Archaeologists discover an ancient 'scandal' in Egyptian mummy-making

(Image credit: Twitter.com/BBC News)

published 11 May 2015

Many animal mummies may be nothing more than empty bundles of cloth.

Researchers at the University of Manchester analyzed 800 ancient Egyptian animal mummies and found that as many as a third of them were filled with cloth. Another third only contained partial animal remains, such as eggshells and feathers, the X-rays and CT scans revealed. Just one-third of the animal mummy specimens from the Manchester Museum contained complete animal remains.

The team believes that since the animal mummies were religious offerings, "demand for the mummies may have outstripped supply," BBC News reports, referring to the cloth bundles as "a scandal at the heart of ancient Egypt's animal mummy industry." Though there were animal breeding programs specifically for mummification, historians believe that the Egyptians buried as many as 70 million animal mummies, so there still weren't enough sacrifices to fill all of them.