At first glance, you may think the
picture is of living crocodiles moving stealthily through mud. But the animals
are mummies, possibly dead for more than 2,500 years and preserved in a ritual
that likely honored Sobek, a fertility deity worshipped in ancient Egypt.
اضافة اعلان
The mummies were among 10 adult crocodiles,
likely from two different species, the remains of which were unearthed recently
from a tomb at Qubbat Al-Hawa on the west bank of the Nile River. The discovery
was detailed in the journal PLoS ONE last week.
The crocodile has played an important role
in Egyptian culture for thousands of years. In addition to being linked to a
deity, it was a food source, and parts of the animal, like its fat, were used
as medicine to treat body pains, stiffness and even balding.
Mummified animals, including ibises, cats,
and baboons, are relatively common finds in Egyptian tombs. Other mummified
crocodile remains have been dug up, but most have been juveniles or hatchlings;
additionally, the ones discovered in this new study were in great shape.
“Most of the time I’m dealing with
fragments, with broken things,” said Bea De Cupere, an archaeozoologist at the
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and a co-author of the study. “To
hear you have 10 crocodiles in a tomb. That’s special.”
“To hear you have 10 crocodiles in a tomb. That’s special.”
She was called to the Qubbat Al-Hawa site
by a research team led by Alejandro Jiménez Serrano, an Egyptologist from the
University of Jaén in Spain. In 2018, researchers uncovered seven small tombs
under a Byzantine-era rubbish dump. In one of the tombs — sandwiched between
the dump site and four human burials believed to be from around 2100 BC — were
the mummified crocodiles.
De Cupere studies everything, including
bones, teeth, and shells as well as coprolites, or fossilized feces, and animal
prints. “You have archaeologists doing an excavation, and, if they find animal
remains that they think are worth looking at, that’s when we come into the
picture,” De Cupere said.
Clues in the clay
Of the 10 mummified adult crocodile remains
found, five were just heads, and the other five were in varying states of
completion, but one, at over two meters long, was nearly complete. Often animal
and human mummies are found wrapped in linen bandages secured by resin, which
means scientists use techniques like CT scans or X-rays to see through the
material. The Qubbat Al-Hawa crocodiles contained no resin, and the only
fragments of linen present had been all but entirely eaten by insects, allowing
the researchers to study the mummies at the excavation site.
Based on skull shape and how the bony
plates, or scutes, on the animals were arranged, the team hypothesized that the
majority of crocodiles in the tomb appeared to be one species, Crocodylus
suchus, while others were Crocodylus niloticus. Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist
at the American University in Cairo who was not involved in the study, said
that gathering this kind of information provided insight into ancient Egyptian
understanding of the distinct behaviors of these two species and which the
Egyptians would want to interact with, “because niloticus will eat you, whereas
with suchus, you can conceivably swim in the same pool and live”, Ikram said.
A lack of resin also indicated that the crocodiles were probably mummified by being buried in the hot, sandy soil, where they dried out naturally before being entombed
A lack of resin also indicated that the
crocodiles were probably mummified by being buried in the hot, sandy soil,
where they dried out naturally before being entombed, which the researchers
proposed happened before the Ptolemaic period, which lasted between 332 BC and
30 BC.
“From the Ptolemaic period onward, they
used huge quantities of resin,” De Cupere said.
The team hypothesized that the crocodile
mummies were buried around the fifth century BC, when animal mummification was
increasingly popular in Egypt. But it will take radiocarbon dating to know for
sure. The researchers hope that, in the near future, there will be a chance to
perform such dating, as well as DNA analysis to verify the two species.
“The discovery of these mummies offers us
new insights into ancient Egyptian religion and the treatment of these animals
as an offering,” Jiménez Serrano said.
Ikram also views these discoveries as an
important window into the relationship between people and the Qubbat Al-Hawa
necropolis, from the first burials over 4,000 years ago to the present day.
“Within the community, how were these tombs viewed? What were their uses?”
Ikram said. “You’re seeing how these tombs had after-lives and lives.”
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