The ass, or donkey, and camel are, for the most part, animals of peace that help with daily tasks, while the horse excels in arts of war. The ass and camel both have greater endurance than the horse, though they are not as large or fast. The camel thrives especially in hot, dry climates, and the ass is very surefooted in mountainous areas. The ancient Mesopotamians noticed that crossing a mare, a female horse, with a jackass, or male donkey, would produce a mule, which had many advantages of both species. Nevertheless, the mule has sometimes been stigmatized as a product of an “unnatural” union.
The Avesta, a scripture of the Zoroastrians, told of an ass with three legs, six eyes, nine mouths, and a single horn. This animal was as large as a mountain and stood in the middle of a wild sea, whose waters it forever purified. This early unicorn symbolized the primeval innocence of a time when the world was new, but it also shows the awe with which the ass was once regarded.
The ass was first domesticated in ancient Egypt around 3000 B.C., well over a millennium before the horse. In the Bible, Job marveled at the difference between the donkeys of god and those kept by human beings:
Who gave the wild donkey his freedom, and untied the rope from his proud neck? I have given him the desert as a home, the salt plains as his own habitat.
He scorns the turmoil of the town: there are no shouts from a driver for him to listen for. In the mountains are the pastures that he ranges in quest of any green blade or leaf. (29:5-8) The ass survives precariously in the wild today, but most people think of this animal as fully domesticated. The ass began to acquire new associations through domestication, without casting off old ones, until it became one of the most complex animal symbols of all. The camel has had much the same fate in Arab lands and parts of Eurasia as the ass has in most areas around the Mediterranean. As the horse took over the more glamorous role of a mount of warriors, the camel, like the ass, was increasingly relegated to being a beast of burden. Although the Bible does not specify this, the Magi, or wise men who brought gifts to the infant Jesus, are traditionally portrayed riding on camels. Though sometimes praised for humility, the camel had the additional reputation of being lascivious. Jeremiah used the camel as a symbol of Israelites who had commerce with heathens:
A frantic she-camel running in all directions bolts for the desert, snuffing the breeze in desire; who can control her when she is in heat? (2:23-24)
Much later, the Wife of Bath in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales urged women to fight their husbands like camels.
Because of the unstinting service it performed, the Hebrews had a special affection for the ass, much as the Arabs did for the camel. According to the classifications in Leviticus, the ass was an “unclean” animal, yet the people of Israel never regarded it with revulsion. After the asses carried the Israelites and their possessions from slavery in Egypt, Yahweh ordered that every ass be consecrated with the sacrifice of a lamb (Exod. 13:13).
The king of Moab once summoned the magician Baalam to place a curse on the Israelites. Baalam set out on his she-donkey, when an angel, sword in hand, appeared in his path. The donkey turned aside from the road, and Baalam beat her to draw her back. This happened a second time, and then a third. Baalam picked up a stick and began to strike the donkey furiously. The donkey reproached Baalam, saying, “Have I not carried you since you were a young man? Have I ever failed you? Why do you beat me now?” Then Baalam looked up and saw the angel. “It is lucky for you,” the angel told him, “that your donkey saw me, though you did not, and turned aside. Had you continued, I would have killed you, but I would have let the donkey live.” This story, from the Old Testament (Num. 22:22-35), is one of the earliest and most explicit condemnations of cruelty to animals in the ancient world. For us, perhaps there is another lesson: If people knew a bit more about the proud history of the ass in human culture, being called an “ass” might be taken as a compliment rather than an insult.
The ass was used for work in vineyards and was sacred to Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. The Greeks, however, generally associated the ass with the Phrygians, their traditional enemies. In one legend, Midas, king of Phyrgia and a follower of Dionysus', failed to appreciate the music of Apollo, god of the sun. “You have the ears of an ass,” Apollo told Midas. When Midas looked into a stream, he saw that his ears had grown long and hairy. The ears of a donkey became a familiar symbol of stupidity. The foolscap used by jesters in medieval Europe had two points with bells, symbolizing the ears of a donkey. But,
however we think they look, donkeys actually hear very well. In the fables of Aesop, the ass was always a loser. In one tale an ass put on the skin of a lion and roamed about frightening man and beast. A fox heard him braying and said, “Oh, it's only you. I might have been scared myself, if I had not heard your voice.” Socrates, in Plato's dialogue “Phaedo,” stated that a person who is too concerned with bodily pains or pleasures might after death be reincarnated as a donkey.
