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OneWingedBird

Beloved of Ra
Joined
Aug 3, 2003
Messages
15,431
Thousands of mummified cats were quite famously ground up for fertiliser, which is one of the reasons very few of this type of mummy survive today:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A641378
Link is dead. No alternative or archived version found.


There's a cat mummy in the medical section of the London Science Museum, it's pretty much like the article describes, no limbs or tail visible, just a tube with the head at the top. From the exhibit I saw I couldn't work out wether it had shrunk with dessecation or wether it was an incredibly tiny cat to begin with.

Marie
 
Mummified lion unearthed in Egypt

By Paul Rincon
BBC News Online science staff

Archaeologists have uncovered the first example of a lion mummified by the ancient Egyptians, in the tomb of the woman who helped rear King Tutankhamun.

Although the breeding and burial of lions as sacred animals in Egypt is mentioned by ancient sources, to date no one had found a mummified specimen.

The male lion is amongst the largest known to science and its bones show it lived to an old age in captivity.

Details of the discovery are published in the scientific journal Nature.

The lion was found in a tomb at Saqqara in northern Egypt belonging to Maia, wet nurse to Tutankhamun, who was buried in about 1430 BC.

However, in the last centuries BC, the tomb was re-used for the burial of humans and then animals - mostly mummified cats.

French archaeologists Alain Zivie, Cecile Callou and Anaick Samzun unearthed the remains of the big cat in November 2001.

It comprises the virtually complete skeleton of a lion (Panthera leo) which was once mummified.

Bred for mummification

Analysis of the teeth, particularly the wear on them, show that the lion lived to be very old and must have been kept in captivity.

Alan Lloyd, professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Wales, Swansea, told BBC News Online: "The lion is a creature that has a long association with the king [of Egypt].

"The king was thought of as a lion and as having the qualities of a lion. The qualities the Egyptians were interested in, of course, were martial."

In the last few centuries BC, Egypt was under invasion by waves of outsiders, from Iraq, Nubia (which today comprises parts of Sudan and Egypt) and Greece.

The surge of interest in animal cults may be the ancient Egyptians' way of asserting their identity in the presence of these newcomers.

"I think this should be regarded as an expression of Egyptian nationalism," said Professor Lloyd.

Cats and dogs

Inscriptions suggest lions were bred in special animal precincts and buried in sacred cemeteries. But so far none has been found.

Professor Lloyd said he had heard rumours in the early 1970s of a mummified lion being found in Egypt. However, the person excavating the lion apparently was not interested in it and the location of the find was lost.

During the last few centuries BC, the site at Saqqara where the lion was buried was dedicated to the feline goddess Bastet.

The lion was found lying on a rock with its head turned north and its body orientated toward the east. Its bone measurements are amongst the largest ever recorded for a male lion.

In addition to cats, the Egyptians also mummified dogs, birds, snakes and monkeys.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3395487.stm
 
I thought tombs at Saqqara were mainly from the Old Kingdom? Maia would have been from the New Kingdom . . .

Perhaps the lion was mummified because it was so big?

Carole
 
Carole, having thought, I now understand what you mean - that it's exceptional size led to the exceptional treatment? I could go with that.... I wonder if they selected from the wild for it or if they happened to hit lucky.

if it's the only one we can't try to work out a family grouping yet

My first thought (am lacking caffeine!) was of egyptian worker staring at the corpse and saying the sort of thing that modern removal firms say when faced with a grand piano.

Kettle on I think.:(
 
Wonder what the Ancient Egyptian is for, "By Horus, look at the size of that bugger!" :p

Carole
 
er.... cat, exclamation mark, hand held out for time and a half!

:D

Life is much better with caffeine.

Are mummified ibis bigger than the average ibis and so on?

Kath
 
There's a mummified cat in the London Science Museum and the weirdest thing about that is how tiny it is. I know there's not usually that much cat beneath the fur, but this one is ~tiny~.

Well I suppose at least it didn't get ground up for fertilizer.
 
Cats are hilariously small and cross when they lose a bit of fur... I'm thinking after ops and so on. Sardines seems to help tho.

Cat or kitten BRF?


Kath:)
 
Lions? Easy, peasy

Remember, that at Saqqara there are also the sarcophagi for the mummified Apis bulls - there are around a hundred of these - sacred to Ptah and Osiris. They were buried style fitting a king

So if you though mummifying a lion was a big job....

One of numerous links:
http://www.specialtyinterests.net/apis_bulls.html
 
Had forgotten the bulls..... but are they vbigger than the average bull?

Kath
 
That is true about mummified cats being tiny. There are some in the Egyptian section of the National Museum in Dublin. The first time I saw them I spent ages marvelling over how small they were. Just a head of normal enough dimension and then about a foot long body hanging from it, but the body is a uniform width all the way down - hardly as wide as a human wrist.

Like here: http://myhome.ispdr.net.au/~pshaw/images/mummy.gif
 
Unveiling Animal Mummies
Powerful CT scans reveal thousand-year-old secrets from a collection of preserved animals from ancient Egypt.
By Cristina Luiggi | July 1, 2011
http://the-scientist.com/2011/07/01/unv ... l-mummies/

Stuffed into the sand-buffeted ancient ruins scattered about the Nile Delta are tens of millions of mummified animals. Birds, cats, dogs, crocodiles, snakes—nearly all manner of creature that lived during the time of the Egyptian pharaohs—were carefully preserved and tucked away in the depths of temple catacombs.

For the past 74 years, around five dozen of these mummified animals have sat on the polished display tables and dusty shelves of the Brooklyn Museum like unopened presents. Their time-worn linens and tightly-sealed sarcophaguses have guarded their inner contents for thousands of years, leaving the museum curators and historians to glean clues from external observation.


Video: CT scanning mummies

But in preparation for an upcoming exhibition of Egyptian animal mummies, Brooklyn Museum curator Edward Bleiberg and conservationist Lisa Bruno joined forces with veterinary radiologist Anthony Fischetti to use one of the most powerful medical imaging tools—X-ray computed tomography (CT scan for short)—to reveal the inner secrets of mummified specimens in exquisite detail.

For seven hours on Friday, June 17th, Fischetti and his team of technicians subjected 32 animal mummies from the Brooklyn collection to the powerful X-rays of a CT scanner housed on the 8th floor of the Animal Medical Center (AMC) in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

The chaotic scene was the 21st-century version of a Victorian-era mummy unwrapping. Amid constant camera flashes, journalists, photographers, bloggers, and the occasional curious veterinary intern, huddled around the mummy handlers in order to catch a glimpse of the ancient creatures as they were removed from the safety of their boxes and readied for the scanner bed.

One by one, cats, Ibises, mice, crocodiles, hawks, snakes, the odd egg, and a couple of unknowns were showered with a hefty dose of radiation—much higher than what Fischetti uses on his living patients—in order to penetrate through dense material such as the resin that Egyptians used to preserve the animals.

Within seconds of the each scan, Fischetti would issue preliminary verdicts:

“There’s not much in this one.”

“This just looks like a hollow bird bone.”

“Could that be a baby?”

“This one is a little too well preserved. Are you sure you didn’t make this in Brooklyn?”

Some mummies turned out to be nothing but bundles of linen. Others, thought to hold the remains of birds, just contained feathers. Still others were a mélange of bones from different animals. Fischetti scanned a beautifully preserved Ibis, followed by an unidentifiable sack of shattered bones.

It will take him a couple of weeks to piece together the hundreds of cross-sectional X-ray images that were generated for each mummy in order to reconstruct highly detailed three-dimensional images.

Both Bleiberg and Bruno, who had previously gotten glimpses of what lay inside the mummies from traditional radiographs, are hoping that the more advanced CT scans will unleash a flood of new information about how and why, for a period of around 500 years, the ancient Egyptians were so keen to mummify animals.

Despite their sheer number, very little attention has been paid to animal mummies over the past few centuries. In fact, they often represent a nuisance to archaeologists who, in order to study recently-excavated temples, must first clear out thousands—sometimes millions—of mummified animals that filled inner chambers from floor to ceiling.

“One of the things we’re very interested in is identifying the cause of death,” Bleiberg adds. Most experts now believe that ancient Egyptians ritualistically sacrificed and mummified animals as offerings to the gods. Indeed, in some of the mummies that were CT scanned, Fischetti was able to recognize the tell-tale-signs of a broken neck or blunt force trauma.

“X-rays are only going to tell you so much,” Bruno says. “We really wanted to get CT scans done so that we could get a three dimensional image and actually see soft tissue.”
 
Not far from here, as the seagull flies...

Cat mummy discovered in Cornish attic
[video]
19 February 2013 Last updated at 19:27

A man from Cornwall who found a dusty stuffed cat in his attic has discovered it is a 2,000 year old mummy.
Peter Gray from Porthscatho, near St Mawes, had the cat stored away for about 50 years.
He said: "It's been languishing in the attic. My father always said to get it x-rayed. The vets have confirmed it is a mummified cat and not a fake."

Mr Gray's father did a lot of work for museums around the country. He was given the mummy as a thank you gift.
The Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro has confirmed the mummy is 2,000 years old.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-21512262
 
rynner2 said:
Cat mummy discovered in Cornish attic
[video]
19 February 2013 Last updated at 19:27

A man from Cornwall who found a dusty stuffed cat in his attic has discovered it is a 2,000 year old mummy.

...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-21512262
Egyptian mummified cat discovered in dusty Portscatho attic to go on show
1:00pm Saturday 22nd June 2013 in Truro

An Egyptian mummified cat discovered earlier this year in a dark, dusty attic at Portscatho is being given the opportunity to star in the limelight at the Royal Cornwall Museum.
The cat will be placed on loan by owner, Robert Gray, on Monday, June 24 and put on display near an Egyptian mummified ibis bird at the Museum.

Robert rediscovered the cat, named ‘Mao’ in the attic of his house in Portscatho and brought it in to the Royal Cornwall Museum for identification in February this year.

Jane Marley, Curator of Archaeology and World Cultures, identified the object as an Egyptian mummified cat. Due to the fine ‘diamond’ style of linen bandaging and the way the cat’s head is modelled in linen, this example can be dated to the Roman period in Egypt to the 2nd century AD.
At Jane Marley’s suggestion Robert took ‘Mao’ to be x-rayed at Clifton Villa Veterinary Surgery to find out more and the x-ray revealed that there was a small, complete cat or kitten within the bandages.

Robert was given the cat by his father Mr P Gray, an Egyptologist, who had acquired the cat in the 1960’s as a gift and believed that it had been in Britain since the 1850’s.
Mr Gray x-rayed over 200 mummies in Europe and became the established expert in the field. Robert has never forgotten his childhood experience with his father when he x-rayed Iset-tayef-nakht, the mummified priest and craftsman on display at Royal Cornwall Museum, on 6th January 1969 at the Royal Cornwall Hospital, Treliske.

It is because of this long-standing relationship with the Museum that Robert is lending the cat for displa. He said: "I am thrilled to be following in my late father’s footsteps 50 years on and to be giving the mummified cat to the Royal Cornwall Museum for all to enjoy.’

Visitors interested in viewing the cat will find it on display in the new gallery: Unwrapping the Past, featuring the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Greece and Rome and Iset-tayef-nakht, the unwrapped mummy.
Museum director, Hilary Bracegirdle said: "I am so very pleased that Robert has decided to lend us Mao for display. Such an excellent example of a mummified cat makes a brilliant addition to the museum’s Unwrapping the Past Gallery."

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/tr ... ow/?ref=ec
 
And we have mice mummies. Probably there to accompany cats into the afterlife.

Mummified mice are among the artefacts discovered in a decorated tomb recently unearthed near the Egyptian town of Sohag.

The mice and other animals surrounded two mummified human bodies and the burial chamber contains detailed paintings of funeral processions and people working in the fields. Experts say the tomb is more than 2,000 years old and is thought to be the resting place of a senior official called Tutu and his wife. It was discovered in October when smugglers were caught illegally digging for artefacts.

The Egyptian government's antiquities ministry hopes the finds will draw visitors to the desert town 390 km (242 miles) south of Cairo, near the Nile.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47838077#
 
Saturday, November 23, 2019 - 07:57 PM

Animal mummies recently discovered in Egypt include two lion cubs as well as several crocodiles, birds and cats. Items from the new find were displayed at a makeshift exhibition at the famed Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, south of Cairo, near where mummies and other artefacts have been found in a vast necropolis.

Egypt’s antiquities minister Khaled el-Anany said: “We are finding here hundreds of objects. All of them are very interesting from the Egyptological point of view to know better this area.”

https://www.irishexaminer.com/break...of-lion-cubs-crocodiles-and-birds-966170.html
 
Saturday, November 23, 2019 - 07:57 PM

Animal mummies recently discovered in Egypt include two lion cubs as well as several crocodiles, birds and cats. Items from the new find were displayed at a makeshift exhibition at the famed Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, south of Cairo, near where mummies and other artefacts have been found in a vast necropolis.

Egypt’s antiquities minister Khaled el-Anany said: “We are finding here hundreds of objects. All of them are very interesting from the Egyptological point of view to know better this area.”

https://www.irishexaminer.com/break...of-lion-cubs-crocodiles-and-birds-966170.html

Potentially, adult lion mummies too. Fascinating stuff.
 
DNA Suggests Ancient Egypt’s Millions of Ibis Mummies Were Wild-Caught Birds

Source: smithsonianmag.com
Date: 14 November, 2019

The animals’ genes don’t show the tell-tale signs of domestication, suggesting they were only held temporarily before being sacrificed.

Some ancient Egyptian tombs contain millions of mummified ibises, or hook-billed shorebirds sacrificed in honor of the ibis-headed god Thoth. The origins of these avian mummies have long been unclear, but now, a new genetic survey published in the journal PLoS ONE suggests the vast majority of sacrificial birds came from the wild.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...bis-mummies-were-wild-caught-birds-180973556/
 
DNA Suggests Ancient Egypt’s Millions of Ibis Mummies Were Wild-Caught Birds ...

Update ...

Newly published follow-on research focusing on chemical / isotope analyses indicates the majority of ancient Egyptian bird mummies were wild-caught rather than domestically raised.
Study Solves The Mysterious Origins of The Birds Ancient Egyptians Gifted Their Gods

It was very common for ancient Egyptians to be buried with mummified birds as offerings to the gods, including Horus, Ra or Thoth. In fact, the number of sacrificial birds of prey and ibis buried with Egyptian mummies is thought to reach into the millions.

But up until now it hasn't been clear whether the birds were bred for this specific purpose (as cats were) or captured in the wild.

New research looking at the chemical composition of these birds strongly suggests they were wild and untamed, living out in the natural world before being entombed.

Which begs the question: how did ancient Egyptians catch all these birds?

"Whether these birds were industrially raised or massively hunted is a matter of heavy debate as it would have a significant impact on the economy related to their supply and cult, and if hunted it would have represented an ecological burden on the birds' populations," write the researchers in their published paper.

It was the eating habits of these birds that helped solve the mysterious origins of these birds – the isotopic make-up of feathers, bones and embalming strips taken from 20 ibis and other bird mummies from the Musée des Confluences in Lyon revealed a wide and varied diet.

Not a diet, in other words, that you would get in captivity. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/new-st...-of-the-birds-given-as-gifts-to-egyptian-gods
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract for the research addressing the supply of birds for mummification. The full research report is accessible at the link below.

Isotopic systematics point to wild origin of mummified birds in Ancient Egypt
Marie Linglin, Romain Amiot, Pascale Richardin, Stéphanie Porcier, Ingrid Antheaume, Didier Berthet, Vincent Grossi, François Fourel, Jean-Pierre Flandrois, Antoine Louchart, Jeremy E. Martin & Christophe Lécuyer
Scientific Reports volume 10, Article number: 15463 (2020)

Abstract
Millions of mummified birds serving for religious purpose have been discovered from archeological sites along the Nile Valley of Egypt, in majority ibises. Whether these birds were industrially raised or massively hunted is a matter of heavy debate as it would have a significant impact on the economy related to their supply and cult, and if hunted it would have represented an ecological burden on the birds populations. Here we have measured and analysed the stable oxygen, carbon and radiogenic strontium isotope compositions as well as calcium and barium content of bones along with the stable carbon, nitrogen and sulfur isotope composition of feathers from 20 mummified ibises and birds of prey recovered from various archeological sites of Ancient Egypt. If these migratory birds were locally bred, their stable oxygen, radiogenic strontium and stable sulfur isotopic compositions would be similar to that of coexisting Egyptians, and their stable carbon, nitrogen and oxygen isotope variance would be close, or lower than that of Egyptians. On one hand, isotopic values show that ibises ingested food from the Nile valley but with a higher isotopic scattering than observed for the diet of ancient Egyptians. On the other hand, birds of prey have exotic isotopic values compatible with their migratory behaviour. We therefore propose that most mummified ibises and all the birds of prey analysed here were wild animals hunted for religious practice.

FULL ARTICLE: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72326-7
 
Archaeologists Look Inside Egyptian Mummies First Found in 1615 Without Opening Them

Source: sciencealert.com
Dare: 11 November, 2020

Two ancient mummies discovered in a rock-cut tomb in Egypt more than 400 years ago are finally spilling their secrets, now that scientists have CT scanned their remains, a new study finds.

You don’t need to be a human mummy to have a CT scan of yourself. Some new scans in ultra high resolution of a snake, bird and cat have just been released.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-69726-0


62ADBDC5-B603-4A88-9635-647FB9449659.png
 
Rams to honour Ramses.

More than 2,000 mummified ram heads and a palatial Old Kingdom structure have been uncovered by archaeologists at the King Ramses II Temple of Abydos.

The finds, located roughly 270 miles (435 kilometers) south of Cairo, come from a period of over 1,000 years, from the Sixth Dynasty to the Heroic Age, making some of the discoveries over 4,300 years old.

In addition to the ancient ram's head, archaeologists from the University of New York also discovered a group of mummified dogs, wild goats, cows, deer, and an ostrich.

The mummified remains are believed to have been left at the site to honor Ramses II about 1,000 years after his death, the Egyptian Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities said. ...

https://www.sciencealert.com/thousands-of-mummified-ram-heads-revealed-in-ancient-egyptian-temple
 
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