…an ass, an agreeable substitute to the pilgrim for his jaded and uneasy camel…(1)
(1) This explanation of the use of an excrescence which would otherwise seem a mere inconvenient encumbrance shows how wonderfully the camel is adapted to the peculiar circumstances in which Providence has placed it…
-Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, Edward Lane, in a footnote explaining the natural history of the camel’s hump
On the trail if one of the herd must be butchered you eat his excrescence, cooked on coals and buried in a sand pit Hawaiian style. Yes, maybe the hump is inconvenient for you perched on top, but less an encumbrance for your camel given what more- your disagreeable ass, forty 16mm film cannisters, hunks of petrified wood you’ve collected along the way- encumbers him. No wonder he arrives in Egypt jaded and uneasy, not the least because next he’s marched straight to the slaughterhouse where it is tossed aside by Egyptians with no taste for hump fat and gristle.