Mummification Of Animals Essay

In ancient Egyptian times, religion was based around multiple deities who often took up animal forms. Egyptian Gods such as Horus, who was portrayed with a hawk head, Thoth who was represented by a baboon, and the goddess Bastet who was represented by a cat. Ancient Egyptians believed “animals were both physical and spiritual beings that possessed a soul.” (Powell 48) The mummification of these animals was a very common practice in those times and played a major role in the spiritual life of many ancient Egyptians. In the First Millennium B.C. Animal cults became an eminent feature of religious activity within ancient Egypt. Animals were seen as a way to speak to the gods whether or not it was asking for praise or a blessing or just worship. Animals were treated like royalty and “even the pharaohs revered animals.”(Powell 49) “Ancient Egyptians treated animals with great respect, regarding them as both domestic pets and representatives of the gods.”(Buckley, Clark, and Evershed 294) The animals were bred on temple estates and given a personal priest, feeders, and embalmers assigned to that specific animal group. The animals were immediately mummified after death. Pilgrims paid for the embalming of the animal as a way to show their allegiance to the god. “Large numbers of animal necropolises did not appear …show more content…
Millions of animals were used for burial purposes and that gives people the thought that “little care and expense was involved in their preparation compared with human mummies.”(Buckley, Clark, and Evershed 294) Nonetheless, after close analysis of the inner workings of these mummified animals the embalming mixture is “of comparable complexity compared to those used to mummify humans from the same period.”(Buckley, Clark, and Evershed