43
Ball; leather, twine, silver thread
Bowl; ceramic
Lead; linen, leather
Provenance: Asyut, Egypt; Middle Kingdom
The species of the Lethe Hounds is unknown, but they are commonly understood to be jackals due to both their physical appearance and their discovery at the ruins of a temple dedicated to Upuaut in Asyut (though under Greek rule it was known as Lycopolis, which rather begs the question of what else might be hiding in their DNA).
The pups were found by Lethe Delegate Clayton James (’22), who smuggled them back to the States aboard the RMS Majestic, and they were bound to Il Bastone shortly after (for the specifics of the ritual of St. Roch, please see Guillote’s Compendium of Heresies).
The ball, lead, and bowl were acquired from Henry Wellcome through a secret sale to the Lethe board in 1924 and are believed to come from the same area centered around Upuaut’s cult in Upper Egypt.
The ball is said to have originally been a reliquary and the lead was most likely woven from leather and some type of sacred garment.
Unfortunately, the bowl was broken during a retrieval training exercise in 1967, during which Raymond Wilkin lost a finger.
The finger was coaxed back from the hounds in return for a plate of bratwurst, but the bowl could not be repaired.
—from the Lethe Armory Catalogue as revised and edited by Pamela Dawes, Oculus