Although the ancient Egyptians are famous

for producing human mummies, the vast

number of animal mummies that they made
are far less well known. People and animals
were mummied in order to preserve the
body so that it served as a host for the
eternal soul in the hereafter. Embalmers
made mummies, both human and animal,
by eviscerating the body, in the case of
large mammals, excerebration, followed
by desiccation using natron, a mixture of
sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate,
sodium sulphate, and sodium chloride that
occurs naturally in the Wadi Natrun in Egypt.
This part of the preparation of the body took
40 days. A further 30 days were needed to
massage the body with oils and unguents,
and to wrap the body prior to burial. The
application of the sacred oils and unguents
served both religious and practical services:
they imparted a pleasant (divine) aroma to the body, they made the body more exible and thus easier to
wrap, and they were regarded as vital to the resurrection of the body. After the application of these precious
uids, the body was wrapped in linen bandages, accompanied by the recitation of special spells that helped
protect the body and ease the deceaseds path to the Afterworld. After the 70 days of mummication were
completed, the mummy was buried in its tomb.
Other methods of mummication were employed on both humans and animals. Bird mummies were sometimes
prepared by being dipped in vats of molten resin, while small animals, such as shrews were not eviscerated.
Particularly in the Late Period cedar or juniper oil enemas were used to melt the internal organs prior to
desiccation.
There are four basic types of animal mummies: beloved pets, food or victual mummies, sacred animals, and
votive mummies. Pets were mummied and buried with their owners or near their tombs so that they could
frolic together in the afterworld. Victual mummies are pieces of meat or poultry that was prepared as if to
be consumed immediately (a prelude to the ready-to-eat roast meats available today) by the deceased in the
hereafter. Sacred animal mummies are of animals that were worshipped during their lifetimes as a personication
of the god whom they were identied with (cats for Bastet, goddess of love and indulgence; ibises for Thoth,
the god of wisdom; dogs for Anubis the way-nder
who guided the dead from the land of the living to
the land of the dead, etc.), and buried with pomp
and circumstance upon their deaths. A Sacred Animal
was identied by special markings; upon its death the
spirit of the god would enter the body of another
appropriately marked creature, and continue on, much
in the way of the Dalai Lama. Votive mummies are
mummies of animals that were purchased by devout
pilgrims and offered to the relevant deity (e.g. cats for
Bastet, etc.) and then buried in catacombs, en masse,
at certain religious festivals. These acted in the same
way as votive candles, taking the prayers to god.
Until recently scholars have studied mummies by
unwrapping them, as radiographs are expensive
and sometimes difcult to carry out in certain
museum/excavation circumstances, either due to
Figure 1. This sacred ram, in a gilded cartonnage covering, was a manifestation of the
god Khnum. Although many sarcophagi for sacred rams were found on the island
of Elephantine, only a few contained unrobbed burials of these creatures. The x-ray
shows an old animal whose teeth were very worn down. Curiously, there appear to
be no horns. Perhaps the animal was polled and the horns used in sacred headdresses
by the priests.
(Photograph by Anna-Marie Kellen)
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Mummified Menageries: Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummuies
Figure 2. This votive cat mummy was very elaborately bandaged. X-rays
show that the animal was deliberately killed by strangulation in order to
mummify it.
(Photograph by Anna-Marie Kellen)
practicalities or to museum policies. It should be said that X-rays have been
used intermittently on mummied remains from 1896 (by W. Knig) onward,
with the rst royal mummy, that of Thutmosis IV being x-rayed in 1903 by Dr.
Khayrat. Since then most of the royal mummies in Egypt have been x-rayed, as
well as many non-royal ones as well. Increasingly, whenever possible scholars
are using x-rays, MRI, and CT-scanning in order to study mummies.
The Animal Mummy Project (AMP) at the Egyptian Museum, directed by the
author was the rst large-scale project to x-ray animal mummies. The main x-
ray machine, owned by the museum was a Hitex (Hk-100S, KVP 100, mA to 5).
This was augmented by a portable machine, a Karmex Diagnostic X-ray Unit
PX-20N (AC 115V 50/60HZ, 50-130 KVp 2-20mA), graciously lent by the Institute for Bioarchaeology. This was
particularly useful when the mummies were too fragile to move. Kodak and Agfa industrial lm (12 x 10,
or 25.4 cm. x 30.5 cm.) were the lms used as it was much easier to position these lms (sometimes quite
creatively) as they did not need cassettes.
The mummies were rst examined visually, and then radiographed. The kind of information derived from
the radiographs included the genus and often the species of a given animal, its age, any diseases manifest
in its bones, and their resulting treatments, if any, its method of death, and the method of mummication.
Ultimately the results of this study have been collected and published in a catalogue. The information derived
from the AMP provides information about the fauna of ancient Egypt and, indirectly, its environment and
climate, as well as animal domestication, veterinary practices, human nutrition, mummication itself, and the
religious practices of the ancient Egyptians.
Salima Ikram
Further Reading
www.animalmummyproject.com
IKRAM, S. 1995a. Choice Cuts: Meat Production in Ancient Egypt. (Leuven: Peeters).
IKRAM, S. 1995b. Did the Ancient Egyptians Eat Biltong? Cambridge Journal of Archaeology 5.2: 283-89.
IKRAM, S. 2000a. The Pet Gazelle of One of the Ladies of the Pinudjem Family, KMT 11.2: 58-61.
IKRAM, S. 2000b. Animals for the Afterlife, Egypt Revealed 1.1: 55-61.
IKRAM, S.. 2000c. Meat Production, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technologies. P. Nicholson and I. Shaw, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press), 656-71.
IKRAM, S. 2001. The Animal Mummy Project, KMT 12.4: 18-25.
IKRAM, S. 2003. The Animal Mummy Project at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty-rst Century. Z. Hawass, ed.
(Cairo: American University in Cairo), 235-39.
IKRAM, S. 2003. Death and Burial in Ancient Egypt. (London: Longman).
IKRAM, S. 2004a. A Zoo For Eternity: Animal Mummies in the Cairo Museum. (Cairo: Supreme Council of Antiquities).
IKRAM, S. 2004b. Beloved Beasts: Animal Mummies from Ancient Egypt. (Cairo: Supreme Council of Antiquities).
IKRAM, S. 2004c. Victual, Ritual, Or Both? Food Offerings From The Funerary Assemblage Of Isitemkheb, Studi di Egittologia e di Papirologia 1:
87-92.
IKRAM, S. 2005. Divine Creatures: Animal Mummies from Ancient Egypt. (Cairo: American University in Cairo).
IKRAM, S. and N. ISKANDER. 2002. Catalogue Gnral of the Egyptian Museum: Non-Human Remains. (Cairo: Supreme Council of Antiquities).
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Figure 3. Mummication debris of
sacred and/or votive animal was
regarded as sacred and was wrapped
up and placed in ceramic vessels. X-
rays reveal that this jar contains ibis
bones, some feathers, linen, and
perhaps some natron.
(Photograph by Salima Ikram)
Figure 4. This victual mummy consists of beef ribs that might have cooked in some way
before being mummied. They belonged to the burial of the great grand-parents of the
pharaoh Tutankhamun.
(Photograph by Anna-Marie Kellen)