With this very useful and informative book Maja Miziur-Moździoch offers an excellent example of the new avenues for research within the quite active field of animal studies.[1] The subject matter concerns the astonishing pompē (“procession”, “pageant”) arranged and organized by Ptolemy II Soter at a date somewhere between 279 and 278 B.C. (44-47), and its goal is to study this phenomenon from as many points of view as possible. The main source of information about it is a lengthy passage from the historian Kallixeinos (2nd c. B.C.?) preserved in Athenaeus, Deipn. 5.197c-203b. The pompē contained about 28,600 animals (Appendix B, p. 227) and a prodigious number of humans acting in many capacities, not least that of animal handler.
The previous full study of the Grand Procession of Ptolemy II Soter, itself an excellent book, focused largely on fully describing the pompē itself. [2] A look at the content of Miziur-Moździoch’s chapters shows that the procession can lead to fruitful paths of research concerning the human-animal interactions in the third century B.C.
The introduction defines certain key concepts, including an especially fine discussion on what exactly a zoo is as opposed to a menagerie. Chapter 1 (“Menageries of the Ancient World”) begins with an insight into Egyptian animal collections as well as a detailed study of words the ancient Greeks used to describe various collections of kept animals. Chapter 2 (“Setting the Stage”) deals with Ptolemy II Soter’s interest in exotic animals by closely studying his explorations south to obtain them. Chapter 3 (“All Roads Lead to Elephants”) is a meticulous investigation into how Ptolemy’s elephants were hunted, captured and brought to Alexandria and other cities. Several routes to the south are proposed, each with its advantages and disadvantages as well as the estimated time it might take to transport the elephants. Chapter 4 (“The Animals”) discusses the animals of the pompē. Chapter 5 (“There is More than One Way to Skin a Cat”) deals with the methods used to obtain the animals, and Chapter 6 (“Animal Management”) treats the generally overlooked questions concerning keeping and managing the animals once they were in Alexandria. Chapter 7 (“Alexandrian ‘Zoos’”) is a careful overview of where and how the animals might have been stored in Alexandria, including very interesting information concerning handlers imported from the animals’ territory and in what parts of the city they might have been stored. Chapter 9 (“Pictured Menageries”) studies the depiction of the animals involved as found in painting, mosaics and papyri. The book contains five figures, four maps and five appendices, the first of which has the Greek and an English translation of the passage in Athenaeus.
There are several points of excellence in the book. First of all, there is the breadth of source material Miziur-Moździoch uses: ancient authors, papyri, inscriptions; mosaics, painting and Egyptian texts. Miziur-Moździoch’s use of animal collection excursions in the late 19th and the 20th centuries is noteworthy as is the fact that Miziur-Moździoch makes use of documents in languages beyond Greek and Latin, such as Demotic Egyptian, Hebrew and Sanskrit.[3] This work especially impresses me for asking questions that are too often overlooked when authors speak of ancient exotic animals: how were they collected; where were they transported and kept; how much food needed to be on hand to feed them on their journey or in captivity; what vehicles and vessels carried them from their natural environment; how much space was required to keep and exhibit them; where were the animals were kept in a staging area before they joined the procession? Answers to these practical questions are generally lacking and using modern expeditions that lacked motor vehicles to find comparanda is an inspired technique.
There are a few points to raise. The lack of an index is a glaring flaw of the book. A scholar studying, for example, ostriches will find much of interest in the book. But where? In its current shape, there is no way to find the many scattered references to the bird apart from reading the entire book. A reader of the sections on elephants in this book will be well advised to also consult the recent dissertation by Jenna Rice, which is not in the bibliography, undoubtedly appearing near the end of the book’s production.[4]
The text is clean and there are very few typographical errors (I noticed only “porcuipine” on p. 232). The maps are extremely useful and should be consulted as one reads about the possible routes involved in getting and transporting the animals; the appendices are also very informative. Throughout the appendices the names of the ancient animals are identified by their modern genus/species nomenclature.
This brings us to what is, to me, a problem existing not just in this book, but throughout ancient animal studies. Scholars have a fixation on identifying an animal whose name is a hapax or, truth be told, is too generic or widespread to allow for precise identification. Consider the onelaphos, seven teams of which appeared in the pompē in harness. The name literally means “ass-deer” and has been identified as at least five different animals.[5] Yet, in Appendix B (p. 224) it is simply identified as an “antelope”.
Further, consider a person going through the antelope and deer section of a modern zoo. The term “antelope” refers to artiodactyls that belong to the family of Bovidae, which is subdivided into eleven groups and about ninety genera. Some are more closely related to the deer family than the Bovidae. Can the average zoo-goer, even one as highly sophisticated as Athenaeus or Kallixeinus, be expected to know the difference between an antelope and a gazelle? What if an animal is known by different names in different places? Consider the robin in England (Erithacus rubecula, a type of flycatcher) and the United States (Turdus migratorius, a member of the thrush family). In America, the large cat known as the cougar (Puma concolor) is variously called a catamount, panther, mountain lion and puma, depending on local preferences. More caution needs to be applied throughout the field when trying to identify certain animals.
There are several examples in this work where the subjunctive would be preferable to the indicative. One example will suffice, and it concerns the animal on the Marisa frieze that is labelled ORYX (83-84).[6] Miziur-Moździoch uses minute details of the depiction such as tail and horn shape to support identifying “ORYX” as a member of four species of dik-dik, quite small antelope in the genus Madoqua. When Miziur-Moździoch categorically states that “(t)he mysterious animal (…) can now be identified as the dik-dik antelope” (p. 84) and so identifies it in the appendices without a question mark, this implies a certainty that cannot be supported by the available evidence. First, the inscription reads to some as ΙΥΙ.Λ and to others as ΙΥΟΛΙΕ. And Miziur-Moździoch relies on anatomical details from the painting to support the identification of the beast, which others have seen as a dog, lynx or caracal. Miziur-Moździoch points to its short tail and large tuft on head, and even uses it to identify the creature as female. Yet elsewhere (p. 191) Miziur-Moździoch argues that the artists of the Marisa frieze had probably not seen the majority of the animals they painted, and states that their depiction of two rhinoceroses “resembles a child’s drawing”. This is not to deny the possibility of Miziur-Moździoch’s identification, but a simple question mark in the tables, for this and some other animals, would more accurately reflect the true strength of the identification.
This, of course, in no way detracts from the book’s being an excellent study of the thorny question of Ptolemy’s pompē, answering several important questions that seem not to have been asked before. Miziur-Moździoch’s ability to see beyond the awe we and the ancients had for exotic animals and thus to ask and answer important practical questions will prove seminal to the study of future investigations.
Notes
[1] For an overview see T. Fögen, Animals in Graeco-Roman antiquity: A select bibliography, in: T. Fögen & E. Thomas (eds.), Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, Berlin & Boston 2017, 435–474.
[2] E. E. Rice, The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Oxford 1983.
[3] Miziur-Moździoch relies heavily on Carl Hagenbeck, Beasts and Men. Being Carl Hagenbeck’s Experiences for Half a Century among Wild Animals, London 1912.
[4] Jenna Rice, Animals in Ancient Greek Warfare: A Study of the Elephant, Camel, and Dog, Diss. University of Missouri-Columbia, 2020.
[5] Kenneth F. Kitchell, Animals in the Ancient World from A to Z, London & New York 2014, 138.
[6] Based on Miziur-Moździoch’s earlier “A note on the unidentified animal in the Marisa (Maresha) tomb frieze”, in: Eos 105 (2018), 331-334.