Camel

Where are the camels in ancient Egyptian drawings?

But another topic came to mind: the camel.

The camel, the ship of the desert.

The ruler of the Sahara and a great survivor, shaped by evolution into what it is: wide feet for moving on sand, a fat hump for storing food, highly efficient insulating fur (camel hair coats, sweaters, scarves), and so on.

However, the ancient Egyptians were conspicuously silent about the camel’s central role in their society.

Or perhaps the camel wasn’t present in the region during the Old Kingdom?

We usually don't think about the fact that in this area, evolution didn’t have millions of years but just a few hundred years to create the camel, as the green Sahara, according to today's calculations, became an uninhabitable desert in just a few hundred years.

Oh, it's quite simple: let's find the true place of origin of the camel, where it had millions of years to develop.

According to current scientific knowledge, the camel evolved either on the Arabian Peninsula or in North Africa in desert regions.

Where there also wasn’t a desert of sufficient size or duration to allow an animal as large and specialized as the camel to evolve.

In any case, while walking, Natalia noticed some strange bones on the ground and, given that bones were her specialty, immediately recognized them as camel bones.

She first thought of hidden cameras and pranks since her friends knew she was going there and might have scattered the camel bones to trick her.

The idea that these could be the remains of an ancient, now-extinct polar camel didn’t even cross her mind.

As investigations revealed (using biochemical collagen dating), these were the bones of a camel that lived and died during the Pliocene epoch 3.5 million years ago.

Now come the questions: what was that camel doing there?

So, is the camel not the ship of the desert?

The camel’s foot is perfectly adapted for walking on snow, its thick fur coat is excellent for surviving in icy conditions, and it carries its food in its hump.

As it turns out, the camel was originally the ship of the snowy plains, not the desert.

So now its easy: the Vikings brought the camel to the Sahara region from the north.

The camel was brought when the Sahara had already become a desert.

This is also evidenced by the fact that the camel, as a domestic animal, only appeared in Egypt around 1000 BC.

That’s all about the camel.

Biglino highlights a significant issue in this passage: the mention of camels.

The Bible describes Eliezer taking ten camels from Abraham's possessions on his journey to find a wife for Isaac.

The problem, as noted by archaeologists, is that camels are not believed to have been domesticated in Canaan until the 10th century BCE, approximately a thousand years after the time of Abraham.

Biglino argues that dismissing the Bible as mere myth or fable, based on issues like the mention of camels, is misguided.

He points out that while camels may not have been common in Canaan during Abraham's time, they were domesticated in Mesopotamia, Abraham's homeland.

Biglino cites the work of Professor Mark Chavalas from the University of Wisconsin, an expert in Middle Eastern history, who has documented evidence of camel domestication in Mesopotamia as early as the mid-third millennium BCE.

This evidence includes archaeological finds such as a tablet from Eshnunna depicting a human riding a camel, and records from Puzrish-Dagan mentioning the trade of camels.

Further supporting evidence comes from Professor Martin Heide of the Philips University of Marburg, who also confirms that camels were domesticated east of the Zagros Mountains and brought into Mesopotamia around the same time.

He emphasizes that dismissing the Bible's accounts due to perceived anachronisms like the mention of camels is a mistake.

He ends by urging those who dismiss the Bible as a collection of myths to reconsider, given the substantial evidence supporting the presence of camels during Abraham's time.