By Jane O'Brien BBC News, Washington
The ancient Egyptian animal
mummification industry was so large it put some species in danger of
extinction. But as a new exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National
Museum of Natural History in Washington DC shows, the Egyptians believed they
were doing the animals a great honour.
Egypt in the 7th Century BC was not a
healthy place to be if you were a cat or a dog.
Puppy farms and other animal breeding
programmes were a huge industry - not to produce pets, but to provide a stock
of animals to be killed and mummified.
The Egyptians believed that animals held
a unique position in the afterlife. They could keep the dead company, they
represented the gods, and they were well received as offerings by the gods,
Egyptologists say.
Millions
mummified
Such was the enthusiasm for animal
slaughter that experts say it contributed to the extinction in Egypt of at
least one bird species. The Sacred Ibis were mummified in the millions because
they were sacred to Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing, says Selima Ikram,
professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo.
Others, including hawks and falcons, saw
their populations dwindle.
"It's easier to say which animals
the Egyptians didn't mummify," says Prof Ikram, who helped curate the
Smithsonian's largest mummy exhibition to date.
"There are no mummified pigs as far
as we know, no mummified hippos, and I think that's about it - because almost
every other creature at some time or another has been mummified."
At the exhibit, visitors can see a range
of mummified animals, including the Sacred Ibis, and gain an insight into the
industry that became a driving force of the economy of ancient Egypt.
When animals in the wild started dying
out, extensive breeding programmes were launched by the temples and surrounding
villages.
'Obsessed
with life'
The programmes began as early as 3,000BC
and peaked from 650BC to 200AD, when the mummification industry was
"phenomenally large", says Prof Ikram.
Mummification represented a culture of
life, not of death, says exhibition curator Melinda Zeder.
"The ancient Egyptians weren't
obsessed with death - they were obsessed with life," says Ms Zeder.
"And everything they did to prepare for mummification was really looking
at life after death and a way of perpetuating oneself forever.
"The priests would sacrifice the
animal for you, mummify it and then place it in a catacomb in your name. So
this was a way of obtaining good standing in the eyes of whatever god it
was."
While many animals were bred
specifically to be killed on demand, others were worshiped as deities
themselves.
The museum has a rare bull mummy which,
as a manifestation of the sun god Re, would have been allowed to live out its
life in luxury.
During its life the bull would have
received daily massages and paraded through adoring crowds while priests
studied its movements and tried to divine messages from the gods.
When the bull died of old age - probably
after 20 years - it was mummified, placed in an immense sarcophagus and put
into a catacomb.
"Some might have died of heart
attacks because they were overfed by the priests," says Prof Ikram.
Other animals did not fare even that
well.
Another species killed to the point of
extinction in Egypt was the baboon.
When none were left, the Egyptians
manufactured fake baboon offerings, creating mummies that looked real on the
outside but which CT scans have recently revealed to be elaborate forgeries.
"If you wanted to have a baboon as
an offering, you make it look like a baboon - and if you say it is a baboon,
then it magically becomes a baboon," says Prof Ikram.
"The real ones were very expensive
and hard to come by and that's why the whole genre of fake mummies
started."
Animal lovers today might be appalled
that such large scale slaughter took place in the name of religion and ritual
burials.
But Egyptologists say the ancients
believed it was a great honour for the animals involved: They were bred for a
higher purpose and would spend eternity with the gods.
"They believed there were going on
to a better life," says Prof Ikram, "although their short term life
might not have been fantastic."
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