[FEL-L] Just something informative

Wed Nov 14 02:49:14 CST 2007

Hi there,

  As some of you may or may not know, I've been going through and cataloging the contents of my individual library to make it available as a private reference library (fee-based membership) to cover the costs of it all and as such I've been coming across articles I've long forgotten. Anyway, apart from that all I was cataloging some magazines from the 1960s and among them was this article I figured you'd all enjoy. And it might prove interesting to use before politicians that seem to have bought into the AR hooey that big cats are "inherently wild" and unsuitable as pets. Bear in mind this all takes place in a time when the slightest displeasure to a superior-ranking individual could mean enslavement or even death....

  BATTLE LION OF EGYPT
  One of history's strangest true stories about a king's savage pet who had been trained to obey his master
  By FAIRFAX DOWNEY

  A LION cub waited hungrily in a cave in the Egyptian desert for his mother to bring him food, but the lioness never returned. Hunters trapped her in a deep pit, with meat as bait, and killed her with arrows. Then they followed her tracks back to the cave and found the cub. He was small, but he fought the men savagely until they threw a net over him and tied him while he was tangled in the meshes. They took him to the royal city of Memphis on the Nile, which was the capital of Egypt, ruled by the Pharaoh Rameses II.

  For days the cub snarled and clawed at any one who came near him, but little by little he began to trust the keepers, who fed him regularly and treated him kindly. He was taken in hand by the Egyptian animal trainers, who were among the most skillful the world has ever known. They taught him to obey so well that he no longer had to be shut in a cage for safety but could be let loose. He learned many things a well-trained dog knows: to follow or stay, to hunt wild beasts and to guard a master. His training was so perfect that he was judged worthy to be given to the Pharaoh.

  The lion was now full-grown, a magnificent tawny creature with a shaggy black mane. His trainers took him to the palace and made him understand that the Pharaoh was his new master, whose every word must be obeyed. Rameses, who had ascended to the throne of Egypt in 1292 B.C. as a youth and was still a young man, was delighted with his pet. He named the lion Anta-m-Nekht, which means Mighty Repulser - one who drives away the enemies of the king. Before long the lion would live up to his name.

  When the Pharaoh held court, Anta-m-Nekht crouched beside his throne. Although he acted as tame as a house cat, courtiers trembled under the glare of his yellow eyes. Sometimes the Mighty Repulser, with a garland of flowers around his neck, marched in religious processions, for the lion was worshipped as one of the sacred animals of Egypt. But best of all he loved to hunt with his young master and run free beside the chariot horses, which had learned to overcome their natural fear of him. After the game had been surrounded by the huntsmen, Rameses would speak a sharp command that sent his lion bounding after hyena, gazelle or ostrich, to spring and bring them down with a pounce or the powerful stroke of a paw.

  ANTA-M-NECKT would attack men, too, at his master's order. Early in Rameses' reign the Negro tribes of Nubia to the south rebelled against the rule of Egypt. The Pharaoh led an expedition against them and took his royal beast along. When he met the enemy drawn up on the battlefield, he pointed to them and commanded his lion to charge. Roaring, Mighty Repulser rushed with such fury on the tall black spearmen that they fled in terror. Egyptian archers, riding in chariots, pursued and shot down many of the fleeing rebels.
  Rameses and his lion became devoted companions, and the Pharaoh decided that his pet must go with him to the next war he wwaged. But this time the enemy was the Hittites, and Rameses was unwilling to risk the life of his lion in battle against those fierce, hard-fighting Asiatics. He ordered his scribes to write in the records they kept that the mighty lion was going with him only "for pleasure and parade."

  The Egyptian army, numbering twenty thousand men - charioteers and infantry - marched through Palestine and Syria. Sometimes Anta-m-Nekht trotted along beside the horses of the royal chariot, but more often he rode in a cart and was spared the fatigue of the long journey. In camp he was chained in front of his master's tent with his forepaws tied because he might jump savagely on anyone he did not know.

  Unfortunately the young Pharaoh was overconfident. When he approached the Orontes River his advance guard halted to build a walled camp, while the main body of his troops was dangerously strung out along the line of march. Rameses did not suspect that the Hittite army, equal in strength to his own, was waiting in ambush behind the City of Kadesh. Suddenly three thousand Hittite chariots, each manned by three warriors, whiled out onto the plain, galloped down upon the Egyptian columns and thre them into confusion. Rameses himself, with only his bodyguard, was cut off by masses of enemy chariots.

  The Pharaoh strung his bow, shouted to Menna, his charioteer, and charged at the head of his band into the thickest of the Hittite forces. By his side in great leaping bounds ran his battle lion. They crashed into the Asiatics, and above the din of combat were heard the roars of Mighty Repulser as he sprang at the throats of rearing horses and dragged streaming bowmen and spearmen from their chariots.

  Six times in three hours the battle lion followed his master in headlong charges. But hard as they and the small bodyguard fought, the Hittites were too many for them, and they would have been overcome if many of the enemy had not abandoned the attack to plunder the Egyptian camp on the plain. Once more the Pharaoh and his lion charged and broke the Hittite line, and at that moment fresh Egyptian troops arrived and turned the tide of battle.

  SCRIBES wrote words that would be carved on stone about Rameses and his victory:
  There were thousands and hundreds of chariots round about him on all sides. He dashed them down in heaps of dead bodies before his horses. He killed all the kings and all the peoples who were allies of the Khita, together with his princes and elders, his warriors and his horses. He threw them one upon another, head over heels, into the water of the Orontes.

  In praise of Mighty Repulser's gallant deeds at the Battle of Kadesh, Rameses ordered that pictures of the lion also be carved on the walls of temples. Centuries passed, and the temples fell in ruins; but the carvings were saved, and they have brought the story of Anta-m-Nekht down to us through more than three thousand years.

  - from Children's Digest, July 1966

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