Skeletons of over 30 equids found inside their own tombs at Umm el-Marra have been identified as the elite kunga equids referred to in third-millennium Syrian and Mesopotamian texts. DNA analysis confirms the hypothesis that they were a hybrid of a female donkey and male wild ass.

• The Kunga Was a Status Symbol Long Before the Thoroughbred – The New York Times A new study finds the first known instance of a human-engineered hybrid, bred from a donkey and a Syrian wild ass 4,500 years ago.
• The genetic identity of the earliest human-made hybrid animals, the kungas of Syro-Mesopotamia In the third millennium BCE, urbanized, socially stratified, and literate societies appeared for the first time in Syria and northern Mesopotamia (1, 2).Part of this “second act” of the urban revolution was the breeding and employment of an equid of high status and prestige designated a “kunga.”