All sorts of animals are shown, in odd contortions and grotesque attitudes, and not infrequently the scene or episode depicted refers to the state or condition of the human soul after death.
It is deduced that from these animal pictures arose the class of stories called fables, in which animals are endued with human attributes.
And also connected with them is the belief in metempsychosis or the transmission of the human soul into the body of an animal after death, which is a strong factor in the primitive religions.
Indeed, the intermingling of humans and animals is inherent in all art and literature, as, instance the calling of Our Lord a Lamb, or the Holy Ghost, a Dove.
Or, as to this day we call our children lambs or kittens, or, slangily, kids. As we still call a man an ass or a puppy; or a woman, a cat.
An argument for evolution can perhaps be seen in the inevitable turning back to the animals for a description or representation of human types.
At any rate, early man used this sort of humor almost exclusively, and so combined it with his serious thought, even his religions, that it was a permanently interwoven thread.
And the exaggeration of this mimicry of animals resulted in the grotesque and from that to the monstrous, as the mind grew with what it fed on, and caricature developed and progressed.
Also, a subtler demonstration of dawning wit and humor is seen in the deliberate and intentional burlesque of one picture by another.
In the British Museum is an Egyptian papyrus showing a lion and a unicorn playing chess, which is a caricature of a picture frequently seen on ancient monuments. And in the Egyptian collection of the New York Historical Society there is a slab of limestone, dating back three thousand years, which depicts a lion, seated upon a throne as king. To him, a fox, caricaturing a High Priest, offers a goose and a fan. This, too, is a burlesque of a serious picture.