GIALens 2017 Volume 11, No.

Documenting the worlds oldest proverb, now found thriving in

Ethiopia and South Asia: on the trail of the hasty bitch
by Peter Unseth, Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics
email: pete_unseth@gial.edu

Abstract: The worlds oldest recorded proverb, from around 3,800 years ago, is found on a
tablet from the Assyrian empire. The proverb has been documented in later eras from the Middle
East and northwest up into Europe, as far west as Britain. Evidence is given here that it is also
found to the south in Ethiopia and as far east as Pakistan.
Key words: Proverb, Ethiopia, hasty bitch, Pashto

1. Introducing the proverb

The oldest recorded proverb in the world is about a dog being hasty and therefore giving
birth to blind puppies. An ancient king of Assyria, ami-Adad, wrote on a clay tablet in
Sumerian to Yasmah-Addu, his son and viceroy in Mari, advising him not to be hasty in his
actions. In his instructions to his son he warned, Heaven forbid that, as in the ancient proverb,
kalbatum ina u-te-bu/pu-ri-a uppudtim lid The bitch1 by her acting too hastily brought
forth the blind, you now do likewise (Moran 1978a: 17, 18). Based on this, Alster has
described this proverb as having a longer history than any other recorded proverb in the world,
going back to around 1800 BC (1979: 5). Note that even at the time of his writing the father
referred to it as an ancient proverb. It is a wonderful example of a metaphorical proverb; the
reader of the letter would clearly have understood that the message had nothing to do with literal
dogs giving birth to literal puppies.
The proverb about the hasty bitch producing blind whelps needs no introduction to the
classicist. Familiar with it perhaps in many other languages (English, German, Italian, Turkish,
and so on), he certainly knows the [ancient] Greek version (Moran 1978a: 17). Many scholars
have written about this proverb, but always from a limited geographical range: Mesopotamia and
Europe (Alster 1979; Avishur 1981; Bodi 2015; Bonechi 2014; Bremmer 1980; Chavalas 2013:
84, 85; Dalley and Reyes 1997; Gordon 1958; Hinz 2004; Moran 1978a, b; Slings 1976; Stol
2000: 167; Swift 2014: 63; West 1997).
Now, far from these areas where scholars are familiar with this proverb, this study
documents it to the south and east of Mesopotamia, in contemporary languages of Ethiopia and
one from South Asia. What makes this discovery noteworthy is not merely that yet another
proverb is documented as having a wider range than known before. Rather, it is worth noting
because this is the worlds oldest recorded proverb and it has been studied by many, but
previously noted only within the same limited geographical range, Europe and the Middle East.
1
Bitch is a technical and somewhat archaic term for female dog.

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2. Mid-East
The earliest recorded version of this proverb was written by King ami-Adad in
Mesopotamia, an area that is now within Iraq. The proverb is still found in Mesopotamia, in
modern Iraqi Arabic, one version with a hasty dog and another with a cat: The bitch in her hurry
whelps blind pups and The cat in her haste kittens blind kittens (Avishur 1981: 37, 38).
Part of what is striking about this proverb from Iraq is that Avishur reported that he found
it only in Iraqi Arabic, not in other Arabic speaking areas.
It is noteworthy that the syntax of the proverb is identical in both Akkadian and
Arabic, i.e., the Arabic version is a word-by-word translation of the Akkadian
text. These sentences are built in the same way. The proverb, created by the folk
mouth, appears to have been transmitted among the populace of Mesopotamia for
generations, and translated by them according to which tongue they spoke: from
Akkadian to Aramaic, and from Aramaic to Arabic ... This assumption is
supported by the fact, that in the collections of folk proverbs from Arabic
countries (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Yemen and Bedouins) I have not
found this proverb; it is also missing in the corpus of Comparative Proverbs
published by Al-Tikriti2 [n.b. Al-Tikriti 1966-1969]. Thus, it appears that this
proverb is not an original Arabic text, nor is it borrowed from a European culture
(Avishur 1981: 38).

3. Greece
Moran believed that the proverb originated in Mesopotamia: This of course would not
be the only piece of oriental wisdom to have worked its way west (Moran 1978a: 18, fn. 7). If
we presume that the proverb spread from Mesopotamia toward Europe, the earliest European
attestations are, not surprisingly, in Greek.3
Its adoption into Greek was early; Archilochus of Paros (7th century BC) referenced it, I
am afraid, lest acting hastily out of eagerness, I begat like a bitch in the proverb children blind
and untimely (Moran 1978a). Other Greeks used it later, such as Aesop (6th century BC) in a
fable (223 in Perrys index of Aesops proverbs) about a bitch bragging to a sow about how fast
she gives birth; in return the sow taunted the bitch, You give birth to the blind (Bodi 2015: 77).
Aristophanes used it in his play Peace in 421 BC: The bitch in her haste gave birth to the blind
(Peace 1078).
A fragment of Archilochus poetry citing this proverb was used as part of the wrapping of
an Egyptian mummy from the first or second century AD (Mulligan et al. 2012: 1). The fact that
it was written in Greek and was from an era when Egypt was under Greco-Roman domination
(both culturally and politically) allows us to classify the finding of this proverb as still within a
Greek context, even though this example of the proverb was technically on the African continent.
2
Abdul-Rahman Al-Tikriti compared the proverbs of 12 Arab nations.
3
The proverb may have travelled to Greece via Turkey, but this cannot be proven since the earliest Turkish record of
the proverb is from the 15th century. Describing the location of this example from Turkey, between Mesopotamia
and Greece, Bodi noted it is geographically significant (Bodi 2015: 78).

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4. Europe
In Europe, the proverb first entered via the Greek language and culture. The Greek
scholar and copyist Michael Apostolios (born 1420) transcribed many Greek proverbs, likely the
source that brought this proverb to the attention of Erasmus4 (Hinz 2004). Following that,
Erasmus recorded the proverb in Latin, Canis festinans caecos parit catulos, in Adagia, his
collection of proverbs; then his books carried it across Europe via Latin. We can assume that
Erasmus Adagia (published in 1500 with subsequently enlarged editions until 1536), which
spread many proverbs across Europe (Mieder 2014: 13), was instrumental in spreading this one
across Europe where it had not previously been known.
Proverbs that refer to a bitch giving birth to blind pups (or a cat giving birth to blind
kittens) because of her haste have also been found across Europe all the way to Britain, where it
has been passed down as The hasty bitch bringeth forth blind whelps (Apperson 1929: 289).
The proverb lives on still today in modern Greek:
(Marina Mogli. Personal communication. 2017.). It was adopted into German,
where it lives on as Die eilende Hndin wirft blinde Junge (Hinz 2004). In French, it has come
down as La chienne dans sa hte a mis bas des choits aveugles. In Italian, it became known in
two forms, one with a hasty dog (Cagna frettolosa fa catellini ciechi) and another with a hasty
cat (Gatta frettolosa fa i gattini acerbi) (Taylor 1962: 25, Bodi 2015: 77).

5. Ethiopia
Though the proverb was previously well documented and studied only from Europe and
Mesopotamia, it has now been noted in at least two languages of Ethiopia. In book reviews, I
have previously noted the parallel between the Akkadian proverb and proverbs currently found
in Guji Oromo (Unseth 2011: 433) and Alaaba (Unseth 2013: 461). Both are in the south-central
part of Ethiopia, contiguous to each other, Alaaba being Highland East Cushitic and Guji Oromo
being Lowland East Cushitic. Speakers of both language communities are largely Muslim, which
might suggest a link with Arabic speaking areas.
Examples from these languages are transcribed as in the original sources.
Guji Oromo:
Mali maqnee, jette sareen jaamaa sagal deettee (Jaleta 2004: 85, Jirata 2009: 50).
Whats our sin? said a bitch after giving birth to nine blind pups.
In the Guji proverb, we find a form of assonance, all the vowels after the first word being
exclusively <a> and <e>: Mali maqnee jette sareen jaamaa sagal deettee. This is clearly
artistically crafted for the ear.
The Guji Oromo version of the proverb is recognizable as a match to the Akkadian
example, but structurally different in some interesting ways. First, the matter of haste is not
mentioned, rather the broader term sin. Secondly, the proverb is formed as a wellerism, a

4
Erasmus is known for his compilation of proverbs in Latin, but also for producing the first critical edition of the
entire New Testament in Greek. I am indebted to him for both of these, since both have led to my employment and
enjoyment.

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quotation proverb in which there is a statement, a speaker, and an unusual setting (Mieder and
Kingsbury 1994: x; see also Unseth et al. 2017). Additionally, this proverb specifies the number
of the blind puppies as nine sagal. In a Guji riddle game about numbers, the standard answer
for eight is that it is the number of puppies in a litter, but in this proverb the number of puppies
in the litter is nine, beyond the norm. This is significant because among the Guji the birth of a
ninth child is believed to bring misfortune (Berisso 2013: 59).

Alaaba:
wsshat(i), da lans batiih(a) kook kalta (Schneider-Blum 2009: 95).
The she-dog, because she is in extreme hurry, gives birth to blind ones.
Though the hasty bitch proverb may possibly have an external origin, the forms of the
proverb in these Ethiopian languages all have some sound-based poetic features, a common trait
of proverbs. In Alaaba, the last two words have a pattern of alliteration of the ejective velar
consonant, here underlined: kook kalta. Also, the first three words each contain the
sequence aC(C)i.
Whatever the source of the proverb in these Ethiopian language communities, they have
crafted local forms of the proverb that contain verbal art.

6. South Asia
A form of this proverb is also found in Afghanistan and Pakistan, far to the east of where
it has previously been noted. The proverb is used today in the Pashto language, spoken in both
Afghanistan and western Pakistan. The Pashto proverb is documented as The bitch made such
haste she gave birth to blind pups (Bartlotti & Khattak 2006: 90).
The Pashto form of the proverb is transliterated into Roman letters as follows: Bia spi
ke wa; che andu kotri e raw . In the Pashto transcription, the <> with a dot underneath,
represents a retroflexed rhotic consonant, pronounced similarly to <r>. In the Pashto proverb,
there are six sequences of rhotic consonants followed by a vowel, three followed immediately by
the vowel <a>. Again, we find that the meaning of the proverb is clearly linked to proverbs
elsewhere, but the local form of the proverb has been artistically formed.

7. Conclusion
The proverb about the hasty bitch giving birth to blind pups has been well documented
for centuries in the Middle East and northwest into Europe. The evidence presented here is the
first to call attention to the fact that the proverb is also found in at least two areas significantly
outside of the previously documented regionsin Ethiopia and South Asia. There have been
ancient trade links between these regions, but the specifics of how this proverb has spread are
lost. This does suggest, however, that scholars should search for traces of this proverb in the
regions between Mesopotamia and Ethiopia, and also between Mesopotamia and Pakistan. In
addition, scholars should also be alert for the proverb in additional languages in the Horn of
Africa, Ethiopia, and South Asia.

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Acknowledgements
As always, I gratefully acknowledge the support, patience, and editorial expertise of my
wife, Carole. Additionally, I am delighted to acknowledge the help of Wolfgang Mieder, both
near past and far past. Also, I am grateful to Pat Krayer for explanations of Pashto orthography.
Also, I am grateful to Marina Mogli for help with the Modern Greek form.

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