Why Did Ancient Egyptians Mummify So Many Animals?

Episode 16  ·  Pets, offerings and sacred animals — and how scans read a bundle without opening it  ·  all sources

This film asks why ancient Egyptians mummified animals in such large numbers. It separates the different purposes — pets, food for the afterlife, sacred animals and, most often, votive offerings — and follows how researchers now read a bundle without unwrapping it: X-ray and CT imaging, species and age, ancient DNA from sacred ibises, bundles that hold less than their shape suggests, a crocodile's last meal, and the records that tell us where a mummy was found.

This is a fully animated film. Every visual was drawn for ColdProvenance; no footage, photographs or recordings are used. Narration is a synthesized voice. The music and sound effects were created for this film. The researchers, workshops, temples, scans and museum rooms shown are illustrations, not real people, places, specimens or scan results.

Sources

• The scale of animal mummification, the species involved, the imaging methods and the research questions that remain open: The British Museum — Divine creatures: animal mummies in ancient Egypt (research project)
• The different purposes of animal mummies — pets, food for the afterlife, sacred animals and votive offerings: University of Manchester and partner museums — Animal mummies teaching resource
• Votive bird mummies whose contents range from complete skeletons to partial remains and non-skeletal material: Atherton, S. — An investigation of the post-mortem status and mummification practices of avian votive mummies
• Complete mitochondrial genomes from fourteen ancient sacred ibises and their diversity: Wasef, S. et al. (2019), PLOS ONE — Mitogenomic diversity in Sacred Ibis Mummies sheds light on early Egyptian practices
• High-resolution X-ray imaging of a cat, a bird and a snake mummy: Johnston, R. et al. (2020), Scientific Reports — Evidence of diet, deification, and death within ancient Egyptian mummified animals
• The crocodile mummy with a fish and a metal hook in its stomach: The University of Manchester — How the last meal of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian crocodile was brought back to life using modern science

Visuals

• All animation, characters, objects and diagrams were created by ColdProvenance for this film. No footage or photographs appear in this film.
• The bundles, cut-away views, skeletons, scan screens, maps, time ribbons and bead bowls are explanatory drawings, not images of real specimens or measured data. Animals, bundles and people are drawn at typical real-world sizes next to each other.

Audio

• Narration: synthesized voice.
• Music, ambience and sound effects: created for this film. No stock music, sound libraries or field recordings are used.