Episode 44 Animal Mummies
The History of Ancient Egypt
Professor Robert Brier
Film Review
The Ptolemies were fascinated with animal mummies. They served four different purposes:
- when they were viewed as gods and mummified and buried as god
- as pets for the deceased in the after life
- as a mummified sacrificial offering
- as food for the deceased in the after life
The Apis bull was the main example of an animal god. It was conceived after lightning struck a bull and could be discerned from distinctive markings: a diamond shape on its forehead, a scarab shape under it tongue, wing marking on its back and tail hairs that doubled at the ends.
The Apis bull lived in its own temple and was pampered and perfumed. A papyrus has been found describing how to mummify an Apis bull prior to burial at the Serapeum (see link). As a god, the Apis bull played an essential role in soil fertility.
Example of Egyptian pets who were mummified included cats, baboons dog. The nobility sometimes kept gazelles.
Mummifying animals for sacrificial was a major Egyptian industry under the Ptolemies and millions have been found. People seeking to be healed could make a pilgrimage to various temples, buy a mummified animal (commonly an ibis or falcon raised on special farms) and offer them to the priest, who put them in specially designated niches carved out by specialized stone cutters.
Under the Ptolemies, there was an administrator at Hor who kept a rough draft of the number of mummies offered up and made sure pilgrims didn’t get cheated (by being sold an empty mummy case).
There was also a special cemetery for mummified cats, named after Bastet the cat goddess. When the British occupied Egypt, they shipped hundreds of thousands of cat mummies back to Britain to be ground up as fertilizer. All (none were more than a year old) were clearly raised as offering.
There was also an entire cemetery at Esna in southern Egypt dedicated to fish mummies*
Tutankamen and other pharaohs had pressed duck mummies and mummified animal hearts to take to the next world as food.
*Based on the myth that three fish devoured Osiris’s phallus after Set through his body into the Nile.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/1492791/1492889
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