In Ancient Egypt, the carcasses of cats, dogs, monkeys, birds, and even crocodiles were embalmed to serve as religious offerings in temples and tombs. But apparently the demand for animal mummies outstripped the supply, and embalmers pulled the picaresque to please their customers.
As a team of researchers from the Museum and the University of Manchester has discovered, under the bandages a third of those supposedly embalmed creatures had stuffed or, simply, nothing. This is the most striking result of a study that has consisted of analyzing the content of 800 mummies with X-rays and computerized tomography.
Experts found that a third of the bandages housed whole animals; another third, vestiges of their bodies; and the remaining third were mere appearance. Embalmers filled the latter with clay, sticks, reeds from the banks of the Nile, eggshells or feathers. Other bandages did not contain any objects.
Egyptologists estimate that up to 70 million animals were embalmed and later sold as a religious offering in Ancient Egypt. It was a veritable industry that, according to the new research, ran out of supplies, although it is not clear if the solution devised was a scam or the pilgrims knew they were acquiring a fake.
