Last meal of a crocodile mummified in ancient Egypt revealed 3,000 years later in CT scans
What comes to mind when you think of ancient Egyptian mummies? Perhaps your mind wanders back to a school trip to a museum where you came face to face with a mummified person in a glass case. Or perhaps you think of mummies as portrayed in Hollywood, emerging from their sandy graves like zombies, their dirty bandages flapping in the wind.
It may surprise you to learn that the Egyptians also Millions of animals.
In a recent studyMy colleagues and I have uncovered extraordinary details about the last hours of life of a crocodile mummified by ancient Egyptian embalmers. Using a CT scanner, we were able to determine how the animal died and how the body was treated after death.
For the Egyptians, animals served as important religious functionthat move between the earthly and divine realms. Falcons were associated with the Sun god Horus, because they flew high in the sky, closer to the sun (and thus to the god himself). Cats were associated with the Goddess Basteta brave and extremely protective mother figure.
Most animal mummies were created as Votive offerings or gifts.
Animal mummies provide a snapshot of the natural world, taken between about 750 BC and 250 AD. Some of these mummified species are no longer found in Egypt.
The ancient Egyptians, for example, would have seen Sacred Ibiseslong-legged waders with curved beaks, along the banks of the Nile every day. The birds were mummified by the millions to be used as offerings to Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing. The birds no longer exist in Egypt, as climate change and the effects of desertification have led them south to Ethiopia.
Another frequently mummified animal was the crocodile. Although crocodiles lived in the Nile in ancient times, Completion of the Aswan Dam in 1970 prevented them from advancing north towards the delta in Lower Egypt.
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Crocodiles were associated with Sobek, Lord of the Nile and the God whose presence the annual Nile flood which supplied their fields with water and nutrient-rich mud.
Crocodiles were mummified in large numbers as offerings to Sobek. Throughout Pharaonic Egypt, they were used as talismans to ward off evil, either by wearing crocodile skins as clothing or by hanging a crocodile over the doors of houses.
Most crocodile mummies are small animals, which suggests that the Egyptians had the ability to hatch the young and keep them alive until they were needed. Archaeological evidence This theory is supported by the discovery of areas dedicated to the incubation of eggs and the rearing of young animals. Some of these were pampered like cult animals and let them die a natural death.
As crocodiles grew in size, so did the risk to crocodile keepers, suggesting that larger specimens were caught in the wild and hastily sent for mummification. Research on the mummified remains of larger animals has provided evidence of Head trauma caused by humans, probably as an attempt to immobilize and kill the animal.
Our findings
The crocodile mummy in our study contains clues as to how these animals might have been captured. The mummy is in the collection of Birmingham Museum and Art GalleryGreat Britain, and is 2.23 metres long. In May 2016, the large crocodile mummy, which was part of a larger study by a research team I work with at the University of Manchester, was Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital undergo a series of X-ray examinations.
Medical imaging techniques allow researchers to examine ancient artifacts without to destroy themas was once done during the research of mummies.
X-rays and CT scans showed that the animal’s digestive tract was filled with small stones that were “Gastroliths”Crocodiles often swallow small stones to help themselves Digesting food and regulate buoyancy. The gastroliths suggest that the embalmers did not perform evisceration, i.e. the removal of internal organs to delay decomposition.
Between the stones, the pictures also showed a metal fishing hook and a fish.
The study suggests that large, mummified crocodiles were caught in the wild using hooks baited with fish. It adds depth to the story of Greek historian, Herodotuswho visited Egypt in the 5th century BC and wrote about how pigs were beaten on river banks to attract crocodiles, which in turn were caught on baited hooks in the Nile.
Unlike many other aspects of life in ancient Egypt, little information was recorded about animal worship and mummification. Classical writers who traveled the country remain some of our best sources of information.
Colleagues from the Birmingham School of Jewellery helped recreate the hook in bronze—the metal most likely used to make the ancient original—to display alongside the crocodile mummy.
Thanks to modern technology, we are learning more and more about our past. I can only imagine what secrets technology might reveal in the future.
This edited article was republished by The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the Original article.
