A 3,500-Year-Old Egyptian Dog Finally Has a Name: Duaty
The dog was painted in an ancient Egyptian tomb about 3,500 years ago. Now it has a name: Duaty.
Archaeologist Chelsea Kaufman of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, identified the name, The Art Newspaper reported on 30 October 2026. The name had been hard to read. Kaufman used digital imaging software to boost the blue pigment in faint hieroglyphs (ancient Egyptian picture-writing) above the dog's head.
The painting is in the tomb of a man called User, a scribe who served as an official in ancient Egypt. The tomb sits in a necropolis (an ancient burial ground) at Luxor, about 500 kilometres south of Cairo. Three dogs are painted beneath User's chair. Each wears a collar and sits upright.
Two of the dogs were already known. One is Kenii, meaning "Strong One." The other is Maaty, meaning "Trusty." Duaty is the third.
Duaty's name means "He-of-the-Underworld." That phrase is usually an epithet, a descriptive title, of Anubis. Anubis is the god linked with the dead and with funeral rites, and he is often shown with a jackal's head.
Kaufman's findings were published in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. Her reading makes Duaty the first known Egyptian dog name to include an epithet of Anubis. Researchers know of about 100 dog names from Egypt, and Duaty stands apart from all of them.
The painted dog itself has a red coat with a rippled pattern. That pattern resembles the cloth User wears in the same tomb painting.
Kaufman's reading gives the three animals beneath User's chair names for the first time in full. Duaty is the one whose name connects it to the god of the dead.
