Yes, but the way the article presents it as a fact is disingenuous.

Exactly. It is an option which I can entertain as a possibility no doubt, but I don't think it is reasonable to take it as a certainty as it was not demonstrated, just hypothesised. Once again it's not that I doubt it, I find it possible or maybe probable given that it is, and unfortunately, a human universal, but the evidence is just not there. At least yet.

I mean honestly what do they expect from old times.

That's what I love about history.

I want to see what humans in 1000 years think of Shaq statue.

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The opposite would be humanely branded, I'm sure.

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Is there such a thing as being unbrutally branded.

It's a likely possibility

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Can't for the life of me remember the book but I read an autobiography of a frontier woman (late 1800s, Midwest) who lost a young daughter. She hired a laborer to help her move a stone step from the only primitive church around; she used it as a grave marker for her daughter and carved the name and dates herself. Poignant confession. The settlement knew it was her but didn't act on it. The woman died in the 1920s.

There are a lot of domesticated animals smaller than cattle that the brands could have been used on.

Off the top of my head, Egyptian society used sheep, goats, and donkeys.

As you stated, the evidence is tenuous at best.

Edit: I re-read the article and the author discusses the idea of branding goats or donkeys, but doesn't actually address it, merely stating 'other options must be explored'. Which is fine, but the rest of the article only examines why they could be used for branding people, not why it is more likely than the usage of these brands for smaller livestock.

Most of history is, since I would imagine you can’t ask any ancient egyptian slave owners directly

>Pharaoh prohibited the Jewish slaves from returning to their homes

Is there any evidence of Jews in Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs? I have never seen any credible source with artifacts or documents, yet always people repeat the story as if it is common knowledge.

As opposed to being...ethically branded?

It's a perfectly reasonable conjecture. It is definitely an unreasonable conclusion.

Well what's the evidence that these ancient egyptian branding irons were intended for use on cattle in the first place? Genuinely curious here if anyone knows the answer!

(After all, comparing the evidence we have for their different possible uses would be the best way to evaluate the strength of this argument. For instance, if we had extant cow hides bearing brand-marks that matched the patterns on some of the irons, or visual depictions of branded cattle, or textual descriptions of people branding cattle using branding irons, that would be pretty strong evidence for that form of use.)

Tattoos were widely available since 3000BC and are still used by criminal networks today. Something to think about.

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The technical term for this is spolia if you’re interested in reading about more examples.

Why cut your own stone when there’s a perfectly good Roman mausoleum over there? The Romans aren’t using it anymore.

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I don't think it's that much of an unreasonable conclusion

So there's no actual evidence? It's just someone saying, "Hey, these cattle brands are really small, and they look like human brands from thousands of years later and from a different region of the world."

'Were likely used to mark the skin of human slaves' - so its all based on assumptions.

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