- The recipes used by ancient Egyptians for mummifying
animals were just as complicated as those they employed for dead people,
new research shows.
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- It suggests Egyptians took just as much care when preparing
pets for the next world as they did with their owners.
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- Pets' organs were carefully removed and they underwent
elaborate bandaging before treatment with a variety of chemicals including
beeswax and bitumen
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- The study by University of Bristol researchers appears
in Nature.
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- The Egyptians are known to have mummified a variety of
animals, from cows and crocodiles to scorpions, snakes and even the occasional
lion.
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- "If it moved, they mummified it," co-author
Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol told BBC News Online.
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- The sheer numbers in which mummified animals have been
found has led some researchers to surmise that they were prepared with
little care or expense compared with their human counterparts.
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- Consequently, the accepted view has been that the ancient
Egyptian embalmers did a rush-job on animals, wrapping them in coarse linen
and dunking them in a preservative resin.
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- But organic chemists Professor Evershed, Katherine Clark
and Stephen Buckley have now demonstrated this could not have been the
case.
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- The Bristol researchers analysed the mummified remains
and wrappings of a cat, hawk and ibis bird to reveal the chemical composition
of the substances used to mummify them.
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- Their results showed very complex mixtures of chemicals
were used as preservative "balms".
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- "We found very similar combinations of material
to those used to embalm human mummies we've looked at," Professor
Evershed commented.
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- These include a variety of fats and oils, beeswax, Pistacia
resin, sugar gum, bitumen, conifer resin and possibly cedar resin.
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- Beeswax, for example, was shown conclusively to be present
by the detection of characteristic constituents such as n-alkanes, wax
esters and hydroxy wax esters.
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- One balm recorded by the classical writer Diodorus Siculus
as having been used in mummification - cedar oil - could not be definitively
identified. But there were tantalising clues that it might have been used
on the specimens.
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- 'Respectful' treatment
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- "Because animals were important to them and they
treated them with respect, you would expect to see that reflected in the
embalming treatment. This might take the form of nice tidy - and even complicated
- bandaging or a sophisticated embalming recipe," explained the Bristol
professor of biogeochemistry.
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- "I suspect the embalming treatment was driven partially
by what worked. Particular substances inhibit bacterial activity, so for
that reason - as well as the respect for pets - they would have used the
same on animals as they did on humans."
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- Four groups of animal mummy have been identified by researchers:
those placed in tombs to be used as food in the afterlife by a dead person,
those that were pets of a dead person, animals mummified as symbols of
a cult and those given as votive offerings to the gods. The first three
are found throughout Egyptian history. But the last is generally restricted
to the Greco-Roman period (332BC - AD395).
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- Researchers propose that, in some cases, animals were
mummified before, not after, they died.
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- The mummies studied by the researchers come from the
latest mummy-making period, between 818BC and 343BC.
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- "The next step for us may be to look at more animals
and ask questions related to whether there were specific treatments for
specific animals or whether there was any change in the practice through
time or location," Professor Evershed explained.
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- "Perhaps different embalmers had their own secret
recipes. We just don't know."
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- The researchers used combinations of techniques such
as gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, thermal desorption, and pyrolysis
to characterise the compounds in the wrappings and animal tissue.
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- EGYPTIAN ANIMAL MUMMIES
- Cows
- Bulls
- Sheep
- Cats
- Dogs
- Baboons
- Ibis
- Falcons
- Hawks
- Fish
- Crocodiles
- Shrews
- Scorpions
- Snakes
- Bird and reptile eggs
- Scarab beetles
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- © BBC MMIV
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3658334.stm
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