What Makes a Horse a Horse? Configurational Aspects of Ancient Egyptian Equines

We expect depictions of things we know to contain certain elements. These elements depend on our experience, our visual requirements, culture, upbringing, and so on. For example, in order to recognise a certain subject, a degree of realism is expected. If these requirements are not met, either we are unable to correctly identify the subject as the intended subject, or we project our expectations and attribute the lack thereof as mistakes, inabilities, or lack of knowledge of the author. This bias is predominantly present in the analysis of ancient Egyptian images (and texts, for that matter) and is inappropriate. In order to correctly understand the intentions of the creator and the image, we need to understand their cultural properties, their pictorial system, and, most importantly, the function of the image. This article will look at depictions of horses from ancient Egypt, taking their function as a starting point, and discuss their configurational aspects in terms of the function of the image.