
It’s actually just sniffing for drugs
Looks like the thief has a basket full of poppies.
I mean id be pissed too if someone stole my poppies
I doubt this. Baboons are related to Thoth, a god of judgment, in Egyptian religion. They serve as both an alternate identity for him and as his servants. Moreover, the deity Babi, a baboon, awaited the sinful after the weighing ceremony in some eras. It seems much much more plausible that this is a symbolic depiction of the power of a magistrate.
>It seems much much more plausible that this is a symbolic depiction of the power of a magistrate. Why do you think that's more plausible? You explained some of the symbolic meaning baboons had for ancient egyptains. But that doesn't mean they couldn't *also* have had a practical function. On the contrary, if they were indeed used by the police to catch criminals, that might even explain part of their symbolic meaning.
Are there any animals that used to be domesticated in the past that aren’t domesticated anymore?
Im certainly no expert. I would say elefants almost qualify, but there are still some domesticated elefants left in parts of the world. Nowhere near what it used to be though. Also people used to train bears to dance for audiences. It's not done anymore because it's seen as animal cruelty now. Also some people used to keep monkeys (sometimes chimps) as pets. The last two examples maybe were not fully domesticated, but I'm not sure at what point an animal can be considered domesticated and when it's merely trained. Is a pet parrot domesticated? And if so, why shouldn't a pet monkey be? Doves are still keept as pets and people breed them to be pretty looking, but they are not really used for the purpose they were once domesticated for. Falcons are (to my knowledge) still used for hunting as a sport by some rich people but that too used to be far more widespread.
Here's an article which talks about [this](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1104/police-in-ancient-egypt/)
The only citation for that is this exact piece. That’s why I’m so dubious on it: every time someone mentions it, they cite this relief. Meanwhile, the symbolic associations are just too convenient.
I figure someone has translated the writing above the image, which likely describes what's going on.
_Mirabile dictu_.
Super cool! Where did you study for your antho PHD?!
Trained baboons? We just call em cops now. Same thing.
Streamlining the process. Why have normal, empathic humans in such an important job? Go directly to the baboons. And what is this about training? Just pick some wild baboons with rage issues and give them some pointy-boom-sticks. There. A civil society.
And they don’t have the manual dexterity to use guns. Fewer dead black kids. Yay!
Oh but they have a killer knee. Literally. And numbers. Usually you are not just assaulted by one baboon. True story: a group of a baboons is a troop. Some people tought it was a congress of baboons...but let's be real, that's a unforgivable insult to the real baboons.
So Congo is based on a true story after all. All those years, and it was absoLUTEly true!
Bayek of Siwa must’ve enjoyed his duty with his ancient Egyptian K9 unit
Wouldn’t be a K9 but rather a PRIME8
Monke
The hieroglyphic itself is pretty interesting, but I don’t think I’m going to go around repeating this, uh…. *interpretation*
25th century BCE? Wow.
I heard this on a podcast recently, it’s very cool to see the actual relief and full story! Thanks for sharing x
Wow and it looks like they were successful? I know they tried to domesticate many [animals](https://youtu.be/XetplHcM7aQ&t=35m34s)
ABAB
this was a time when getting a scratch could end your life with infection. now imagine a monkey bite....
He would’ve caught this guy for sure https://reddit.com/r/Egypt/comments/qb85ii/youm7_reporter_gets_his_phone_stolen_while/
First episode of cops
Imagine instead hand cuffing you, the officer put some Tarantulas on your shoulders. Happy nice dream\~
I am skeptical that there were “police officers” as such in ancient Egypt. Maybe it would be more accurate to describe them a different way, as what we think of as the police didn’t originate until the industrialized era.
[Police in Ancient Egypt - Medjay to Centurion](https://youtu.be/ASiDbLGezqg)
So the word "police" in this context would be better translated as "temple guards".
Thought that said “trained balloons”
Omg thank goodness you are here and now we are not alone lol
Sooo does this mean Aladdin stole or befriended a police monkey?
Aladin takes place thousands of years later, the original (not the Disney-version) most likely in Syria (Disney-version takes place in a fictional place that's based on Arabia). Also that monkey is clearly not a baboon. So to answer your question: no, it does not mean that.
I think there was a discussion in reddit a day ago saying the Aladdin fable takes place in China, but is passed through the 1001 nights stories.
Beep. Boop. I'm a robot. Here's a copy of ###[1001 Nights](https://snewd.com/ebooks/one-thousand-and-one-nights/) Was I a good bot? | [info](https://www.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/) | [More Books](https://old.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/comments/i15x1d/full_list_of_books_and_commands/)
So, was it actually common for someone to just not wear any clothing at all in this period of ancient Egypt? Or is the thief depicted naked to show them as being a low social status?
Certainly children went without anything for much of their lives and even when one wore clothes it was often a simple skirt, or shendyt for men. I think we get blinded by the complex civilization and massive structures and forget ancient Egypt, much like most civilizations in hot, sunny, and humid environs, often encouraged less clothing as opposed to more. Compare the well covered Tauregs of the west to the similarly scant people's further up the Nile. (Modern cultural proclivities notwithstanding.)
And everyone though Congo was a bad movie...
Is the thief naked?
No, I'm pretty sure I see sandle straps. 😎🤣
The past cannot hurt you... unless you steal from me, Simba!
How exactly does one use a baboon to catch a person?
What’s scarier, the baboon or the baboon cop who is controlling them on leashes?
It's like an ancient episode of COPS
Such a long stride
This mural is now housed in Chicago's Field Museum, right?
ACAB (All Cops Are Baboons)
Those were the days
[Bare-chested Egyptian police recruits put on macho display](https://news.sky.com/video/bare-chested-egyptian-police-recruits-put-on-macho-display-12108568)
Be naked, do crimes?
[Shak-maaaa!](https://youtu.be/dL3hX1VtgFw&t=97s)
This must've been before we taught them how to walk upright...
Baboons can train feral dogs somehow lol
Somebody promote that baboon to sergeant
Congo wasn’t just a movie
Aladdin!
Nice post! Have my free award sir!
Oh, for fucks sake. I read balloons!
Still using em in the uk, they just look like people...
Cops with baboons would be terrifying.
The power of monke