Around the same time that the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt; a young donkey was sacrificed in what is now considered to be Israel and was placed under a house.  Archeologists of have discovered the remains of a 3,500 year old donkey complete with a copper bridle in its mouth and saddle bags on its back in northern Be’er Sheva.

Based on its skeletal structure, Israeli researches that have led this unusual find determined that the donkey was four years old at the time it was sacrificed as part of a Bronze Age ritual at a time when donkeys enjoyed a respected status.

Donkey is frequently mentioned in the Bible, with the most famous dialogue between Bilam, a prophet hired by Balak to curse the Israelites and the “talking donkey”.  Instead, he ended up blessing the People of Israel as they stood on the edge of the desert before entering the Promised Land.

Donkeys were the beast of burden, were used on trade routes and were so important during the founding of ancient Egypt that skeletons of donkeys have been found in graves of pharaohs.

The skeletal remains that was found at an archaeological site near Kiryat Gat, located approximately 15 miles north of Be’er Sheva and 50 miles or so southeast of Tel Aviv, indicates that the young donkey was spared hard labor.

Guy Bar-Oz of the University of Haifa, who led the research team at the Tel Haror site, said that donkey was laid on its left side, with its limbs neatly bent. It probably was sacrificed, and the copper bridle bit probably was symbolic because the animal’s teeth showed that the bit was not used.

“The absence of any sign of bit wear on the lower premolars indicates that the animal was not ridden or driven with a bit for prolonged periods of time,” the researchers write in a paper published online this week in the online journal PLoS ONE. “Moreover, the young donkey was still in the process of shedding its teeth and permanent teeth were just erupting. Based on its age, the Haror donkey would probably have been too young to be a trained draught animal.”

The bit is the only one from the Bronze Age to have been found in the mouth of hoofed mammals. A sign that the donkey had been sacrificed in a rite was a pile of bones from sheep and goats that were found near the donkey’s carcass.

“The Tel Haror interment represents the only known example of a donkey within a ritual context that was symbolically harnessed with a horse bit and bearing saddlebags, and, thus, sheds important light on both the functional and symbolic role of equids in the Ancient Near East,” the research team wrote on PLosOne.

“The location, grouping, dimensions and symmetrical placement of the fittings, leads us to suggest that they represent the remains of fasteners for saddlebags that was composed of decayed organic material, such as leather,” they added.