Charles-Alexandre Piétrement

“ Homer furnishes a number of evidences of the antiquity of the existence of mules in Asia Minor and Greece, and in one place declares them superior for certain purposes to oxen.
Not only do we possess fewer ancient facts respecting asses and mules than respecting horses, because their part in history has been less important, but the historical documents on asses and mules permit us to trace their past further back in the East than in the West, and this is easily explained. In the first place, the habit of preserving the memory of facts arose earlier in the East than in the West ”

“ THE majority of modern naturalists have long attributed an Asiatic origin to the domestic asses. They have believed that the species are derived from the so-called onagras or wild asses of Asia, which the ancients mention, and which are still met wandering in droves of greater or less size, from the northern part of the Altai Mountains to the southern regions of the continent. As late as 1862, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire assumed that the primitive country of the ass was partly in Asia, partly in Africa, because, he said, "the onagra extends from Asia to Northwestern Africa." ”

“ Their only beasts of burden are the asses that carry their goods and children."
Although asses are thus frequently figured on the ancient monuments of Egypt, no representation of the mule has been found there, not even on the numerous monuments built after the horse was introduced. The people had already a good stock of camels and asses, and their soil was not of a character to call the work of mules into requisition; and mules are still scarce in Egypt. ”