Animal mummies tell history

[WebenBanu]

Original article at: http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articleid=53313

Animal mummies tell history
Elizabeth Storey -
Monday, April 07, 2008 issue

Animal mummies, long overshadowed by human mummies, hold much more useful information about ancient Egypt than has previously been thought.

Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at the American University of Cairo, discussed the increase in research on animal mummies in her lecture, “Beloved Beasts: Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummies,” Thursday.

“For a long time people would regard animal mummies with curiosity, tuck them under their arm and take them home,” Ikram said. “Animals were of great importance and significance in ancient Egypt as in many other cultures. On one level, they were important for their gods, part human, part animals. On another level, animals are of crucial significance because they give you food.”

Ikram referred to four different types of animal mummies, their uses in ancient Egypt, how they were mummified, and what they meant to humans.

Like today, animals were mainly pets in ancient Egypt.

“They were very attached to their pets, and when they died, they wanted their pets to be reunited in the afterlife so they often mummified their pets,” Ikram said.

Cats were the most popular, according to Ikram, although other animals such as dogs and monkeys were common.

“If the animal dies before the owner, the owner will have it mummified ... until the owner dies. If the person dies first, pets are kept outside the owner's tomb in a coffin in a sarcophagus,” Ikram said.

Another type of animal mummy is the victual or food mummy.

“Ancient Egyptians believed that you can take it with you, so if you like it, you should have it in the afterlife. You might not have had it very often in this life because it’s short, but the next life is eternal so you better make sure you have what you want. They made victual mummies, which were placed in their tombs, so they could enjoy their favorite roast for eternity,” Ikram said.

Ancient Egyptians believed that, as in life, if you didn’t eat, you didn’t live. Food mummies were usually portions of cattle, sheep, goats, antelopes, ducks, geese or pigeons.

“Spare ribs were a very popular food, invented in Egypt,” Ikram said.

Body parts represented different aspects of culture. The tail symbolized the acquisition of the animal’s power because the king wore a royal bull’s tail, according to Ikram.

Sacred animals are a third type of animal mummy. Ancient Egyptians believed that animals represented certain deities who could enter into the body of an animal, made noticeable by certain markings, according to Ikram.

“During that animal's lifetime the god would reside in it and you would worship that animal, pray to it. It could give judgment or predict the future. Upon its death, it died as a god. You would mummify it and bury it with great pomp and circumstance. The soul, the essence of the god, would move into the body of another similarly marked creature,” Ikram said.

The fourth kind of animal mummy is a votive offering. These were used to deliver eternal messages to the gods, according to Ikram.

“If you would take (an animal) and give it as an offering to its god, your prayer would be heard not just briefly but heard eternally. So during your life and after it, you have a good representative clamoring for you to have a good afterlife,” Ikram said.

Ikram and her students have conducted experiments on the methods of mummification. They have experimented with rabbits, ducks and fish.

“They were all purchased from the butcher, they were all meant to be killed and would just have been eaten. These rabbits, however, have made it into the afterlife,” Ikram said.

Animal mummification is different from human mummification because animals come with fur, feathers or fins. Ikram experimented with animal decay under normal conditions and the amount of natron — a naturally occurring salt mixture — to use and how long between changing it. In addition, she experimented with how much oil to use before wrapping and how to wrap the mummy.

The first step in animal mummification is to remove the brain for larger animals such as bulls or, for smaller animals, the internal organs, according to Ikram.

“Once the internal organs are removed, they are wrapped separately for humans and larger animals. For dogs and cats — well, they were probably fed to other dogs and cats.”

After this, the body cavity is washed out with palm wine and packed with natron, which dries out the body. It takes 40 days to desiccate the human body, Ikram said.

At this point, the body is ready to be wrapped. Human wrapping lasts 30 days, beginning with soaking the body with the seven sacred oils, according to Ikram. Then the bodies were wrapped and buried.

Ways of examining animal mummies include X-rays, CT scans and testing embalming materials. Several aspects of ancient Egyptian culture can be identified from these animal mummies.

“Climate and environment, most obviously, are the things we can most certainly find out from animals. Also changes in seasons over time, veterinary practices, cultural beliefs, technology of how mummies are made and comparing them to human mummies, and trade. Materials used in mummification are quite interesting because a lot of things are imported,” Ikram said.

The lecture made an impact on many students in attendance, including Rachael Godkin, junior in anthropology.

“I found the lecture thoroughly inspiring and am now considering spending some time in Cairo for Egyptology,” said Godkin.  

[WebenBanu]

It's interesting how this article mentions that many of the materials used in mummification were imported. I wonder if that has anything to do with why some mummies are found without wrappings? Perhaps the resins which solidify the wrappings were unaffordable or too scarce at the time, so the wrappings gradually deteriorated or fell away? Or perhaps the embalmers didn't see much point in doing the intricate wrappings if the final seals could not be applied to keep them in place?  

[Nevira Shadowfire]

Mmm, spare ribs. *ate little breakfast, skipped lunch, and hasn't eaten dinner yet* cheese_whine

Anyway. I'll bet the entire embalming process didn't come cheap and many couldn't afford it. And so they probably skipped it, or, in this article's case, made sure that their pet could make it safely to the afterlife in order to have a stake in it. It's probably cheaper to mummify a cat instead of a human - less materials are used.

It kinda reminds me of the statistic today that many families go into debt making sure that their pets are fed and well-cared for. In ancient Egypt, they'd forego their own mummification in order to ensure their pet's happiness in the afterlife.