An Egyptian mural from the Rekhmire Tomb (c. 1479 to 1401 BCE during the XVIII dynasty) shows what appears to be a baby mammoth. The artist portrayed an elephant-like creature with lots of hair, a convex back, a high-domed head, and tusks.
Science writer Darren
Nash Naish proposes the “tentative suggestion that the elephant shown in Rekhmire's tomb might actually be a dwarf Woolly mammoth. If true, this would have radical implications. It would mean that the ancient Egyptians had a trading link of sorts with far eastern Siberia, and also that mammoths were captured and then transported alive to Africa!”
Both Naish and the commentators to his web article suggest other possibilities. Could it have been a surviving pygmy mammoth from one of the Mediterranean islands? Or was the artist unclear about what Asian elephants really looked like?
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Read the post at Nash’s site:
Tetrapod Zoology. More about
Cryptozoology
