• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 618 4351
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

8 Millions Dog Mummies Were Buried Within The Catacombs of Anubis

January 30, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

In 1897, mining engineer and archaeologist Jacques de Morgan made a map of several catacombs at Anubis, North Saqqara, Egypt. On this map was the first modern reference to a Tomb de Chiens, or tomb of the dogs. The name was somewhat of an understatement, for when the catacombs were investigated later in 2015, it was estimated that they once contained 8 million dog mummies.

When the catacombs – built around 400 BCE – were explored, the main passageway stretched 173 meters (568 feet), with several corridors branching off from it up to 140 meters (459 feet). Ninety percent of the remains uncovered by the team were found to be dogs, though they also found jackals, cats, mongooses, and foxes.

Advertisement

The animals, many of which were taken by grave robbers and used as fertilizer by industrialists, would have been given as as offerings to a god. In the case of the Dog Catacombs, the gifts were likely for jackal-headed Egyptian deity Anubis, in the hope of favor or good fortune, or as thanks.

“Each mummy would be a symbol of something a pilgrim had given as a gift to the god. So nowadays, people go to a church and light a candle,” archaeologist and Egyptologist Salima Ikram explained to NPR in 2015.

“But the Egyptians were in for the long haul, so instead of a candle, they would offer a mummy. So clearly, this means that there were a lot of very religious people out there who were asking Anubis for intercession and for help for a variety of things.”

Adding extra ick to a story of dog sacrifice, the team believes that the animals were obtained for the purposes of sacrifice.

Advertisement

“The most likely scenario is that there were a series of puppy-farms located nearby, probably in Memphis and its environs,” they write in their paper, “from which most of the animals were sourced”.

Given the lack of written evidence, it’s not known how the dogs ended up buried at the catacombs – whether pilgrims arrived at the temple and made a payment for a dog to be sacrificed and buried as an offering, or whether they had to purchase the dogs before arrival at the temple.

“Its life may have been extremely short but its journey to the afterlife was to be a good one and the afterlife was forever,” the team adds. “The animal cults cannot be viewed with twenty-first century sensibilities.”

The study was published in the journal Antiquity in 2015.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Asian shares hold gains, dollar weak ahead of major U.S. jobs data
  2. Cuba publishes draft family code that opens door to gay marriage
  3. Asian shares fall again, dollar drifts
  4. Climate change set to worsen resource degradation, conflict, report says

Source Link: 8 Millions Dog Mummies Were Buried Within The Catacombs of Anubis

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Army “Telepathically” Controls Robot Dogs In Eerie Video
  • How We Know Astrology Isn’t Real
  • With 16 Sunsets A Day, How Do Muslim Astronauts Observe Ramadan In Space?
  • There’s A Depressing Reason For The “Orgasm Gap” Between Heterosexual Women And Men
  • Green Disease: Another Illness Laced With Past Misogyny
  • Once-In-A-Decade Event As Asteroid Flies By Earth Tomorrow
  • 1,700 Tons Of DDT Dumped In The Ocean Isn’t Breaking Down
  • Earth Just Got Hit By The Strongest Geomagnetic Storm In 6 Years
  • Listen To The Sound Of A 9,000-Year-Old Flute Made of Bone
  • Ancient Bison Found In Permafrost Is So Well Preserved Scientists Want To Clone It
  • Space-Time Crystals Have Been Caught On Camera Doing Their Thing
  • Trinitite Is Atomic Rock Forged By The Fireballs Of Nuclear Bombs
  • Why Sitting With Crossed Legs Could Be Bad For You
  • In US First, Utah Kids Are Banned From Social Media Unless Their Parents Consent
  • Frozen Bubbles Form In Canada’s Abraham Lake
  • Gold Literally Grows On Trees In Australia
  • There’s A Jellyfish In The Ocean That Looks Just Like A Fried Egg
  • Misophonia, The Hatred Of Specific Noises, Is Way More Common Than We Thought
  • The Entomologist Who Grew Botfly Larvae In His Arm, And Filmed It
  • Does Eating A Fig Always Involve Eating Dead Wasps? Yes And No
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 618 4351
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2023 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version