Better to ride an ass that carries me than a horse that throws me. Donkey exhibition at the Egyptian Collection in Berlin

In 1417, the Mallorcan priest Anselm Turmeda wrote Disputa de l’ase (“The Dispute of the Donkey”), in which a donkey and a monk debate whether humans are superior to animals. The monk wins the argument with the claim that God chose to incarnate as a human, not an animal.

Despite the pious argument, the work was put on index by the Spanish Inquisition in 1583, probably due to a lack of humor. And Father Anselm himself seems to be bluffing here, since he had already gone to Tunis a few years earlier to convert to Islam under the name of Abdallah at-Tarjuman, or Abdallah the Interpreter – and Islam obviously does not consider this argument well-founded.

Nevertheless, the donkey could have retorted that even if God did not take on its image, at least in His most glorious images of His becoming man, at the birth of Christ and at His entry into Jerusalem, one of its kind is always present.

The current exhibition Einfach unentbehrlich. Der Esel in der antiken Welt (Simply indispensable. The donkey in the ancient world), also reveals that the donkey was also present when man became a man. Or at least when civilization was founded. In Egypt, the donkey was domesticated as early as the 4th millennium BC (for comparison: the horse only two thousand years later, while the camel three thousand years later). A patient, persistent and unpretentions load-bearer, it was considered the only vehicle of land transport of the time. From the lone donkey with which the farmer carried the grain to thresh, to the donkey caravans consisting of hundreds of animals with which the merchants transported the luxury goods of Egypt to Mesopotamia through the Sinai Peninsula and brought back the rare minerals of the Afghan mountains – one could say that the path of world trade ran on the backs of donkeys – they were used and depicted in countless formations.

Perhaps the oldest depiction of the donkey from the predynastic period, the 4th millennium BC

An equally early depiction of a make-up palette from around 3200-3000 BC

A large harvest scene from a tomb at Saqqara, ca. 2400 BC

You shall not muzzle a donkey while threshing

A joy donkey in a camp scene, ca. 1220 BC

A strange transport: baby gazelles in a box on the back of a donkey

The donkey is a calm, patient and reliable animal. They were often used alongside horse-drawn carriages or horse caravans, because they had a calming effect on the horses. At the same time, they are very autonomous, or as their owners would say, stubborn. Even if incited, they do not get into situations that they do not fully understand. This is why they have such a bad press. In Egyptian paintings, which faithfully depict everyday details, we can see people trying to persuade donkeys with a stick, but also, which is much more effective, by stroking their chin or ears, or leading their foal in front of them.

“A donkey is not more stubborn than a horse. It simply gives you more time to think about what you did wrong.”

This duality is also evident in its symbolic use. The god Seth, the murderer of Osiris, is often depicted with a donkey's head, since his home – the desert and savannah, which is also the home of wild donkeys – simultaneously threatens and protects the fertile Nile Valley. Some of the guardians and protective spirits in afterlife also have donkey's head. And since the Sun is carried back to the East by a donkey, they often depicted it on the lower, flat part of scarab-shaped Sun amulets.

The god Seth is second from the left on a Theban astronomic ceiling from around 1280 BC

Horus, the vengeful son of Osiris, depicted as a falcon, attack Seth, depicted in the form of a donkey. 332-313 BC

Two donkeys, symbols of the past and future day, with the symbol of life between them, hold the horizon under the Sun represented by a scarab

One of the trials in the Book of the Dead is the encounter with the Ass-Eater

A common curse formula used against grave robbers in Egyptian tombs is “may the donkey fuck his wife”. Sometimes this was also depicted in plastic form.

In Mesopotamia, the donkey was sometimes used in the same way as the Jews used the scapegoat, on which they loaded the sins of the people and drove it out into the wilderness. The “scapedonkey” also carried far away the diseases and troubles that afflicted the community. This is depicted in a widespread carving type, on which the fever demon Lamaštu is carried away by a donkey on a boat.

The press of the donkey went really wrong in Roman times, when, forgetting its positive symbolic qualities, they focused mainly on its stubbornness, which was considered stupidity. We see this in Apuleius’ Golden Ass, and in the Roman-era Egyptian statuette that closes this exhibition, where an orator is depicted with a donkey’s head, an obvious reference to his intellectual abilities.

The image of the donkey as one of man’s oldest, most loyal and humble companions will be a thing of the past, along with Egyptian art. It is fortunate that the guardian of the past, the museum, reminds us of this image with a large number of objects that we cannot otherwise see in the permanent exhibition.