Scope: The Ptolemies had a fascination with mummies, especially animal ones. We will take an in-depth look at a major industry during the Ptolemaic period—animal mummification. In addition to how animals were raised to be sacrificed and mummified, we will also see four distinct reasons why animals were mummified: (1) as preservation of a god, (2) as pets for eternity, (3) as offerings to the gods, and (4) as food for the dead.
Outline
I. The Ptolemies had a continuing fascination with animal mummies, a major industry in ancient Egypt.
II. There was only one animal the Egyptians worshipped as a god.
A. Most Egyptians didn’t worship animals, even if some were often associated with gods. Bastet was the cat goddess, for example, but that didn’t mean every cat was a god.
B. The Apis bull, however, was clearly worshipped and had the most elaborate of all animal burials.
1. Lightning came down from heaven, struck a cow, and conceived the Apis. It had a diamond on its forehead and wings on its back.
2. The Apis was believed to reincarnate in a different form, unlike the usual Egyptian belief in resurrection.
3. The Apis was mummified like a god. A lone surviving papyrus tells us how it was done, although no such instructions exist for human mummification. Perhaps because there was only one Apis at one time—dying at about 30-year intervals—it was necessary to pass the knowledge down in writing rather than by word of mouth.
4. The Serapeum, burial place of sacred bulls, disappeared for thousands of years until Auguste Mariette discovered it. The bulls were bejeweled and placed in huge sarcophagi, all of which were robbed.
III. Other animals were mummified to become pets for eternity—one could take “Fido” to the next world.
A. Cats and gazelles were among those preserved.
B. In one case, an x-ray revealed that a mummy thought to be a princess turned out to be a pet baboon.
C. Theodore Davis, in one of his excavations, had a strange encounter with the mummies of a baboon and a dog, placed nose to nose.
IV. Most animal mummies were sacrificed as offerings to the gods.
A. If you wanted to be healed of an affliction, you would make a pilgrimage and buy a mummified animal.
1. At the tomb of Imhotep, the healer, mummified animals were sold, whereupon the priests placed them in niches in tomb walls.
2. Walter B. Emery’s excavation of the ibis galleries uncovered millions of mummified birds.
B. The archive of Hor describes the industry of raising, mummifying, and burying these offerings.
C. In Bubastis, there was a cemetery for cats. In the nineteenth century, the excavating British took a boatload of thousands and had them ground into fertilizer.
D. The sacred fish of Esneh were a bit of a mystery. Why were they mummified? They recalled the fish that had consumed Osiris’s phallus in the ancient myth.
V. Finally, animals were also preserved as food for the dead. Some mummified naturally in the tomb. Ducks in Tutankhamen’s tomb were intended as food—call it an “order to go.”
Essential Reading:
Bob Brier, Egyptian Mummies, Chapter 8.
Supplementary Reading:
Salima Ikram and Aidan Dodson, The Mummy in Ancient Egypt, pp. 131-136.
Questions to Consider:
1. What were the reasons for mummifying animals?
2. What was special about the mummification of the Apis bull?