Mystery of the Egyptian mummy of a cat
Pets usually were mummified and buried alongside their owners. Now the technology of 3D scanning can “expand” all the bandages and show what is inside of these mummies.
For the first time, scientists from the Museum of the University of Aberdeen studied a mummified cat with a medical scanner and found among all the bandages, the tiny kitten. In the process of mummification of the body of the animal several times increased at the expense of the materials used.
What’s inside this 2,000-year-old Egyptian cat mummy? Not what you might think https://t.co/TjHOduX3kP pic.twitter.com/V3u7xyYeXp
— Live Science (@LiveScience) 12 APR 2017
Other museums, too, had a CAT-scan. For example, in Chicago it was found that some of the mummies did not contain any animals, and was filled with other organic materials: leather, reeds and gravel.
Why did the Egyptians come up with such a mummy? Many of them, scientists believe, was created for the sacred offerings to the gods. There was a whole industry, thanks to which during the existence of Ancient Egypt appeared more than 70 million animal mummies.
As for the “fake” mummy, they, too, were used. It is likely that they were made as an alternative for ritual ceremonies, and they cost much cheaper.
“Large mummified cat was worth more money compared to a small,” explains Neil Curtis, head of the Museum.
The neck of the cat, the corpse is found during a scan of the mummy at the University was broken, so the history of this particular mummification is very scary and gives some idea of the manners and customs of Ancient Egypt, reports Live Science.
We can say that the worship of cats in Egypt had a dark side.