Page 10 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW Special Edition 5

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 1 0

SLOEQIS

(ARABIAN SIGHTHOUNDS)
AUGUST LE GRAS
Translated from Dutch by Els Siebel - The Netherlands
Circa 1903

I was asked by some enthusiasts to compile a story about our beautiful, ancient breed and I
gladly comply with this request for the dogs to which I have been devoting so much time,
effort, care and money for some years now; for the dogs of which, as an artist and dog lover, I
can so confidently say that they are “very beautiful”.

To start at the beginning. Yes, the beginning is unknown to me. From which jackal or wolf
species the sloeqi was originally bred, I don't know.

However, there is a particularly slender jackal living in Nubia and Abyssinia, which is most
probably the ancestor of the sloeqi and therefore of the later European smooth-haired or so-
called English greyhound.

It is certain that the sloeqi, in his present form, is ancient. On the oldest Egyptian
hieroglyphs, he is depicted as a companion of the hunting prince or grand seigneur.

Because, as the sloeqi is still encountered today with the great chiefs and spiritual lords of
Arabs, so was he six and more thousand years ago the companion of Ramses 1, and Ramses II
and III, of all those Old Egyptian Kings whose history and life is now, for us people from the

20th century, so mysterious.

As an image, just as old, of any other breed is known to me only on Assyrian monuments, in
relief, a kind of large hunting dog which, by size and type, most closely resembles a middle
form between mastiff and German dog. The dogs of the prehistoric inhabitants of Europe
were, in fact, judging from the discovered skeletons, more tamed wolves than actual dogs.

The sloeqi thus has his pedigree, or rather his coat of arms with quarters; he is of ancient
noble lineage.

And yet, Europe's influence in the old eastern countries, supposedly civilising but interfering
and destroying everything that was sacred in the old East, is also causing the sloeqi to
disappear there.

Sacred was also more or less the sloeqi.
Just last year, a mass of mummified dogs was found. And the Egyptian tried with embalming
to preserve for posterity only those creatures that stood very high with him.