A study on the portrayal of hunting dogs in the Old Kingdom

The ancient Egyptian gave a great importance to domesticated animals such as dogs. In 1950, Debono discovered the cemetery of Heliopolis, which included forty-five human graves and eleven animal graves (six goats and five dogs) and seven sets of pottery buried with no trace of bones. The graves of the dogs were very small and near the surface of the earth. The dogs were from the first and second dynasty and continued to the Greco-Roman period in ancient Egyptian civilization. Since the beginning of ancient Egyptian civilization, hunting dogs played a fundamental role in the daily life activities on one hand and considered a religious symbol on the other. So, thanks to the Old Kingdom artists for their precise observation and depiction of one type of dog on diffrent private tombs,