Eight million dog mummies found in Saqqara,Egypt

reply to post by MrInquisitive


They use ground radar before excavating.

Originally posted by misse2miss
Now that i am overlooking this thread once again i find myself wondering.

8 million is a hell of a number (8,000,000)... The time it took to mummify 8 million animals;it actually seems very outrageous now.

Does anyone know how old these remains are or the oldest compared to newest?

edit on 3-1-2013 by misse2miss because: error

Sorry for singling you out for answering, just thought this post best represented many that seem to be cropping up on this thread.

What needs to be considered is that it wasn't 1 person doing the embalming! This was an extremely important job in Egyptian society and would have had many "craftsmen", particularly at somewhere like Saqqara. It was, after all, a necropolis rather than a city - it specialised in the whole death process, majorly important in Egyptian society.

I'm amazed at this.

My crude and approximate calculations show a little over 40 dogs a day, for 500 years were thrown in those catacombs.

So that would be 20 a day for 1000 years

or 10 a day for 2000 years

So just to get a general picture, an average of roughly 5-7 dogs daily were being mummified (either intricately or executed in a rather "express" manner) in a span of 3,000 years?

And since the bodies were all found in one area, is it safe to assume that during that time when transportation was a pretty big deal, most of those 8 million dogs were produced by or came from nearby settlements? And that's excluding the 1 million cat mummies that had been previously found? Plus the humans. Makes me wonder how they were able to consistently practice that in a span of 3k years or so. Their belief system must have been pretty solid. Either that or these were all done within a shorter time span but requires a lot more dedication, resources, and manpower. Nice to ponder about stuff like this every now and then.

Originally posted by DoorKnobEddie
reply to post by MrInquisitive

 

They use ground radar before excavating.

This may be the case, but no mention is made of this in the article. Also, I don't know the resolution of ground radar. Is it going to pick up corpses of birds and other small animals? And are they going to be able to get 3-d tomography with it?

Honest questions here. I don't know the capabilities of ground radar.

Im thinking we do the same thing even today...except not on a huge scale like the egyptians.....Did you ever see your uncle from the South's dog "Woofie" standing on the front porch in the alert position for days on end, only to figure out he had been stuffed a year ago..... taxedermy FTW! I think the egyptians were more for rituals, today we do it because we simply just love our companions and cant let go? even though I have 2 dogs and when they die, I will elect to go the traditional route and Bury them by an Oak tree. Very cool read.

I have some thoughts. Please forgive me if some of this is rehashed, because I read the entire thread yesterday and can't remember everything everyone said. I don't want to take credit for an original idea of someone else.

Ancient Egypt has fascinated me since I was a child and visited the Indianapolis Children's Museum. They had some ancient artifacts and some recreations and ever since then I've been hooked. Mummification is something that really fascinates me. How could knowledge of something that was seemingly so commonplace have been lost forever? Blows my mind. BOOM ha ha

Well, I had often wondered how these craftsmen honed their skill. I mean, they had to practice on something, right? So why not small animals? Someone mentioned this earlier and I forget who, sorry. Yes, it does sound sad that they killed these cute little puppy dogs just to practice on them, but is that really so different from what we do today? We dissect fetal pigs in biology class. Also, I'm sure they may have had a problem with stray animals scavenging or going feral. The Animal Shelters here in America euthanize thousands of animals every year in order to keep their populations in check. You can't just let their numbers go unchecked (especially if they didn't have the ability to spay a female dog ( I figure they could castrate a male, but sterilizing the females is the best way to prevent unwanted births). So, maybe the equivalent of the ancient Egyptian Animal Control was out there catching strays and turning them over to these mummification schools to practice?

Another thought here. Two words- Pet Cemetery. That movie scared the heebie jeebies out of me as a kid. But I digress. Maybe these were beloved family pets? Maybe when Fido passed away your dad didn't dig a hole in the back yard and your family had a little funeral; instead, you took him to the mummification school. Maybe it was sort of like getting your hair cut at a beauty college? They would mummify your beloved friend and companion at a discounted price and bury them in their pet cemetery. It would be a win-win for everyone.

Anywho, just a couple thoughts. Not saying I am right, but it is fun to speculate. Thanks for indulging me.

reply to post by shivaX


Zombie dog apocolypse anyone???

when you said that all i could think of was the dogs in resident evil.....good god!

reply to post by shivaX


Interesting post. Any news on why they were mummified?

I might have missed it being mentioned upthread, but re this

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

isn't it possible they died soon after birth and were still deemed worthy of mummification by their owners, rather than that they were mummified alive as pups for some warped cultural reason?

Originally posted by IvanAstikov
I might have missed it being mentioned upthread, but re this

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

isn't it possible they died soon after birth and were still deemed worthy of mummification by their owners, rather than that they were mummified alive as pups for some warped cultural reason?

Considering the number of animals, well, I suppose there could have been some disease that killed them.

But I still prefer the theory that the dogs were used for practice (whether or not they died a natural death). Actually, I think they did die naturally, considering this could have happened over 3000 years,and if the Egyptians had them as pets.

Originally posted by Hijinx
reply to post by shivaX

 

Interesting indeed. I think it would be extremely odd to find out the entire world we live today, is merely the after life of all the dead of the past projected by the great mysterious machines that are the pyramids of the world.

What if we are all in ancient Egypt right now building pyramids, and this is just some cruel matrix?

I hope I wake up soon, I want to go home. Human ruled land is gay.

Also I like the theory that the Egyptians were such humanitarians that they even took the time out to mummify all their deceased pets. It's highly irrational, but that's what makes it so great; that a society would actually act based on something other than rationality.

I'm more confident in saying that they were doing it for practice, and research.

I don't see why they'd be doing rituals or sacrifices unless their god/alien leader believed the occult was the only way to summon the rest of the aliens/gods. Maybe the leaders of the time felt that such sacrifices brought good fortune? Or prosperity?


I think it's interesting that there's the evolving statues nearby.. Almost like a little hint at what they might have been trying to establish or accomplish?

reply to post by thoughtfuldeliquent


Is that butch, handle bar moustache gay or your more flowery namby pamby gay?

Important you clear that up, just for clarity.

reply to post by Flavian


A mix of both; you have the overcompensating republitards, and the pussyfooting flower-loving libtardians