Khonsu and Re lead the Horses of the King. Large Tote Bag

Original artwork by Miriam Bibby. I'm an archaeologist and historian specialising in the history of the horse, and I find the arrival of horses into ancient or established societies particularly interesting. The ancient Egyptians adopted the use of the horse and chariot in the middle of the second millennium BCE, when Egypt was already an established society with identifiable cultural artefacts and behaviour. "Khonsu and Re lead the Horses of the King" is my own interpretation of the arrival of the horse in ancient Egypt - my own personal mythologising of the arrival. Khonsu and Re were the gods of moon and sun respectively, and although this dualism perhaps isn't the most obvious aspect of Egyptian myth - Egyptian deities tended to be in triads, or even groups of eight or nine - the colours of the horses lent themselves to the moon and sun theme. They wear solar and lunar discs and lead five other horses, making the total seven, which is the number of the seven Hathors, beings who were appear in stories in ancient Egypt. Although the goddess Hathor is usually seen in bovid rather than equid form, I liked the idea of linking the horses numerically with good fortune. The background again reflects my own personal mythological interpretation of the horse - possibly viewed as the gifts of the river, the land, the desert, the sea or the sun. And the solar dung beetle pushing the young sun skywards - made sense in that there was a direct connection between it and the horses. Plus, the arrival of the horse and chariot marked a new dawn in Egyptian history.