World Elephant Day 2025 highlights the historical significance of elephants in northeastern Africa, where they were transported by ships during Antiquity.
The Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt sought war elephants from Kush and Punt, leading to the construction of specialized boats.
This era marked a unique chapter in elephant history, showcasing their role in warfare and the challenges of transporting these majestic creatures.
World Elephant Day, celebrated annually on August 12, is dedicated to raising awareness about the urgent need to protect elephants.
Elephants have been on the decline in many parts of their former range, both in Africa and in Asia.
For World Elephant Day 2025, Down To Earth decided to focus the lens on the elephants of the Red Sea region or northeastern Africa.
Today, it comprises the countries of Sudan, Eritrea, northern Ethiopia, Djibouti and parts of Somalia. But in Antiquity, these were the lands of ‘Kush’ and ‘Punt’.
While elephants became extinct in Egypt once its environment turned arid, they nevertheless continued to be found in the regions to the south—Kush and Punt.
The elephant exploded in importance in Egypt when the country came under the rule of the Ptolemies, the Greek dynasty founded by Alexander the Great’s general of the same name, following the division of Alexander’s empire upon his death in 323 BCE.
Alexander left an empire that stretched from the Balkans in southeastern Europe to the Beas river in northern India.
Upon his death, his generals divided the empire: Macedonia, Alexander’s homeland, came to be ruled by the Antigonid dynasty; Egypt, as we have seen, went to Ptolemy; and the Seleucid Empire, which encompassed much of the former Achaemenid Persian Empire, went to Seleucus.
Borders having been drawn, the successor states of Alexander’s empire had a relationship marked by conflict as they vied for dominance and control of the remaining territories.
The Seleucid Empire had something of a ‘secret weapon’. Since it consisted of the Indian part of Alexander’s empire, there was a steady supply of war elephants, the ‘tanks’ of their day.
Alexander had seen the importance of these mighty animals in his battles in the Middle East and India; how they could wreak terror and havoc in the ranks of the Macedonian soldiers, who had never seen an animal of such size before. His experiences in both regions forced Alexander to change his battle tactics and also incorporate elephants in his army.
And so, while the Seleucids who had control over the Asian part of Alexander’s empire had these ‘tanks’, the Ptolemies did not, putting them at a disadvantage.
“The seleucid dynasty of Babylon, the main enemies of the Ptolemies, were then making use of Indian elephants, which have aptly been termed the ‘tanks’ of the ancient world; and the Ptolemies, as M, Rostovtzeff, the renowned historian of the ancient world, observes, ‘could not remain inferior in this respect’. The ‘starting point’ of Ptolemaic policy was therefore ‘to have their own war elephants’, for, without a supply of them, their army would be ‘hopelessly inferior’ to that of their rivals,” the late British historian Richard Pankhurst wrote in his 1996 paper A chapter in the history of Ethiopian elephants: the Ptolemaic century (305-284 BC) and its Aksumite aftermath (to 525 AD).
The Ptolemies, cut off from India, thus turned to elephants that were found to the immediate south of their territory, the lands of Kush and Punt. What followed was extraordinary.
The first Ptolemaic emperor of Egypt, Soter, sent a captain named Philos to capture elephants and bring them back from the south.
“The capture of elephants along the southern Red Sea coast of Africa was later organized and expanded, according to the Greek historian and geographer, Agarthachides, by the second Ptolemy, Philadelphus (280-246 BC),” writes Pankhurst.
The crowning achievement came when Philadelphus ordered the construction of specially designed boats called elephantegoi or ‘elephant-carriers’.
“They were designed to transport the animals from the southern Red Sea coast, and to bring back grain and other supplies for the hunters,” writes Pankhurst.
What is more, the Ptolemaic emperors also built a series of fortified ports along the Red Sea coast. They were named after captains who directed elephant hunting expeditions in the interior ‘and often left memorials of themselves in the shape of stele and altars’, writes Pankhurst.
But the challenges of transporting elephants captured in the interior in the elephantegoi were huge, given the massive body size of the animals.
Pankhurst writes that the ships often ran aground on the coast, which “was in consequence dotted with broken Egyptian ships”.
“Many crews, thus stranded, ran out of supplies, endured ‘innumerable sufferings’, and killed, themselves by the sword, or by throwing themselves into the sea, rather than endure slow death by starvation,” he adds.
And what of the people whose territory was being used to capture the elephants?
British zoologist Matthew Cobb writes about the Kushite Kingdom of Meroe, which supplied elephants to the Ptolemies. He also hints at taming and domestication of these African elephants by the Kushites in his 2016 paper, The Decline of Ptolemaic Elephant Hunting: An Analysis of the Contributory Factors.
“The kingdom of Meroe almost certainly impacted on the elephant populations of Sudan due to the ivory trade and the acquisition of elephants for warfare. This is apparent from their frequent representations in art, most notably the image of a Meroitic king riding an elephant at Musawwarat es-Sofra. There is also possible evidence for an elephant pen and training grounds at this site, which if correct compliments Arrian’s claim that the Indians and the Ethiopians were already employing war-elephants before the Macedonians, Carthaginians and Romans,” writes Cobb.
Could African elephants be domesticated? They certainly were during Belgian rule in the Congo centuries later, as historian Thomas Trautmann told DTE in a 2024 interview.
For years, there were disagreements between scholars as to what exactly were the elephants captured in these Ptolemaic expeditions. Were they the current day African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana) or the smaller African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) or the extinct North African Elephant (Loxodonta africana pharaohensis)?
Finally, a study carried out by Adam Brandt and his team in 2014 in Eritrea confirmed that elephants there were indeed bush or savanna pachyderms.
“The sampled Eritrean elephants carried nuclear and mitochondrial DNA markers establishing them as savanna elephants, with closer genetic affinity to Eastern than to North Central savanna elephant populations, and contrary to speculation by some scholars that forest elephants were found in Eritrea,” The elephants of Gash-Barka, Eritrea: nuclear and mitochondrial genetic patterns notes.
Ultimately, the era of the Ptolemaic interest in elephants waned.
In his 2023 essay Pachyderms, Power, and Politics: The history of the elephant in Northeastern Africa, Reginald O’Donoghue writes that “…The era of the war-elephant craze in the near east ultimately lasting little over a century, the Seleucids had lost control of the land routes to India, and the Ptolemies had depleted the nearest stocks of elephants. It continued however, in India, and perhaps also in Sudan and Ethiopia. The rise of the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, and its port of Adulis (perhaps originally a small ivory trading centre) can perhaps be explained by the decline of Hellenic interest in elephants, allowing Aksum to have a monopoly over the ivory trade,”
The Kingdom of Aksum is known to be the polity which Abraha, the viceroy of Yemen, professed fealty to.
Abraha is known in Islamic tradition as the Christian Abyssinian who marched towards the ‘Kaaba’, the cube-shaped structure that is today at the heart of Makkah’s Grand Mosque, with a force of elephants, intending to destroy it.
Islamic tradition says that as he was approaching Makkah, Abraha’s lead elephant stopped, unwilling to move. At the same time, a flock of birds appeared, showering stones on the convoy, forcing it to turn back. This incident is narrated in the Surah 105 of the Quran, known as Surah Al-Fil (The Elephant).
O’Donoghue says that while elephants clearly survived in large numbers, “evidence for elephants at all in Northeast Africa during this period (Aksumite) is, however, scant.”
Ultimately, according to him, environmental factors like increasing aridification may have played a role in the decline of elephant populations in Northeast Africa.
The story of the elephant in the Red Sea region shows how humans tamed a mighty force of nature for themselves, ultimately losing interest in these animals. They then vanish into the pages of history, having left an indelible mark.