Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Ancient Egypt, Ramses II & lasso, rope, lariat.

 Salvete Omnes,



there is a word in the American English for a  long rope with a running noose used to capture cattle or horses that comes from Spanish language.
Namely, it is lasso, which comes from a Spanish noun: el lazo; this lariat, lasso, or rope with a noose (arkan in Polish) used for lassoing animals and people  is a very ancient device, invented many thousands years ago by the Stone Age hunters. 

Now,  we will quickly time travel to the ancient Egypt, where in one of their temples (started by pharaoh Seti I and completed by his son Ramses II)  at Abydos there is so called Corridor of the Bull



In ancient Egypt the sinewy lasso had cosmic implication - eg this article explains some aspects of the religious meanings of a lariat.


but this New Kingdom imagery was just a continuing tradition and use from the oldest Egypt dynastic periods - the Old Kingdom.
There is the so called mastaba of Akhmerutnisut (5th Dynasty, 2494-2345BC) where the tomb sponsor is depicted as a hunter wielding a lasso (more details in Ines Torres'  article). While in the mastaba of Raemkai (MET) 'prince' is hunting gazelles with a lasso.

Nota bene, there are tomb imagery showing rope making (plant fibers and leather, eg this one) , while in this article by Emily Teeter you can learn about the rope making, techniques and its terminology in the ancient Egypt. 

Unfortunately the book from Cambridge Univ. Press - The Material World of Ancient Egypt, does not have anything about lasso and its use in the ancient Egypt - the rope chapter is by far so much weaker than any of the articles listed above - nor it mentions the use of rope in warfare,  hunting, war and animal husbandry (but for animal halters and fishing).. 

Valete

1 comment:

Dario T. W. said...

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/lasso