A dog begins to follow Dakis in AD 67, described as a “round
dog with big shoulders like the Arabs use to guard their flocks. He was the color of sand but he did not bark
at me.” The narrative indicates that the
dog “was no one’s dog and would be no one’s dog,” a pariah. I always wondered if this dog was meant to be
a depiction of a dog at all, or rather some sort of spirit, or a fragment of
conscience that took animal form in the wilderness Dakis was crossing at the
time of his encounter with the animal.
The dog reappears several times but never follows Dakis into a
city.
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| Les bergers, conduits par l'etoile, se rendent a Bethleem |
I had always assumed that Jacob described this dog from a
visit he took to Palestine before the war, in 1936.
It is known from his correspondence that he
accompanied a caravan from Palmyra to Damascus, where he may have seen such
dogs.
This, I think, is the most likely
explanation but there are also artistic depictions of similar dogs that may
have been an influence.
One is a
painting that I recently saw in the Musée d’Orsay by Octave Penguilly-L’Haridon
entitled “Shepherds, Guided by a Star, Go to Bethlehem,”
the left side of which is shown here. The dog at the extreme left would appear to
fit the description, perhaps a pariah with Molossian traits.
Whether Jacob knew anything about the history
of dogs in the region, or was merely projecting backwards from what he saw in
person or in paintings, is not something about which I am qualified to
speculate.
– JE
