Egyptian Animals Were Mummified Same Way as Humans

The ancient Egyptians mummified more than just human corpses. Animals were viewed not only as pets, but as incarnations of gods. As such, the Egyptians buried millions of mummified cats, birds, and other creatures at temples honoring their deities.

Because of the sheer scale of animal mummy production, many archaeologists thought the vast majority were churned out in relatively slipshod fashion. But a new study suggests the mummification techniques ancient Egyptians used on animals were often as elaborate as those they employed on the best-preserved human corpses.

Researchers at the University of Bristol, England, conducted the study, which is described in tomorrow's issue of the science journal Nature.

The team examined samples from four animal mummies—two hawks, a cat, and an ibis—dating from 818 B.C. to 343 B.C. The mummies are housed in the collection of the Liverpool Museum in Liverpool, England.

The researchers analyzed samples of tissue and wrappings using a combination of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry—methods so sensitive they can enable scientists to detect and identify different chemicals in fragments weighing as little as a tenth of a milligram (three and a half millionths of an ounce).

Chemicals detected in tissue samples from the animal mummies revealed the presence of various natural products found in human embalming materials used by the ancient Egyptians. These included animal fats, oils, beeswax, sugar gum, bitumen, and pine tree resins. The researchers found these products had also been applied to the bandages used to wrap up the mummies.

"Millions of animal mummies are known to exist, and there is some debate whether they were treated with the same sort of reverence and sophistication as human mummies," said Richard Evershed, the study's coauthor. "We found pretty much exactly the same materials were used on both."

Evershed concedes that many more animal mummies will need to undergo chemical analysis before any firm conclusions can be drawn. But he noted: "If you started to find the same range of different embalming agents on these mummies as you did on humans, then you'd say it looks like [the ancient Egyptians] were taking some care over this."

John Taylor is an Egyptian-antiquities expert at the British Museum in London. He says animal mummies represent a largely untapped resource for scientists and historians. "Lots of [animal mummies] are still sitting wrapped up in collections and haven't even been x-rayed," he said.

Taylor said in many cases animal mummies appear to have been smeared or dunked in some kind of resin and oil before being wrapped—a process far less complicated than that observed in human mummies.

He said the vast majority of these animals were mummified because of their link with ancient Egyptian gods.

For example, cats were seen as the incarnation of Bastet, goddess of music and joy and protector of women. The Apis bull, a sacred animal to the Egyptians, came to be known as the incarnation of Osiris, god of embalming and cemeteries. Likewise, ancient Egyptians associated hawks with Horus (the god of light), ibises with Thoth (the god of wisdom and learning), and so on.

"If a sacred animal was mummified and formally presented to a god, that was a sign of devotion on the part of someone making a pilgrimage to a temple," Taylor explained. "You could come along and pay to have an animal dedicated in your name, and then the priests would bury them in a large cemetery."

Many of these animals were killed deliberately, with x-rays revealing, for instance, that huge numbers of cats found in temple cemeteries had their necks broken while still relatively young.

Animal Cemeteries

Taylor said some animal cemeteries contain literally millions of examples of one particular species. "You can't image that all of them were given the most elaborate treatment," he added.

However, Taylor agrees there is no doubt that some animals were preserved to an extremely high standard.

"In the case of the Apis bull, for example, we know that mummification was a very ritualized process that was taken extremely seriously. It was certainly no less elaborate than the mummification of an important human," he said. "But to what extent does that elaborate care for animals extend further down the scale?"

"Specimens from museum collections have often been selected because they are the finest specimens," Taylor added. "They don't necessarily represent a cross section of what was actually found."

Lizard, fish, and even beetle mummies from ancient Egypt have been unearthed. Pets were also mummified and buried in tombs with their owners. Such pets weren't limited to dogs and cats but included baboons, monkeys, and gazelles.

As with other animals, the exact embalming procedures involved in pet mummification remains largely unknown.

Evershed, the study coauthor, said, "The mummification process just isn't documented by the ancient Egyptians, which is why we are doing the chemical analysis. It was a secretive process."

He said further mummy studies should help unravel other mysteries about ancient Egyptian society. For instance, knowledge of the precise embalming agents used should shed new light on the extent of trade between Egypt and its neighbors.

Just like those famously bandaged Pharaohs, it seems the vast menagerie of animal mummies left behind by the ancient Egyptians have many more secrets wrapped within..

Egyptierna såg katterna som heliga.
 När en katt dog så balsamerades den och blev invirad i lindor
så att den blev mumifierad.
När man började med utgrävningar av dessa gravar
fann arkeologerna tusentals mumifierade katter.

 För att visa sin sorg när en katt dött
 rakade man av sig ögonbrynen och klädde sig i sorgkläder
 och den som dödade en katt skulle själv mista livet.

När man började med utgrävningar av dessa gravar
fann arkeologerna tusentals mumifierade katter.
Många av dessa har dock gått om intet
 eftersom man på 1800-talet malde ner trehundratusen mumifierade katter
 och skickade dom till England där det användes som gödsel på åkrarna!

When a cat died, their human family would go into a deep mourning and shave their eyebrows. The cat would then be mummified and buried along with provisions such as milk, mice and rats. Cats were often taken to Bubastis to be buried, but tombs have also been discovered in Giza, Abydos, Denderah and Beni Hasan. For example, a tomb in Beni Hassan was discovered in 1888 which contained an estimated 80,000 feline burials.

The deceased cat was wrapped in fine linen and taken to be embalmed. Diodorus recorded that the deceased cat was "treated with cedar oil and such spices as have the quality of imparting a pleasant odour and of preserving the body for a long time."

anubis mummie

Science News

Ancient Egyptians Mummified Their Cats With Utmost Care

ScienceDaily (Sep. 13, 2007) — Examination of Egyptian mummies has shown that animals such as cats and crocodiles were given a far more careful and expensive trip to the afterlife than previously thought.

The mummification process, which was crucial to the ancient Egyptians so their bodies survived and they could become immortal, is being investigated by Dr Stephen Buckley at the University of York. He was speaking on September 11, 2007 at the BA Festival of Science.

His work uses modern chemistry techniques to look at exactly what was used to mummify humans and animals.

The technique involves taking a very small sample of the mummy and examining it for traces of chemicals using equipment commonly used in forensic studies.

The compounds that Dr Buckley finds act as the chemical fingerprints for the materials used by the Egyptian embalmers.  These included animal fats, beeswax, plant oils and resins, and more exotic materials such as marjoram and cinnamon.

Following examination of over 100 samples it is clear that different animals were treated with different mummification materials.  These "recipes" varied considerably, but it is believed that there is a symbolic association between the ingredients used for each animal and the god they represented.

"Mummification of animals has been thought of as cheap and cheerful, but this shows that a significant amount of effort, knowledge and expense was afforded to them," explained Dr Buckley.

"Cats in particular received special attention and this fits with the idea of cats having a special place in Egyptian life."

Cats were associated with the Egyptian goddess Bastet, who was particularly revered.  To mummify a cat for its journey to the afterlife, the typical recipe would have been 80 per cent fat or oil, 10 per cent pistacia resin, 10 per cent conifer resin and a pinch of cinnamon.

"The Egyptian embalmers understood that there were things that caused the body to decay and they discovered that certain materials could help preserve the bodies.  The resins they used on the inside of the bodies had anti-bacterial properties whilst those used on the outside acted as a barrier to moisture and fungus," said Dr Buckley.

This knowledge of the embalmers lives today on as some of those compounds used to preserve mummies are used in modern anti-bacterial products.

Dr Buckley's findings also shed light on the politics, religion and trade-routes of the Egyptians.

The black colouring of the mummy of the Priest of Min at Hull Museum is due to bitumen that was imported from Persia.  This material was both practical and symbolic.   Min was the Egyptian fertility god and the Egyptians used black silt to fertilise their fields so the mummy's colour represents the land and the god.

A recently acquired mask from a cat mummy ( Figure 1 ) reflects many aspects regarding the extraordinary religious beliefs and customs involving sacred animals in ancient Egypt.

Almost all Egyptian gods were associated with some animal and assumed the form of that particular beast. Although certain species of cats are known to have lived in the wild in prehistoric Egypt, there is no evidence that they were worshipped. However, the tame and friendly cat reflected by the McClung Museum's acquisition appeared in a much later period and was revered. Not all cats were deities, even though the species was believed sacred. A cat became sacred only after special rituals were performed, and in the belief that the cat deity Bastet dwelt within the animal, and perhaps by certain markings deemed divine.

No longer just curiosities to be ignored, mummified cats and other animal mummies have risen in importance. Research is being conducted to document and catalog various aspects of these creatures that are so identified with ancient Egypt. Cat mummies are being carefully investigated in terms of religion, cultural history, relation to the environment, questions relating to the genus and species, whether they were wild or domesticated, the diseases they had, and how exactly they were mummified. Also being determined are their types; that is, whether they were sacred, used as funerary food or votive offerings, or were just beloved pets. The Cairo Museum, in conjunction with the Department of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, leads with its important Animal Mummy Project.

The family of cats ( Felidae ) is separated into two subfamilies: the larger and the smaller. The first consists of large wild species, such as the lion and leopard, tiger and cheetah. The second, a small African wild cat ( Felis silvestris libyca ), also named the Egyptian, or Kaffir, cat, is the one this article concerns. This species may actually be the ancestor of the modern domestic cat ( Felis silvestris familiaris ). The exact location of the first domesticated cat is unknown, but it may be Egypt or the Near East, no doubt spreading from trade routes to different parts of the world. In any case, evidence so far for the domesticated animal in Egypt does not date before the Middle Kingdom, circa 2000 BC, when we learn of them from tomb paintings and cat mummies produced at that time. By the early New Kingdom, circa 1500 BC, more representations are found in wall paintings and reliefs. In the Late Dynastic Period, a highpoint is reached in the appreciation of the domestic cat, and ancient authors, such as the Greek historian Herodotus (484?-425? BC) noted their importance. Images were being produced on papyri, as bronze and wood figurines, on sherds, as amulets in various materials, and in quantities as mummies. Such representations had special magical properties and communicated religious beliefs.

Usually, animal cemeteries are reserved for one kind of animal. Those for cats date to around 900 BC, particularly at Bubastis ("House of Bastet"), the temple and cult center of Bastet. According to Herodotus, "Other temples are greater and more costly, but none pleasanter to the eye than this." (Note 1) The site of extensive ruins and cemeteries, Bubastis is southeast of the modern, southeastern Delta town of Zagazig. Situated on the mound of Tell Basta, Bubastis may have been the capital of the entire country during dynasties XXII-XXIII, when it reached great heights as a major center. Cat cemeteries include those at Saqqara and Dra Abu el-Nagga at Thebes, as well as those of lesser scale, such as at Abydos, Dendera, and the Dakhla Oasis. Mummies were abundantly produced in the Ptolemaic Period, circa 332-30 BC, but even in greater numbers into the Roman Period.

Syftet med mumifieringen i det forntida Egypten var att bevara kroppen för att man skulle fortsätta må bra och se bra ut i dödsriket, och mumien tänktes på så sätt vara en förutsättning för evigt liv. Den första mumien var dödsguden Osiris .

Man plockade ut fyra utvalda organ och la dem i varsit kanopkärl. Kärlens lock föreställde gudar och skulle symbolisera deras vakan över organen. Imset tog hand om levern, Hapy lungorna, Duamutef magsäcken och Qebehsemuf tarmarna. Man tog även ut hjärnan. Det gick till så att man tog ett verktyg som var avlångt med en krok i ena änden och grävde djupt in genom näsan upp till hjärnan. Hjärnan var dock inget som sparades. Kroppen tvättas med palmvin och sedan la man ut salt, som skulle hjälpa kroppen att torka. Kroppen låg i många dagar innan man fortsatte processen. Man fyllde då kroppen med olika oljor, harts och väv för att fylla ut kroppen så att den skulle se ut som förut. Men man fick vara försiktig. Man har nämligen hittat mumier som svält upp på grund av för mycket fyllning. Man har också hittat mumier som blivit förstörda av för mycket olja. Man lindade in mumien i linne och band in amuletter som skulle bringa tur under den döde personens resa i dödsriket. Mumien lades i en eller flera kistor och sedan i en sarkofag.

Egyptierna mumifierade även sådana djur som betraktades som heliga, exempelvis katter och hökar . När dom skulle ta ut organen, tex hjärnan så tog dom en pinne och vispade runt tills hjärnan rann ut.

Ancient Egyptian animal mummies at the Natural History Museum are used to investigate the processes of domestication in cats and cattle.

Through studying animal mummies, scientists and archaeologists have learnt more about the importance of animals in ancient Egyptian society. The identification of some animals can clarify the relationship between certain gods and the mummies offered to them.

‘The mummified specimens are so well preserved,' said Richard Sabin, Museum mammal expert, 'that we've been able to study the skeletons to make close comparisons with the modern wild and domestic animal specimens held in our research collections.'

The collection includes the African subspecies of wild cat Felis silvestris and also the markedly larger predecessor to the modern domestic cat.

Sabin explains ‘we're looking at a point in time that is very close to the origin of the domestic cat. It adds to the body of evidence and to the theory that cats were being bred for the mummification process.'

Animal Mummies of Ancient Egypt

The Animal Mummies of Ancient Egypt exhibition displays a unique range of animal mummies for the first time in the UK, including cats, a baboon, a crocodile and birds of prey.

Visitors get the chance to peer inside the mummies with the help of X-rays. There are also examples of natural mummification, when the body dries before it decomposes.

Bandages from a calf mummy.

Spectacular examples include a cat buried under the grounds of the Duke of Bedford's house in Woburn Abbey. The cat is thought to be approximately 300 years old and had been buried in an air-tight brick-lined cavity.

Extremely low levels of humidity and virtual absence of bacterial action had helped to preserve it. The Duke of Bedford's cat is on show for the first time at the exhibition.

http://www.summum.org/mummification/pets/animalcosts.shtml