The boar

(of the forest, wild, otherwise called swine) (Ps. 80 [79]:13) — a cloven-hoofed animal, of the thick-skinned family, distinguished by its strength and ferocity. Modern travelers relate that wild boars are very numerous in northern Africa and Asia, partly on the banks of the Jordan and in the reed thickets of the Sea of Tiberias. The psalmist’s allusion in the citation given above to “the boar out of the wood” is explained by the fact that the boar usually roots up the earth in search of roots for food, and thus damages trees in forests and greatly harms cultivated soil.

(See Swine.) Since the Mohammedans abstain from eating pork, just as in antiquity the Egyptians, Arabians, and Phoenicians did, wild boars are found in great numbers in certain parts of the Levant, and are especially abundant in the jungles of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. In Mesopotamia they are found in the closest proximity to various settlements. A depiction of a wild boar with its young among the reeds has been especially well and accurately preserved on an ancient stone slab brought to England from Kouyunjik.