Eight million dog mummies found in Saqqara,Egypt

Eight million dog mummies found in Saqqara,Egypt

english.ahram.org.eg...

During routine excavations at the dog catacomb in Saqqara necropolis, an excavation team led by Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo (AUC), and an international team of researchers led by Paul Nicholson of Cardiff University have uncovered almost 8 million animal mummies at the burial site.

Studies on their bones revealed that those dogs are from different breeds but not accurately identified yet.

“We are recording the animal bones and the mummification techniques used to prepare the animals,” Ikram said.

Studies on the mummies, Ikram explains, revealed that some of them were old while the majority were buried hours after their birth. She said that the mummified animals were not limited to canines but there are cat and mongoose remains in the deposit.

edit on 3-1-2013 by shivaX because: (no reason given)

Now this is a BIG news. 8 million animal mummies is not a joke. Mummies of other species like bulls, cows, baboons, ibises, hawks and cats were also found. The link says that the mummies were found nearby a temple of Anubis. This could indicate some occult practice which the ancient Egyptians are famous for.

reply to post by shivaX


This is VERY interesting. (S and F.)

Where can I see more photo's?

I will be looking forward to get more information on this.

I just fear that a fair amount of animal cruelty was involved here.
If true, that will really be a sad story.

Studies on the mummies, Ikram explains, revealed that some of them were old while the majority were buried hours after their birth.

The Poor Puppies were buried only hours after their birth? - Man that's Ruff.

I LOVE reading up on ancient Egypt... My two felines are named Bastet, and Sekhmet, and we named my tiny, small, old as time house Saqqura. Lol.

Anyways, this is pretty cool! We all knew they mummified animals, but this many is pretty intense!!

reply to post by shivaX

Aw,poor dogs.
I saw a tv prog a while back that looked into a catacomb where there were many thousands of cat mummies-they were often buried with dead people,although no one seemed sure why there were so many in one location.

After testing a load of the mummies,they found that most were "fakes"-made with just a pinch of cat hair and/or bone.
The theory the tv prog came up with was that there was a thriving industry of these fake cat mummies at the time,as everyone wanted one for their dead relatives graves.The catacomb may have been a "stash"of where the people hid their fakes until they sold them..

Maybe a lot of these dog mummies are similar?

Originally posted by QMask
reply to post by shivaX

 

This is VERY interesting. (S and F.)

Where can I see more photo?

I will be looking forward to get more information on this.

I just fear that a fair amount of animal cruelty was involved here.
If true, that will really be a sad story.

edit on 3-1-2013 by QMask because: (no reason given)

Hi .
Sorry but I did not find any pictures.
However I found another news article reporting the same news HERE

reply to post by shivaX


Firstly, lovely spot. Thank you very much for sharing.

Secondly, and this is pure speculation based on nothing more than time to think, but Anubis is the God of Embalming (amongst other things). Mummification doesn't just happen, it is a specific high skill set so practice is needed. Therefore, if the majority of these animals were mummified hours after birth i would say they were practice for the embalmers.

reply to post by shivaX
Has anyone given a thought to how much space 8 million mummified dogs would take up?

I hate to doubt the figure, but it really is an amazing number.

Think about it. If you allowed one square foot for each mummy, it would require 166 football fields(excluding the end zones) to store them.

That is a lot of mummies!

Interesting post
How did they count all the mummies though? 8 million is a lot of counting.
The new born must've been used in rituals or they were born abnormally due to breeding gone wrong?
I don't know.

reply to post by ParaSpy2012


How long did it take to count them?

reply to post by KoolerKing


Yes how long did they take to count them?
Hey, I love your username!
The Great Escape! Excellent.

Originally posted by butcherguy
reply to post by shivaX

 

Has anyone given a thought to how much space 8 million mummified dogs would take up?

I hate to doubt the figure, but it really is an amazing number.

Think about it. If you allowed one square foot for each mummy, it would require 166 football fields(excluding the end zones) to store them.

That is a lot of mummies!

edit on 3-1-2013 by butcherguy because: (no reason given)

You can be reasonably certain the count is an estimate based on the kind of math you just did. Even if they're off a few million plus or minus, it's still massive.

reply to post by Klassified
Then we can wonder how long it would take a crew of ancient Egyptian 'dog morticians' to mummify eight million dogs?

reply to post by shivaX


Very good find.

Unless they were embalming dogs that had died a natural death, that tells me they had no more respect for life than most human societies, therefore they were no more "evolved" than any earlier or later civilization.
That's my gauge for civilization: respect for life. ALL life. That's civilization.
Everything else is babble condemned by time.

reply to post by butcherguy

Then we can wonder how long it would take a crew of ancient Egyptian 'dog morticians' to mummify eight million dogs?

A very long time. I'll bet there are several generations of animals there. It's hard to even fathom. Job security for the morticians though.

Wow

This is wild, but i'm skeptical to. I mean first of all how the hell did they count 8 MILLION mummies? And like others said, where were they stored?!

Sounds interesting and like there is definitely a lot, but headlines tend to exaggerate things dramatically. This is probably half the case here.

Originally posted by butcherguy
reply to post by Klassified

 

Then we can wonder how long it would take a crew of ancient Egyptian 'dog morticians' to mummify eight million dogs?

I will take a stab at this.......

Saqqara was a very important site for around 3'000 years. So i would say somewhere around 3'000 years........



ETA:

As to the number of mummies, Saqqara is vast (roughly 7 x 1 km). It was the principle necropolis for Memphis (i think) and these mummies were located next to the Temple of Anubis. It all fits together really......

S&F!

Very interesting. I hope we can hear more about this. Obviously eight million is an estimate, it will be interesting to learn exactly how many there are. Thanks for posting this.

Cheers,
Cody

Any idea on the age of these mummies? I didn't see mention of it in the linked story. Another speculation would be that these animals were destroyed because of some sort of illness that was going around. A timeline identification would help with that