Set (deity) or a fennec fox. The animal has a curved snout, long rectangular ears, a thin forked tail and canine body, with sprouted fur tufts in an inverted arrow shape; sometimes, Set is depicted as a human with the distinctive head. Some early Egyptologists proposed that it was a stylised representation of the giraffe, owing to the large flat-topped "horns" which correspond to a giraffe's ossicones. The Egyptians themselves, however, made a distinction between the giraffe and the Set animal. During the Late Period, Set is depicted as a donkey or as having a donkey's head. The earliest representations of what
Medici giraffe Medici giraffe The Medici giraffe was a giraffe presented to Lorenzo de' Medici in 1487 possibly by al-Ashraf Qaitbay, the Burji Sultan of Egypt, in an attempt to win the support of the Medici. It caused a great stir on its arrival in Florence: although the Medici maintained a large menagerie, and had previously featured a giant mannequin of a giraffe in the animal entertainments they provided to the citizenry, this was the first time a living example had been seen in the city. It was also reputedly the first living giraffe to be seen in Italy since the days