Ancient Animal Mummies
Wrapped in linen and carefully laid to rest, animal mummies hold intriguing clues to life and death in ancient Egypt. One hundred years ago, the many thousands of mummified animals that turned up at sacred burial sites throughout Egypt were just things to be cleared away to get at the good stuff. Few people studied them, and their importance was generally unrecognized.
In the century since then, archaeology has become less of a trophy hunt and more of a science. Excavators now realize that much of their sites’ wealth lies in the multitude of details about ordinary folks—what they did, what they thought, how they prayed. Animal mummies are a big part of that.
Animal preservation goes back thousands of years. Ever since the technology has existed humans have had the desire to preserve animals that carry significant meaning in their lives. It’s fascinating to see which animals were deemed important enough for the techniques, and to see how those practices evolved over the passing centuries!