Page 82 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW - ISSUE 13
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T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 8 2
El Jem, Bardo Museum, Tunis. The pair of sighthounds at the paddock and Brack types
flush out the hare; if it runs, the sighthounds are released, followed by the horsemen.
The three sequences of the hunt are arranged in the three lines of the mosaic.
© M. Ayeb, G. Mermet
Since we have to be careful with the term “breed”, we prefer to speak of dog types,
perhaps of a landrace or simply race. What is meant here, however, are dogs of different
origins, as they were described in antiquity. So there were already different types of
sighthounds in Oppian's time. In any case, we can distinguish two types of sighthound in
the mosaics of North Africa: first the slender type, possibly the Vertragus in El Jem, and
then the more compact type of the possible ancestor of the Sloughi in Oudna, in the
mosaic of Ederatus and Mustela.
Can we then also assume that the Italic Romans were more likely to have used Vertragi in
the area they controlled, but that the native Punic and Berber were more likely to take
the Sloughi type with them on the hunt?
