How the last meal of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mint was resurrected using modern science

What do you think of when you think of ancient Egyptian corpses? Perhaps your mind takes you back to a school trip to the museum, when you came across a corpse in a glass case. Or maybe you think of mummies as portrayed in Hollywood, zombies emerging from sandy tombs with dirty rags blowing in the wind.

You might be surprised to know that the Egyptians also kept millions of animals.

In a recent study, my colleagues and I uncovered extraordinary details about the last hours of life of a cremated crocodile in ancient Egypt. 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 an important religious function, moving between the earthly and divine realms. Hawks were associated with the sun god, Horus, because they flew high in the sky, close to the sun (and therefore to the god himself). Cats were associated with the goddess Bastet, the figure of brave and cruel mothers.

Many animal carcasses were made as votive offerings or gifts.

Animal remains provide a snapshot of the natural world, taken between 750BC and AD250. Some of these burned forms are no longer found in Egypt.

For example, the ancient Egyptians may have seen sacred herons, long-legged wading birds with curved beaks, on the banks of the Nile every day. The birds were burned in their millions as offerings to Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing. The birds are no longer in Egypt as the climate changes and the effects of desertification have caused them to migrate south to Ethiopia.

Another animal that was often burned was the crocodile. Although crocodiles lived in the Nile River in ancient times, the completion of the Aswan Dam in 1970 prevented them from moving north to the river in lower Egypt.

Crocodiles were associated with Sobek, King of the Nile and a god whose presence signaled the annual flooding of the Nile that provided water and nutrient-rich sand to their agricultural land.

Crocodiles were burned in large numbers as offerings to Sobek. They were used as talismans throughout pharaonic Egypt to ward off evil, either by wearing crocodile skins as clothing, or by hanging crocodiles over house doors.

Most of the crocodile carcasses are of young animals, which shows that the Egyptians had a way of hatching and keeping the young alive until they were needed. Archaeological evidence supports this theory, with the discovery of areas dedicated to hatching eggs and raising young. Others were celebrated as worship animals and allowed to die a natural death.

As the crocodiles grew older, the danger to the crocodile keepers increased, which suggested that larger carcasses were caught in the wild and sent quickly to be euthanized. Research on the remains of larger animals has revealed evidence of human-caused trauma to the skull, possibly in an attempt to restrain and kill the animal.

What we found

And the crocodile in our study has evidence showing how these animals would have been caught. The mummy is held in the collection of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, UK, and is 2.23 meters tall. In May 2016, a giant crocodile mummy, which formed part of an extensive study by a team of researchers I work with from the University of Manchester, was taken to the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital for a series of radiographic studies. .

Medical imaging techniques allow researchers to study artifacts without destroying them, the way autopsies once did.

X-rays and CT scans showed that the animal’s digestive system was full of small stones known as “gastroliths.” Crocodiles often swallow small stones to help them digest food and control their metabolism. The gastroliths suggest that the embalmers did not remove the internal organs to slow decomposition.

Among the stones, the pictures also showed the presence of an iron fish hook and a fish.

Studies suggest that large crocodiles, excavated from carcasses, were caught in the wild with hooks rigged with fish. It adds weight to the account of the Greek historian, Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century BC and wrote of pigs being beaten on the banks of rivers to attract crocodiles, which were caught in baited boats. placed on the Nile.

In contrast to many aspects of life in ancient Egypt, little information was recorded related to the worship of animals and corpses. The ancient writers who visited this country are still some of our best sources of information.

Colleagues from the Birmingham School of Jewelry helped to print the hook in bronze, a metal that is likely to have been used to make antique jewelry, for the display next to the mother of crocodiles.

Modern technology is helping us learn more about our past lives. I can only imagine what secrets technology can help uncover in the future.

This article is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the first article.