Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummies: Types, Preparation, Cemeteries | Middle East And North Africa

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ANIMAL MUMMIES

20120215-Animal_mummies Egypt_-_Royal_Ontario_Museum.jpg The Egyptians not only mummified their rulers, they also made mummies of baboons, ibises, cats, dogs, rabbits, Nile perch, bulls, vultures, elephants, donkeys, lizards, shrews, scarab beetles, horses, gazelles, crocodiles, snakes, catfish, ducks and falcons. They were often elaborately wrapped in bandages printed with magical spells and carefully painted. John Taylor of the British Museum told AP, "The Egyptians mummified almost everything that moved, as they were considered representative of gods and goddesses."

The animal mummies were usually carefully wrapped and placed in a coffin or jar. Sometimes the animal mummies were placed in small limestone coffins. Some coffins were topped by golden shrews. Shrews were symbols of the sun’s renewal. They were sometimes given as offerings. Research has show that the animals were often prepared and embalmed with the same care as humans.

Tens of millions of animal mummies have been found in Egypt. Most of them are cats, dogs, ibises and birds of prey. Primate mummies such as baboons are rare. It was long thought that animals were simply wrapped in coarse linen rags and immersed in preservative. Research by Richard Evershed, an expert on archaeological chemistry at the University of Bristol, found the same materials — including fine linen, beeswax, cedar resins, bitumen and pistacia — used in human mummies were also used in mummies of cats, ibises and hawks dated to between 9th and 4th centuries B.C.

Today animal mummies are among the most popular exhibits in the treasure-filled Egyptian Museum. A.R. Williams wrote in National Geographic, “Visitor is all ages, Egyptians and foreigners, press shoulder to shoulder to get a look. Behind glass panels lie cats wrapped in strips of linen that form diamonds, stripes, squares and crisscrosses. Shrews in boxes of carved limestone, rams covered with gilded and beaded casings. A gazelle wrapped in a tattered matt of papyrus...A 17-foot, knobby-backed crocodile, buried with baby croc mummies in its mouth. Ibises in bundles with intricate appliques. Hawks. Fish. Even tiny scarab beetles and the dung balls they ate. [Source: A.R. Williams, National Geographic, November 2009]

The oldest-known animal mummies, dated to 2950 B.C., are dogs, lions and donkeys buried with kings in the 1st dynasty in their funeral complexes at Abydos, Symbols of the god Troth, ibises were mummified in greater numbers than any other animal. Archaeologists have uncovered an 18-foot-long crocodile mummy with a small crocodile in its mouth behind its jaws. Archaeologists have also found “corn mummies” with preserved grain inside. X-rays of these reveal that the grain grows inside a statue completely hidden in a mummy’s wrappings.

A bronze cobra coffin with the head of a human wearing a crown represents the god Atum, who was thought to have swum in primordial waters before creating the world. A painted wooden coffin, dating to between 664 B.C. and 332 B.C., with a shrew mummy inside depicts a shrew, a nocturnal animal, which represented Kenty-irty, a god with the ability see in darkness.

Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummies and Life

Fifth Century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus wrote in Book 2 of “Histories”: And in whatever houses a cat has died by a natural death, all those who dwell in this house shave their eyebrows only, but those in which a dog has died shave their whole body and also their head. The cats when they are dead are carried away to sacred buildings in the city of Bubastis, where after being embalmed they are buried; but the dogs they bury each people in their own city in sacred tombs; and the ichneumons are buried just in the same way as the dogs. The shrewmice however and the hawks they carry away to the city of Buto, and the ibises to Hermopolis; the bears (which are not commonly seen) and the wolves, not much larger in size than foxes, they bury on the spot where they are found lying. [Source: Herodotus, “The Histories”, Egypt after the Persian Invasion, Book 2, English translation by A.D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920, Tufts]

ibis mummy
Some mummified animals were pets that their owners wanted with them in the afterlife. Most were offering that were left at temples as a meal for the gods, presumably by people who wanted some favor from these gods. The practice was so common that stalls were set up outside temples that sold mummified animals The animal mummification industry was big business. It employed hundreds of people. [Source: A.R. Williams, National Geographic, November 2009]

Egyptologist Salima Ikram of Cairo’s American University told National Geographic, “They’re really manifestation of daily life. Pets, food, death, religion. They cover everything the Egyptians were concerned with.” Ikram has adopted the Egyptian Museum’s neglected religion mummy collection, and X-rayed and unwrapped individual mummies, cataloguing her findings and creating a gallery for the collection. “You look at these animals, and suddenly you say Oh King So-and-So had a pet. And instead of being at a distance of 5,000-plus years, the ancient Egyptians become people,” she said.

Animal mummies basically fell into four categories: 1) pets such as cats, dogs, monkeys and even gazelles that were mummified in part to accompany their owners into the afterlife; 2) food offerings such as pieces of meat, fowl, and fish that were mummified to provide food for the afterlife journey; 3) animals with connections to specific deities such as baboons and ibises; and 4) votive mummies, that served the same purpose of votive candles burned in churches except they lasted much longer.

Meat mummies of an afterlife feast displayed at the Egyptian Museum include ducks, pigeons, legs of beef, roast and an oxtail for soup. They were all dried in natron, wrapped in linen and packed in a picnic basket. “Whether or not you got it regularly in life didn’t matter because you got it for eternity,” Ikram told National Geographic.

Animal Mummies, Religion and the Mummification Process

Votive animal mummies were offered during festivals at temples of animals cults to win favors from gods associated with each animal. They were usually buried with a prayer. Many were not what they seemed to be or were outright fakes. Some had nothing inside. Others had a different animal than the one claimed by the outside.. Others still contained only a few bones. Ikram said that the more attractive the packages the more likely it was to be a scam. [Source: A.R. Williams, National Geographic, November 2009]

Votive animal mummies became really big in the 7th century B.C. after ancient Egypt was reunited and foreign rulers were thrown out. Apparently happy to return to their traditional ways, the Egyptians embraced the animal mummies to such an extent a large industry grew up around them, consisting of specialized workers to make the mummies and people to breed or catch the animals. Materials had to be manufactured or imported.

When Ikram tried to mummify some rabbits her results were less than exemplary. Gas built up in her first rabbit, named Flopsy and he exploded, Thumper had his main organs removed and was filled with natron and did better. Fluffy had her organs removed and the first batch of natron, which had become gooey and smelly, was taken out and replaced with bags of natron, which were easy to work with and explained why so many similar bundles were found in embalming places. Peter Cottontail endured the treatment described by Herodotus. Instead of evisceration, he received a turpentine and cedar-oil enema before being placed in natron. The technique worked: all the organs dissolved except the heart — the one organ Egyptians always left in place.

Huge Numbers of Animal Mummies After the New Kingdom Collapse

X-ray of a baboon mummy
Eric A. Powell wrote in Archaeology magazine: Large numbers of mummies in dedicated animal necropolises did not appear until after the fall of the New Kingdom, around 1075 B.C. During the subsequent chaotic 400-year span known as the Third Intermediate Period, the central Egyptian state collapsed and a series of local dynasties and foreign kings rose and fell in rapid succession. This time is often depicted as calamitous in official accounts, but Bleiberg notes that during the First Intermediate Period, a similarly chaotic era without central authority that lasted from 2181 to 2055 B.C., life for the average Egyptian went on as normal. In fact, University of Cambridge Egyptologist Barry Kemp has shown that villagers were relatively prosperous during this time, perhaps because they paid taxes only to local authorities, and not to the central state. If life in the Third Intermediate Period was similar, then the average Egyptian may have had more disposable income. With no pharaoh to mediate Egypt’s relationship to the gods, and with foreigners undermining religious traditions, there was also a turn to personal piety among the general public. “Without the pharaoh, people needed to approach the gods on their own,” says Bleiberg. [Source:Eric A. Powell, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2014]

“Against this backdrop, pilgrims visiting temples began to purchase animal mummies from priests to bury as votive offerings. Some wealthier pilgrims bought bronze statuettes of divinities that were also wrapped as mummies and placed in animal cemeteries. But real animal mummies would have been a much cheaper option, and they were soon a pervasive presence in Egyptian life. Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo estimates that the known 31 animal necropolises once held at least 20 million mummies.

According to an ancient text, the Temple of Thoth in the necropolis of Saqqara at one time had 60,000 living ibises being readied for mummification, and archaeologists estimate that some four million ibis mummies were eventually buried there. A few mummies have been found with papyri petitioning the gods for help to resolve a family matter or cure an illness. Bleiberg notes, however, that the majority of animal mummies were not accompanied by written petitions and that it’s possible most were intended to carry oral messages. Perhaps pilgrims whispered their requests in the ears of the mummies, which then delivered their messages to the gods.

Animal Mummy Cemeteries in Egypt

Animals cemeteries with specific areas for each animal were often located outside cities. Near Saqqara a cemetery was found with 400 baboons. There were also large cemeteries for mummified cats. There were so many of these cats they were shipped to England by the boatload in the 19th century and crushed up into fertilizer. [Source: A.R. Williams, National Geographic, November 2009]

Cemeteries for ibises and falcons, associated with the gods Thoth and Horus, were even larger. To meet the demand for falcons, which were hard to catch and raise in captivity, fake mummies made of bones wrapped in rags were sold. Half a million mummified birds have been found at a single location. At Tuna el-Gebel at Hermpolis a huge underground gallery filled with ibises and baboon contains animal mummies arranged in figure-eights, symbolic of the eight creative gods of Hermopolis.

Animals found in cemetery in Hierakonpolis, dated to 3500 B.C., included elephants in elaborate tombs and baboon and wildcats. The elephants may have been manifestations of power. The were buried completely fleshed with grave goods including an ivory bracelet, green malachite cosmetics, alabaster jars and amethyst beads. No expenses seemed to have been spared. The baboons and wildcats may have been pets.

Animal Mummy Workshops in Egypt

Crocodile mummy
In May 2023, Egyptian archaeologists announced that they had discovered two workshops for mummification at the Saqqara necropolis near Cairo and the ancient city of Memphis. The workshops date to the 30th dynasty (380 to 345 B.C.) and the Ptolemaic period (305 to 30 B.C.). One of the workshops at Saqqara features stone beds meant for the preparation of human bodies, while the other has smaller beds that archaeologists think were used to mummify animals. The researchers also found instruments for mummification, clay jars for entrails, and ritual vessels for embalmed organs, as well as supplies of natron — a type of soda ash, sourced from dry lake beds in the desert, that was a key ingredient in the embalming process. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, National Geographic, December 6, 2023]

The sacred animal mummification workshop is a rectangular mud, brick, and stone structure divided into rooms and halls. It contains animal burials and bronze tools for animal mummification, as well as five limestone beds recessed into the floor. This workshop has a large number of pottery vessels and tools used for embalming. The Bubasteion necropolis, one of ancient Egypt’s major burial sites, was located on the west bank of the Nile opposite Memphis. It was dedicated to Bastet, who was the patron goddess of cats. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, June 2, 2023; Magdy Samaan, The Telegraph, May 29, 2023]

According to Live Science: In Egypt, animals such as cats, dogs and birds associated with deities were routinely sacrificed and mummified for ancient Egyptian burials and rituals. Some animal burials were found there, and the workshop may have been used to mummify animals associated with Bastet, an ancient Egyptian goddess who is depicted like a cat, according to the statement.

Jo Marchant wrote in Smithsonian magazine: In a nearby shaft, a team unearthed cat mummies along with human remains. Previous excavations had discovered a huge cat necropolis at the Bubasteion, where the animals, sacred to the feline goddess Bastet, were embalmed and left as offerings. It was one of many local animal cults. Just north of the Bubasteion is the Anubieion, a temple complex dedicated to the jackal-headed god of death, Anubis, where mazelike tunnels are estimated to have held millions of mummified dogs. Beyond that are catacombs once filled with mummified ibises, hawks and baboons. To the west is the Serapeum, where Apis bulls were laid to rest. [Source:Jo Marchant, Smithsonian magazine, August 2021]

Animal Mummy Market

Eric A. Powell wrote in in Archaeology magazine: Until the advent of Christianity, visitors to temples could buy animal mummy bundles as offerings to the gods. Wealthier pilgrims could also splurge on elaborate coffins shaped as creatures to hold these mummies, which ancient Egyptians probably believed represented the souls of the gods. Along with the sale of animal mummies, the production of lavish bronze and wooden coffins must have been an important source of revenue for temples. [Source:Eric A. Powell, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2014]

Egyptian archaeologist Mostafa Waziri unearthed huge numbers of animal mummies at cemeteries in Saqqara, near Cairo. Jo Marchant wrote in Smithsonian magazine he and his colleagues found animal mummies of varying qualities, which were probably priced accordingly. X-rays reveal that some “mummies” have no cat remains inside at all. And the mix with human bones suggests that if priests ran out of space in the dedicated animal catacombs, they simply commandeered older human tombs. The animal cults, in other words, became an ever more significant economic and spiritual force, helping to drive Saqqara’s final flourish. Or as Price puts it: “Saqqara was like an enormous, divine magnet or battery, powered by all these animal mummies.” [Source: Jo Marchant, Smithsonian magazine, August 2021]

Sarcophagus for cat mummy
Many animal mummies date to Ptolemic (Greek) period of Egypt. To the Greeks, part of the appeal of such Egyptian customs may have been the ease of making a personal plea to the gods, by visiting a stall selling mummified animals and choosing from a range of prepared products on offer. And the reward would likewise have been appealing: the promise, unique to Egyptian theology at that time, of an eternal afterlife of splendor. By contrast, “Greek ideas for the afterlife were pretty dull,” says Price.

Animals were important in the religious life of ancient Egyptians in both their deified forms as half-animal Egyptian gods and as the animals themselves. A.R. Williams wrote National Geographic, “Different sacred animals were worshipped at their own cult centers — bulls at Armant and Heliopolis, fish at Esna, rams at Elephantine Island, crocodiles at Kom Ombo. Ikram believes the idea of such divine creatures was born at the dawn of Egyptian civilization, a time when heavier rainfall than today made the land green and bountiful. Surrounded by animals, people began to connect them with specific gods according to their habits.” [Source: A.R. Williams, National Geographic, November 2009]

“Some places were associated with just one god and its symbolic animal, but old venerated sites such as Abydos have yielded whole menageries of votive mummies, each species a link to a particular god...Excavations have uncovered ibis mummies likely representing Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing. Falcons likely evoked the sky-god Horus...And dogs had ties with jackal-headed Anubis, the guardian of the dead.”

Corrupt Practices in the Animal Mummy Business

Eric A. Powell wrote in Archaeology magazine: “As with any large-scale business, the production of animal mummies could be rife with corruption. At the necropolis of Saqqara, Egyptologists discovered a draft document written on ostraca, or potsherds, that details a case of corruption against the Temple of Thoth. Though the exact charges are not translatable, they evidently had to do with payments worshippers made for animal mummies — and what they actually got in return. The document outlines reforms that call for “one god in one jar,” meaning one whole animal per purchase. That implies the priests of Thoth were selling fraudulent mummies that either had no animal inside at all, or held multiple animals that each represented a separate purchase. Whatever their crime, six priests were imprisoned. The document also describes a program of oversight by outside priests and states that, in the future, mummies would be stored in a holding area until they could be buried all at once during an annual festival overseen by reliable officials. [Source: Eric A. Powell, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2014]

“Some of the mummies in the Brooklyn Museum collection may have been the result of such corrupt practices. X-rays reveal multiple snakes in an “ibis” mummy, as well as mummy bundles without any remains, perhaps intended to fool unsuspecting worshippers. One mummy contained nothing but feathers, but was unusually well wrapped. Why would a corrupt priest bent on swindling a pilgrim devote so much time to elegantly wrapping a fraudulent mummy? “It’s possible the feathers came from an unusually important bird,” says Bleiberg, “We’ll never know for sure. ” Although animal mummies were one of the most common classes of object left behind by the ancient Egyptians, they carry messages that may never be fully understood.

Among the animal mummies fakes found at The Brooklyn Museum are two ibis-shaped mummies are not what they appear. One contains no skeleton. An X-ray of the other reveals it actually contains snake skeletons. Both could be the result of corrupt temple practices. An X-ray of this elegantly wrapped hawk mummy dating to between 30 B.C. and A.D. 395 shows it contains only a single bird’s wing while an X-ray of a small, bull-shaped linen bundle shows the object contains a bone fragment that could be bovine.

Ancient Egyptian Dog Mummies

cat mummies
Dog mummies honoring Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the underworld, were wrapped so they looked like jackals. They were sometimes left as offerings at the tombs of people. The Egyptians didn’t believe that dogs were sacred but they believed that jackals guided souls of the dead to the afterlife. One mummified queen was thought to have been pregnant when she died. When her body was X-rayed a baboon was revealed inside. [Source: A.R. Williams, National Geographic, November 2009]

The ancient Egyptian catacomb in north Saqqara, near Cairo, honoring Anubis, the jackal-headed god of death and funerals, once held 8 million mummified dogs, according to a study, which is the first to thoroughly investigate the underground tomb. Researchers also found a fossilized marine vertebrate on the ceiling of the catacomb, as well as other mummified animals, such as cats and mongoose. It's likely that animal cults helped fuel the ancient economy, the researchers said. [Source Laura Geggel, Live Science, June 18, 2015]

Ibis, baboon and hawk catacombs were in the the northern part of the catacomb. The dog catacomb is near the temple in the eastern part. The small catacomb on the right is inaccessible due to shifting sands and a 1992 earthquake that hit the region. One photograph shows the main axial aisle of the underground canine catacomb. Another photograph shows a complete canine mummy in an undisturbed section of the catacomb. An X-ray of a dog mummy shows how the animal’s skeleton was compressed and its tail tucked behind its hind legs.

Ancient Egyptian Cat Mummies

Cats were "mummified in the millions" and buried as offerings. In 1888, a farmer digging in the sand near the village of Istabl Antar found a huge mass grave of cat mummies. English Illustrated magazine reported: “Not one or two here and there but dozens, hundreds of thousands, a layer of them, a stratum thicker than most coal seams, ten to twenty cats deep.” Some were beautifully warped with linen and had gilded faces. The best ones were sold to tourists by village children. The rest were sold as fertilizer. More than 180,000 were hauled away on one ship to Liverpool and used to enrich the soils of England.

Some of the better-prepared kitten mummies found at Istabl Antar were wrapped in linen in a spiral patterns and given a painted mask. The mummies were then placed in a wooden coffin, shaped like an adult cat in a sphinx position that stood about 36 centimeters tall, dwarfing the mummy inside.

CT scans that revealed mummies with complete cat skeletons inside show the had its forelegs and paws laid over its belly in a position similar to the placement of arms in human mummies.

Ancient Egyptian Lion Mummies

dog mummies
In 2001 the first lion mummy was found was in the tomb of Maia, wet nurse of King Tutankhamun. It was found in an area of the tomb dedicated to Bastet, the cat goddess, which also contained the bones of humans and animals, including cats. The lion mummy was not wrapped in linen bandages like human mummies. Mineral deposits found on the bones indicated it was prepared like a cat mummy.

In November 2019, Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities revealed the discovery of two lion cub mummies along with mummies of several crocodiles, birds and cats in Saqqara, south Giza, Associated Press reported: “Archaeologists also found wooden and bronze cat statues representing the ancient goddess Bastet and a rare large stone scarab, which Egyptian archaeologist Mostafa Waziri described as “the largest all over the world.” They also displayed two mummies of ichneumon, or the Egyptian mongoose, wrapped in linen bandages and wooden and tin-glazed statuettes of the goddess Sekhmet, represented as a woman with the head of a lioness. Scholars say Sekhmet (1390-1252 B.C.) was a goddess of war and the destroyer of the enemies of the sun god Re. [Source: Samy Magdy, Associated Press, November 24, 2019]

Apis Bull

Bulls were among the most sacred of all animals. The sacred Buchis bull at Armant, the Apis bull of Memphis and the bull of Heliopolis were worshipped with a reverence usually reserved for the main gods. Even the Pharaoh made offerings to them. Black bulls in particular were honored. They were given harams and palaces because they were believed to be related to the bull-god Apis.

The Apis bull was one of the most revered animals in all of ancient Egypt. A.R. Williams wrote in National Geographic, “A symbol of strength and virility, the Apis was closely linked to the all-powerful king. He was part animal, part god and was chosen for veneration because of his unusual set of markings: a white triangle on his forehead, white winged patterns on his shoulders and rump, a scarab silhouette on his tongue, and double hairs at the end of his tail.” [Source: A.R. Williams, National Geographic, November 2009]

“During his lifetime he was kept in a special sanctuary and pampered by priests , adorned with gold and jewels, and worshipped by multitudes. When he died his divine essence was believed to move on to another bull, and so a search for the new one began. Meanwhile, the body of the deceased was transported to the temple and laid on a bed of finely carved travertine. Mummification took at least 70 days — 40 to dry the enormous repository of flesh, and 30 to wrap it.”

“On the bull’s burial day, city residents surged into the streets to observe this occasion of national mourning. Wailing and tearing at their hair, they crowded the route at the catacomb now known as Serapeum in the desert necropolis of Saqqara. In a procession, priest temple, singers, and exalted officials delivered the mummy to the network of vaulted galleries carved into the bedrock of limestone. There among the long corridors of previous burials, they interred the mummy in a massive wooden or granite sarcophagus.”

Investigating Animal Mummy Diversity

In the late 2000s, Kathy Zurek-Doule and Edward Bleiberg, curators at Brooklyn Museum’s Egyptology department, began investigating museum’s collection of elaborately-wrapped animal mummies — which included ibises, hawks, cats, dogs, snakes, and even a shrew — that dated to after the and figure out why they were so common. [Source: Eric A. Powell, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2014]

20120215-apis bull 450px-Louvre.jpg Eric A. Powell wrote in Archaeology magazine: X-rays and CT scans of the mummies in the rediscovered Brooklyn Museum collection reveal just how diverse animal mummies could be. While many show entire skeletons inside the mummy bundles, others reveal only partial remains. Some even show multiple animals mummified together in one bundle. A particularly poignant CT scan of a cat bundle shows that the feline was mummified with its forepaws crossed in the same position as human mummies’ arms were crossed, a reminder that the ancient Egyptians drew little distinction between people and animals.

To determine if different wrapping styles could be dated to particular periods, Bleiberg took radiocarbon samples of some of the mummies’ linens, but the dates turned out to be inconsistent. It’s possible that the linen used in the wrappings was often recycled, which makes dating unreliable. A piece of linen could begin life as an article of clothing that lasted for decades, then be used as a rag, and then be repurposed as mummy wrapping, perhaps decades, or even centuries, after it was first made. Given the scale of the animal mummy-making business, some temples may have made their own linen, just as they raised their own animals in numbers approaching modern-day industrial farming. “This was an extremely important economic phenomenon,” says Bleiberg. “There was a lot of money being directed toward animal mummies in first millennium. ”

2,000 Mummified Rams' Heads Gifted to Ramses II 1,000 Years After He Died

Ramses II (ruled 1279 to 1213 B.C.) was one of ancient Egypt’s greatest pharaohs. More than 2,000 mummified rams' heads unearthed at an ancient temple in Egypt are believed to be have likely been prepared as an offering to Ramses II, around 1,000 years after he died. Live Science reported: The severed heads were uncovered at the Ramses II temple in Abydos, an ancient city around 430 miles (692 kilometers) south of Cairo. The temple was built after the pharaoh's death. Discovered over 150 years ago, it features include pillars bearing the depiction of Osiris, a god famous for dying and then coming back to life, and an imposing black stone arch, according to Tour Egypt. [Source: Harry Baker, Live Science, published March 29, 2023]

The horned ram skulls neatly lines up in rows. Some are rapped in bandages and partially decayed. The eerie cranium collection was found by researchers from New York University inside a previously undiscovered ancient storage building in the northern part of the temple, representatives from Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities wrote in a translated Facebook post. Some of the rams' heads were covered in bandages and had been partially preserved, but the majority are now fleshless skulls. The team also found the remains of goats, dogs, cows, deer and an ostrich at the site. All of the animal remains likely date to around 1,000 years after Ramses II ruled Egypt and were likely left as an offering to the much-revered king in the afterlife, ministry representatives wrote.

“We came across a skull, then another one, then five, ten, fifty, one hundred,” Sameh Iskander, the head of the team that found the skulls, told Archaeology magazine. “We ended up with over two thousand skulls.” Iskander believes the skulls — mostly of rams, but also ewes, dogs, wild goats, mongooses, gazelles, and pigs — and around 150 cow mandibles were all deposited at the same time. Some of the skulls and other bones were still wrapped in linen with elaborate fringes. In the storage area, the team also found a papyrus roll detailing business transactions, a small bronze bell that would have hung from a ram’s neck, and a large quantity of leather items. The deposits date to the mid-Ptolemaic period, around 1,000 years after the time of Ramses II, suggesting that the pharaoh was revered long after his death. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology Magazine, September/October 2023]

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum, The Egyptian Museum in Cairo

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated July 2024