Egyptian giant crocodile mummy is full of surprises

Courtesy Interspectral and  Rijksmuseum van Oudheden

A three-metre-long mummified Egyptian 'giant crocodile', one of the finest animal mummies in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden), turns out to be literally filled with surprises. Examination of detailed new 3D CT scans has led to the conclusion that, besides the two crocodiles previously spotted inside the wrappings, the mummy also contains dozens of individually wrapped baby crocodiles. This is an exceptional discovery: there are only a few known crocodile mummies of this kind anywhere in the world. Starting on 18 November, museum visitors can perform a virtual autopsy on the 3,000-year-old mummy, using an interactive visualisation exhibit in the new Egyptian galleries.

Virtual autopsy in museum galleries

A new scan of the large crocodile mummy was recently performed at the Academic Medical Centre (AMC) in Amsterdam. An earlier CT scan in 1996 had shown that there are two juvenile crocodiles inside a mummy that looks like one large crocodile. The Swedish company Interspectral, which specializes in high-tech interactive 3D visualizations, has converted the results of the new scan into a spectacular 3D application and thus detected the dozens of baby crocodiles. 

Peek Inside Cat Mummies With New X-ray Images

Turns out there's more than one way to scan a cat.

By Joshua Rapp Learn

Archaeologists may soon unravel the mysteries of ancient Egypt using a new imaging technique that offers a better look inside mummies without removing a single piece of wrapping.

The new kind of CT scan has been successfully tested on cat mummies from the collections of the South Australian Museum. While the exact ages of these mummies are unknown, feline mummies were fairly common in Egypt from about 600 B.C. until A.D. 250.

Typical CT scans use a single type of x-ray to take images of an object from multiple angles and then create a digital image of the insides. Such scans can tell the difference between muscle and bone based on their relative density. But this can present challenges for mummies: As they get older, their skin and muscles dry up and become denser, while the bones lose marrow and become less dense.

The new technique, known as atomic number imaging, instead uses two kinds of x-rays to peer inside stuff and figure out the hidden composition based on a material’s atomic number—one of the defining characteristics of a chemical element. For instance, the scans can distinguish between bones filled with calcium and phosphorous and muscle, which is mostly carbon.

“It’s a technique that can be done on any CT scanner,” says lead author James Bewes, a radiology resident at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia, who describes the work in the August issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

“We can dive that little bit deeper into the makeup of what we’re imaging,” Bewes says. “We’re trying to tell how they lived and how they died through their bones and through their muscles.”

Launch of the world's largest study of Egyptian mummies

Researchers will study more than 40 ancient human and animal mummies as part of the Warsaw Mummy Project, which was launched in Otwock. The study will give a chance to find traces of diseases occurring in antiquity.

The authors of the project are Polish archaeologists and bioarchaeologists, PhD students at the University of Warsaw: Wojciech Ejsmond, Kamils Braulińska and Marzena Ożarek-Szilke. The project is carried out in close cooperation with the National Museum in Warsaw, in the care of which the mummies are.

The Warsaw Mummy Project is the world’s largest interdisciplinary academic initiative devoted to the study of ancient mummies.

Scientists will first check whether the mummies are authentic and what they contain. "Especially in the case of mummified animals we know that bundles often contain only parts of animals - such mummies were mass produced and sold to pilgrims as votive offerings for the gods in the temples" - told PAP Marzena Ożarek-Szilke.

The study will also answer questions about the species, sex and age of the mummies, but above all give a chance to find traces of diseases occurring in antiquity, including bone diseases, metabolic disorders, infectious, vascular, parasitic diseases, and in particular cancer.

Bird Mummy's Secret: Why Raptor Was Force-Fed by Ancient Egyptians

By Megan Gannon, Live Science Contributor   |   September 09, 2015

Its last meal wasn't pleasant.

A mouse tail was lodged in its throat when it died. Semi-digested flesh and fur still remained in its stomach when it was wrapped in mummy bandages.

A new autopsy reveals that overeating choked and killed this unfortunate raptor from ancient Egypt. Scientists suspect that Egyptians force-fed the bird so they could offer it to the sun god Ra as a votive mummy.

Mummification wasn't reserved for people in Egypt. The archaeological record is full of examples of cats, dogs, crocodiles and birds that were mummified and used as religious offerings to their corresponding animal gods, a practice that was popular from about 600 B.C. until around A.D. 250, well into the Roman period. Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, has made a living studying these animal mummies, and for her latest research, she examined the ancient remains of a European kestrel from the Iziko Museums of South Africa in Cape Town.

New imaging technologies have made it possible to see through mummies without butchering ancient corpses: Ikram and her colleagues used an X-ray computed tomography scanner at Stellenbosch University in South Africa to see the insides of the kestrel in 3D. The images revealed the bird's stomach was stuffed with bones and teeth from at least two mice —one with its tail inside the raptor's esophagus —and a partially digested sparrow.

Unravelling the animal mummies of Ancient Egypt

Creepy exhibition reveals what lies beneath the bandages of cats, crocodiles and jackals offered to the Gods 

By Sarah Griffiths for MailOnline

From bandaged crocodiles to cats entombed in wooden effigies, a new exhibition seeks to unravel the mystery of animal mummies.

The ancient Egyptians carefully prepared the mummies in their millions as votive offerings to the gods.

Now, thousands of years after they were made, the exhibition will reveal the contents of these unusual mummies using X-rays and CT scans to the public.

The Gifts for the Gods exhibition at Manchester Museum will explain the background behind what today seems like a bizarre religious practice, in the context of life in ancient Egypt.

While many people may imaging Ancient Egypt to be a sandy wilderness, it was a country of lush grassland and a taxidermy exhibit will show what the mummified animals would have looked like when they were alive.

The strangest one to go on display is a jackal mummy which was found to contain fragments of human bone.

But Lidija McKnight, Research Associate at the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester told MailOnline: ‘The ancient Egyptians mummified just about every animal they could find from cats and dogs, to fish, crocodiles, rodents, birds and baboons.

‘Perhaps the more surprising are the mummies which don’t contain animals themselves, or which contain more than species wrapped together.’

8 Million Dog Mummies Found in 'God of Death' Mass Grave

by Laura Geggel, Staff Writer
 
In ancient Egypt, so many people worshiped Anubis, the jackal-headed god of death, that the catacombs next to his sacred temple once held nearly 8 million mummified puppies and grown dogs, a new study finds.

The catacomb ceiling also contains the fossil of an ancient sea monster, a marine vertebrate that's more than 48 million years old, but it's unclear whether the Egyptians noticed the existence of the fossil when they built the tomb for the canine mummies, the researchers said.

Many of the mummies have since disintegrated or been disrupted by grave robbers and industrialists, who likely used the mummies for fertilizer. Even so, archaeologists have found enough evidence to suggest that the Anubis animal cult was a large part of the ancient Egyptian economy.
 
Ancient Egyptians built the temple and catacomb in honor of Anubis in Saqqara, a burial ground in the country's ancient capital of Memphis. Archaeologists have also found catacombs with the mummified remains of such other animals as the ibis (long-legged birds), hawk, baboon and bull, suggesting the ancient Egyptians also worshipped other animal gods.

"When you go to Saqqara now, you see an area of attractive desert with the pyramids sticking up and one or two of the prominent monuments" associated with animal cults, said the study's lead researcher, Paul Nicholson, a professor of archaeology at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom.
 

Unraveling ancient Egypt’s animal mummy mystery

By Michael E. Miller

What do you call an ancient Egyptian animal mummy with no body inside?

A modern mystery.

Using high powered X-ray machines, British researchers have revealed secrets hidden for almost 3,000 years in the sands of the cradle of civilization. But they have also stirred debate over what those secrets mean for our understanding of ancient Egyptians and their religious beliefs.

As part of a BBC documentary scheduled to air Monday, scientists from the University of Manchester have unveiled CT scans of the insides of more than 800 ancient Egyptian animal mummies. The startling images are as fascinating for what they don’t show, however, as they are for what they do.

Roughly a third of the animal mummies examined were completely empty, Egyptologist Lidija McKnight told The Washington Post. Another third contained only partial skeletons, sometimes as little as a single bone.

“That is the most shocking to most people, that some of them don’t contain what you are expecting,” she said. “I think the more we look at them, the more that becomes sort of commonplace.”

McKnight said that many of the mummies, which date to between 1000 B.C. and 400 A.D., look similar on the outside but contain very different things inside. Two cat mummies, for instance, might look the same but whereas one would contain a complete kitty skeleton, the other would be empty.

Animals in ancient Egypt

Far from superstitiously worshipping animals, the ancient Egyptians had perhaps surprisingly sophisticated attitudes to the natural world, writes David Tresilian

Ancient Egyptian attitudes towards animals have sometimes received a bad press, in part because of the prejudice or carelessness of those observing them. According to the early Christian writer Clement of Alexandria, for example, active in the Egyptian port city in the second century CE, the ancient Egyptians not only spent an inordinate amount of time capturing and mummifying animals, time, he implied, that would have been better spent elsewhere, but they also exhibited the height of superstition by worshipping animals, setting them up as gods or goddesses and building elaborate temples for them.

“The halls and entrances of Egyptian temples are magnificently built. The courtyards are ringed with columns, and precious multi-coloured marble panels decorate the walls,” Clement wrote. “The sanctuaries are concealed behind veils of gold, but when you go into the depths of the temples, seeking the god to whom they are dedicated, what do you find? A cat, a crocodile, a snake, or an animal of that kind! The gods of the Egyptians are just so many wild beasts disporting themselves on purple carpets.”

As Hélène Guichard, curator of the exhibition the Animals and the Pharaohs that has recently opened at the Louvre Lens, the Louvre Museum’s new satellite institution in northern France, points out, Clement’s words could hardly have been further from the truth. While Clement, born in Greece and eager to proselytise, could hardly have been expected to be sympathetic towards a competing religion, he badly missed the mark.

As this stimulating and sometimes enchanting exhibition makes clear, the ancient Egyptians may not have been any more superstitious when it came to the animal world than the American Walt Disney, who after all made a fortune out of a talking mouse. In fact their attitudes may have been closer to those of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, being based on the careful observation of the natural world.

Two Saiti tombs unearthed near Egypt's Minya

Two 26th Dynasty tombs have been discovered at Al-Bahnasa archaeological site in Middle Egypt, containing mummies, coins and even mummified fish

Ahram Online , Sunday 20 Apr 2014

A Spanish-Egyptian team has uncovered two 26th Dynasty tombs during excavation work at Al-Bahnasa archaeological site in Minya.

Al-Bahnasa was known in the ancient Egyptian era as the town of Pr-Medjet, developing in the Graeco-Roman period to be the city of Oxyrhynchus.

According to a statement by the Ministry of Antiquities, the first tomb belongs to a scribe whose his name is not yet identified but was important, having influence on Egypt’s cultural sphere. The tomb houses some of his funerary collection. A bronze inkwell and two small bamboo pens were found beside the deceased’s mummy, which is in a very good state of preservation.

Photocredit: Ahram Online

Ali El-Asfar, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the Ministry of Antiquities, explained that a large number of mummified fishes were also unearthed inside the tomb as well as the lid of a canopic jar. Among the fishes is one representing the symbol of the city. “It is the first time to find stuffed or mummified fishes inside a tomb,” said El-Asfar.

The second tomb, said Mohamed Ibrahim, minister of antiquities, belongs to a priest who was the head of a family many of whose members were priests in the Osirion Temple. This temple was uncovered recently two kilometres west of the tomb.

A large collection of stone sarcophagi, which some are broken, was found along with canopic jars carved in alabaster and bearing hieroglyphic texts as well as a collection of bronze Osirian statuettes. A collection of bronze coins was found inside the second tomb.

The large number of coins reveals that the Saiiti era was one of Egypt’s flourishing periods. Osireion statues and bronze coins dating back to the 26th Dynasty were also found in the tomb.

Joseph Padro, head of the Spanish mission, said: “The Spanish mission of Barcelona University has been working in Egypt in cooperation with the Ministry of Antiquities since 1992. During this period, many discoveries were made and this discovery comes as a reward for excavation work this season.”

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/99433/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Two-Saiti-tombs-unearthed-near-Egypts-Minya.aspx

Messengers to the Gods

During a turbulent period in ancient Egypt, common people turned to animal mummies to petition the gods, inspiring the rise of a massive religious industry

For decades, 30 boxes lay forgotten in the storage vaults of the Brooklyn Museum’s Egyptology department. The contents had not been catalogued, or even seen, since the 1930s and 40s, when they were purchased from the New-York Historical Society. But in 2009, curatorial assistant Kathy Zurek-Doule finally opened the boxes. Lying nestled inside each one was an elaborately wrapped mummy in the shape of an animal. Ibises, hawks, cats, dogs, snakes, and even a shrew were all represented in the collection, which had been amassed by a wealthy New York businessman in the mid-nineteenth century. Faced with an unexpected trove of objects unlike any other the museum has, Egyptology curator Edward Bleiberg and his team embarked on a comprehensive study of the mummies. The rediscovered objects gave Bleiberg the chance to investigate a question that has puzzled archaeologists ever since they first realized that vast animal cemeteries along the Nile hold millions of mummies: Why did the ancient Egyptians invest so much in the afterlife of creatures?

Unlike Greeks and Romans, ancient Egyptians believed animals possess a soul, or ba, just as humans do. “We forget how significant it is to ascribe a soul to an animal,” says Bleiberg. “For ancient Egyptians, animals were both physical and spiritual beings.” In fact, the ancient Egyptian language had no word for “animal” as a separate category until the spread of Christianity. Animal cults flourished outside the established state temples for much of Egyptian history and animals played a critical role in Egypt’s spiritual life. The gods themselves sometimes took animal form. Horus, the patron god of Egypt, was often portrayed with the head of a hawk; Thoth, the scribe god, was represented as an ibis or a baboon; and the fertility goddess Hathor was depicted as a cow. Even the pharaohs revered animals, and at least a few royal pets were mummified. In 1400 B.C., the pharaoh Amenhotep II went to the afterlife accompanied by his hunting dog, and a decade later his heir Thutmose IV was buried with a royal cat.

Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt - A Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2013.11.60

Edward Bleiberg, Yekaterina Barbash, Lisa Bruno, Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt.   London; Brooklyn, NY:  D Giles Limited, in association with the Brooklyn Museum, 2013.  Pp. 152.  ISBN 9781907804274.  $40.00.

Reviewed by Salima Ikram, American University in Cairo

Although this beautifully illustrated book was produced to serve as a catalogue accompanying the eponymous exhibition, it can stand on its own, and is of interest to both scholars and general readers. It is divided into three main parts, each written by one of the authors, and concludes with an Appendix by Barbash, the author of the first chapter. A brief bibliography of selected readings appears at the end. The book is prefaced by a chronology—but this is unlike other chronologies found in exhibition catalogues: it goes beyond a list of dates as it mentions key points and trends that typify each period—a sort of a mini-history—and is illustrated by objects that relate to the period in question, while resonating with the animal theme of the exhibition.

The first chapter, ‘How the Ancient Egyptians Viewed the Animal World’, by Barbash, outlines the sacred and secular roles played by animals in ancient Egyptian culture. It stresses the ideas of duality (benevolent and dangerous) and balance that are inherent in the ancient Egyptians’ world-view, as manifested by the way in which they presented certain animals and their associated deities. This is followed by a brief but informative section on “Animal Imagery,” including animals that are personifications of kings and gods, and how these concepts display domination of nature and human beings, while maintaining cosmic balance. The chapter then segues into a list of the most common animals that were mummified, as well as their roles in the more prosaic daily existence of the ancient Egyptians: cattle, sheep, goats, canines, felines, antelopes, monkeys, shrews, birds ( ducks, geese, ibises, raptors), fish, reptiles, and insects, in the form of scarab beetles.

Egyptian Dog Mummy Infested with Bloodsucking Parasites

By Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience Contributor   |   September 23, 2013

A dog mummy has revealed the first archaeological evidence of bloodsucking parasites plaguing Fido's ancestors in Egypt during the classical era of Roman rule.

The preserved parasites discovered in the mummified young dog's right ear and coat include the common brown tick and louse fly — tiny nuisances that may have carried diseases leading to the puppy's early demise. French archaeologists found the infested dog mummy while studying hundreds of mummified dogs at the excavation site of El Deir in Egypt, during expeditions in 2010 and 2011.

"Although the presence of parasites, as well as ectoparasite-borne diseases, in ancient times was already suspected from the writings of the major Greek and Latin scholars, these facts were not archaeologically proven until now," said Jean-Bernard Huchet, an archaeoentomologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Mentions of dog pests appear in the writings of ancient Greeks and Romans such as Homer, Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, and a painting of a hyenalike animal in an ancient Egyptian tomb dated to the 15th century B.C. shows what is likely the oldest known depiction of ticks. But evidence of ticks, flies and other ectoparasites that infest the outside of the body has been scarce in the archaeological record — until now. (The only other known archaeological evidence of ticks comes from fossilized human feces in Arizona.)

AUC’s Salima Ikram excavates the dog catacombs in Saqqara

In the first full excavation of the dog catacombs at Saqqara, Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo (AUC), along with an international team of researchers led by Paul Nicholson of Cardiff University, has estimated that approximately 8 million animal mummies are present at the burial site and is working to establish whether different breeds are represented there. “We are recording the animal bones and the mummification techniques used to prepare the animals,” said Ikram. “In doing so, we hope to identify the dog breeds present at the site. Thus far, our bone measurements indicate that there are different breeds that were mummified there.” The mummified animals at Saqqara are not limited to canines. “There are cat and mongoose remains in the deposit,” explained Ikram. “We are trying to understand how this fits religiously with the cult of Anubis, to whom the catacomb is dedicated.”

For Ikram, one of the world’s preeminent scholars in the field of mummification with a specialization in archaeozoology, the study of animal mummies offers deep insights into ancient Egyptian culture. “Animal mummies are really manifestations of daily life –– pets, food, death, religion and technology. They cover everything the Egyptians were concerned with,” said Ikram, adding that when Egyptology was becoming established as an academic discipline in the 19th century, archaeologists pushed past hundreds of thousands of animal mummies in their haste to uncover the human ones and, more significantly, their grave goods.

A tour in the bulls’ tombs

by Steven Viney

Saqqara is renowned for being one of Greater Cairo’s most alluring locations for archaeologists and tourists alike. One of the main reasons many prefer this archaeological site to the Giza Pyramids north of it is that it’s home to antiquities that date from the earlier kings of ancient Egypt all the way to the Greco-Roman period — a time span of almost 3,500 years.

Amid the slump in the site’s visitors since last year’s uprising, the Antiquities Ministry officially inaugurated the Serapeum in Saqqara at the end of September, hoping to send out a message to tourists that Egypt is safe again, with new sites to see.

The Serapeum, originally known as the Apis bull tombs, was where ancient civilizations would mummify and bury bulls in vaulted tombs and sarcophagi with jewels, to worship gods such as Osiris, Apis, Ptah and, later, the Greco-Egyptian Serapis, who was a combination of Osiris and Apis. The evolution of the types of gods and worship practices highlighted in the Serapeum’s inscriptions is testament to how much history is contained in the Saqqara antiquities site — and particularly the Serapeum.

This burial site is not newly discovered — it has actually been under restoration for almost three decades. Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Ali says the Serapeum is the first of many new restoration projects around Egypt intended to entice new tourists.

Returned rare sarcophagus of mummified rat to be displayed in Egyptian Museum Tuesday

The Egyptian Museum will display a rare Ptolemaic sarcophagus of a rat Tuesday after museum curators in Germany helped discover it was was illegally in Europe for at least 15 years

Nevine El-Aref , Tuesday 17 Jul 2012

On Tuesday, the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square will host a very rare Ptolemaic sarcophagus of a rat after 15 years of being on display at the Egyptian Museum in Leipzig, Germany.

The sarcophagus is wooden and as small as its host: a mummified rat. Rats symbolised the god Horus in ancient times and a subservient nation during the decline of the civilisation.

Photo credit: english.ahram.org.eg

Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim reveals that the recovery of such a very distinguished and rare object began a year ago when some of the curators at the Egyptian Museum in Lisberg, Germany questioned the origins of the sarcophagus before it came into the possession of the museum. They surmised it was probably smuggled illegally out of Egypt.

Those curators, continued Ibrahim, reported their doubts to the concerned Egyptian authorities and called the Egyptian Cultural Bureau in Germany. The cultural burea, in turn, trailed the documents and confirmed that it, indeed, belonged to Egypt.

The sarcophagus was among the artefacts discovered by a Cairo University excavation mission led by Egyptian Egyptologists Sami Gabra in 1804 at the Tuna Al-Gabal archaeological site in the governorate of El-Menya.

In November 1964, Ibrahim continued, a German antiquities collector called Robert Schleicher bought the sarcophagus from an antiquities trader in Amsterdam and it was offered to the museum later.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/47725/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Returned-rare-sarcophagus-of-mummified-rat-to-be-d.aspx

Statue, Chapels and Animal Mummies Found in Egypt

ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2012) — A wooden statue of a king, a private offering chapel, a monumental building and remains of over 80 animal mummies found by a University of Toronto-led team in Abydos, Egypt reveal intriguing information about ritual activity associated with the great gods.

Professor Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner of the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations presented her team's findings at a recent meeting of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities.
The wooden statue is one of very few existing royal wooden statues, and may represent the female king Hatshepsut. She was often portrayed as male in stone because the Egyptian pharaoh was understood to be son of the god Amon-Re (she was also known to dress as a man for the role). But this statue has a smaller waist and delicate jawline, acknowledging these aspects of her feminine physique. It is believed to be from a ceremonial procession in which wooden statues of the royal ancestors (spirits of the kings) and gods were carried in boat-shaped shrines by priests from the temple of Osiris to his tomb. The procession was part of a festival celebrating the afterlife of the god Osiris.

Egyptians from all levels of society built chapels and monuments along the processional route as a way of ensuring their eternal participation in the festival and their identification with Osiris. Building too close to the route, however, was prohibited by the state and infringement carried the threat of the death penalty. The offering chapel they uncovered is believed to be that of an elite person, dates from about 1990 -- 1650 BC and shows where the boundary to the route was.

"The offering chapel proves that people -- probably elites -- were able to build monuments right next to the processional route in the Middle Kingdom, and that at least one such chapel was allowed to stand in this increasingly densely built-up area and continued to receive offerings even 800 years after its initial construction," says Pouls Wegner.

A much larger structure discovered is likely either a temple or royal chapel from the Ramesside Period. Long after its initial construction, the structure was re-used as a repository for animal mummies. In this context, the researchers found a mass of animal bones and linen fragments. Two cats, three sheep or goats, and at least 83 dogs, ranging in age from puppies to adults, were discovered. Several of the animals had recovered from injuries, suggesting that they had been cared for before they were sacrificed, probably for the jackal god Wepwawet, who was an important deity in the Osiris festival as the leader of the procession and protector of the cemetery.

The dig was conducted in Egypt in June and July 2011. It was supported by a research grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation of Anthropological Research with photo and survey equipment provided by U of T's Archaeology Centre. Wegner's team included Ayman Damarany, Barakat 'Eid Ahmed and Mahmoud Mohamed of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, archaeological illustrator Tamara Bower and U of T graduate students Meredith Brand, Amber Hutchinson, Christina Geisen and Janet Khuu.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120312140250.htm

Animal Mummies Discovered at Ancient Egyptian Site

by Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor

Date: 14 February 2012

A wealth of new discoveries, from animal mummies linked to the jackal god and human remains to an enigmatic statue, are revealing the secrets of an ancient holy place in Egypt once known as the "Terrace of the Great God."

The mysterious wooden statue may be a representation of Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh who ruled the land 3,500 years ago, the researchers say. She was typically portrayed as a man in statues, but this one, giving a nod to femininity, had a petite waist.

The discoveries were made during one field season this past summer by a team led by Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner, director of the excavation and a professor at the University of Toronto. The findings offer insight into Abydos, a site that was considered a holy place, Pouls Wegner said at a recent meeting of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities in Toronto, Canada.

Burial of a god

In fact, the earliest kings of Egypt, those who ruled nearly 5,000 years ago, chose to be buried at Abydos. Ancient Egyptians believed that the god of the underworld, Osiris, was buried there as well and there was a tomb at the site that they deemed to be his. According to legend, the god's brother, Set, killed Osiris and his wife Isis, then gathered his remains and brought him back to life. Their son, Horus, is said to have fought Set in battle.

A temple dedicated to Osiris was also constructed at Abydos and every year, in a great procession, the Egyptians would carry an image of Osiris from the temple to his tomb, where it was kept overnight with rituals being performed.

The procession ended with the image of Osiris returning to the temple to great fanfare. "There's a really neat reference on some of the Middle Kingdom (4,000 to 3,600 years ago) material to hearing the sound of jubilation," Pouls Wegner told LiveScience in an interview.

Revered ancient Egyptian birds were fed — even after death

Provisions suggest welfare of birds in afterlife was important to priests performing embalming

By Jennifer Viegas

Ancient Egyptians placed food in the mouths or stomachs of animal mummies, suggesting that animals were treated equally to humans in death and perhaps also in life.

In this case the mummies were sacred ibis birds. In a study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the findings are the first known examples of food placed directly in animal mummies. The primary organs were also removed, as was the practice for humans. It’s thought that the ancient Egyptians wished to preserve these organs for continued function in the afterlife.

“That the birds received treatment for their own continued provision in the afterlife suggests that the afterlife welfare of the birds was important to the priests performing the embalming ritual on them,” lead author Andrew Wade told Discovery News.

“Certainly, in this sense, there appears to be some degree of equality between humans and animals in death,” added Wade, a University of Western Ontario anthropologist. “If that is the case, then the birds may have been deserving of a greater respect in life.”

Wade and his team analyzed a recently excavated mummified sacred ibis. They found numerous snails in his bill. The people who prepared the body inserted the snails.

The researchers also used non-invasive computed tomography to look inside ibis mummies housed at Yale University’s Peabody Museum. One of these mummies was found to contain wheat. Wade said that temple-raised birds were likely fed grain, so again the bird was probably sent off into the afterlife with food for its spiritual journey.

Life was a mixed bag for animals in the ancient world, however. Wade said all of the birds from the study had broken necks and were likely deliberately killed, probably as a sacrifice to the god Thoth.

Crocodiles Museum to open in Aswan by end of January

New Aswan museum to share significance of crocodiles and ancient Egyptian god Sobek ‎in bid to attract tourists

by Nevine El-Aref , Monday 9 Jan 2012

After three years of construction, the Crocodiles Museum in Aswan will share the significance of crocodiles and the ancient Egyptian crocodile god Sobek with visitors by the end of January.

Overlooking the Nile and across from the historic temple of Kom Ombo in the upper Egyptian City, the museum aims to become the next big tourist attraction. Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim told Ahram Online that the official inauguration of the museum will coincide with Aswan National Day in January.

The museum boasts a display of forty mummified crocodiles, ranging from two to five metres long, along a crocodile foetus and eggs. Also on show is a collection of wooden and granite crocodile statues and replicas of crocodile holes in rocks.

Ibrahim explained that a visitor’s centre adorned with posters would screen a documentary before entrance to the museum as an introduction to Sobek and crocodiles in Egypt.

Sobek, who was depicted as a crocodile or a man with the head of a crocodile, was viewed as a very powerful ancient Egyptian god; he was even believed to have created the world. Eventually he became a symbol of the Nile’s fertility.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/31132/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Crocodiles-Museum-to-open-in-Aswan-by-end-of-Janua.aspx

Unwrapping the ancient Egyptian animal mummy industry

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.