▲▲▲ The Story Behind The Pyramid Society Reference Handbooks by Judith Forbis
There is wisdom in the saying: “with all thy getting, get understanding.” However, if one is trying to research certain subjects, and there is precious little information available, knowledge and understanding are more difficult to attain. This was obvious to me in 1959 when my husband Don and I became enamored of Egyptian Arabian horses. Reference books, particularly pictorial ones, were rare. We were living in Turkey during the late l950s and were also traveling throughout the Arab world in our quest for the classic Arabian horse. In search of knowledge we corresponded with various Arabian horse authorities, including author and Arabian horse historian, Carl Raswan. He told us to go to Egypt, and there we would find the horses of our dreams. However, we could not find any pictures of these horses he claimed to be those for which we were searching. His books, The Arab and His Horse, and Drinkers of the Wind provided glimpses of Ibn Rabdan and a few other early Egyptian horses, as did Lady Wentworth’s Authentic Arabian Horse, but that was it. In 1959 when we reached Egypt, and saw the horses at El Zahraa - the Egyptian Agricultural Organization’s stud farm, our eyes were opened. Here were the magnificent Arabians we’d been searching for as depicted in old lithographs by DeDreux, Vernet, Adam, etc. During this first visit Dr. Mohammed Marsafi, the Manager of the Stud, presented us with the book History of the Royal Agricultural Society’s Stud of Authentic Arabian Horses by Dr. Abdel Alim Ashoub, published in 1948. It contained many photographs of the Society’s early bloodstock and explained the various families bred by the RAS - prior to its being renamed the EAO - after the revolution in the early 1950s. We avidly studied this book trying to understand the differences and similarities in pedigrees, type, and families. Patterns in breeding began to emerge as we photographed the living horses and related them to the foundation horses in the Ashoub book. Some horses noted in that publication were still living, such as Nazeer, Moniet El Nefous, Bukra, etc. In an
Very first advertisement for Volume 1 of the Pyramid Society Reference Handbook of Straight Egyptian Horses, November 1973.
effort to educate and publicize Egyptian bloodstock, from 1959 onward, I wrote articles for Arabian horse magazines and illustrated them with photographs of these foundation horses and newly imported bloodstock. However, magazines are short-lived. Books remain alive. In the meantime, during the mid 1960s, a few Egyptian Arabians had arrived in the US and were capturing the interest of American breeders. Bint Maisa El Saghira, imported and owned by Gleannloch’s Doug and Margaret Marshall, and Ansata Ibn Halima, imported and owned by Ansata and shown by Gleannloch, were crisscrossing the 25