At Saqqara, close to the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, underground corridors are packed with animal remains. Some still have patterned linen wrappings, while others survive as bones and dried skin. One complex of galleries connected with Anubis, the god of embalming and burial, may once have contained about eight million animals, most of them dogs. Estimates for Egypt as a whole reach 70 million animal mummies, although that figure is an approximation. No complete count exists.
Egyptians mummified animals for several distinct purposes. They buried pets with their owners, prepared meat for the dead to eat in the afterlife and gave elaborate burials to certain animals honoured as living manifestations of gods. Most of the surviving mummies, however, were religious offerings. A worshipper could pay for the preparation and burial of an animal associated with a deity, hoping to attract the god’s favour or attention.
Animal offerings accumulated on a vast scale during the first millennium BCE, and the practice continued under Egypt’s Greek and Roman rulers. Keeping it going involved temple priests, those who supplied animals, embalmers, linen workers and the worshippers who funded the offerings. The remains also raise difficult questions about how the animals were obtained and treated. Many animals died in infancy, some wrapped bundles contain incomplete remains, and Egyptian records themselves mention abuses. Each find needs to be understood in its own religious and archaeological setting before we can explain why it was made.
Four Reasons Egyptians Mummified Animals
Egyptologist Salima Ikram groups animal mummies by four principal purposes: companion animals, food offerings, individually sacred animals and votive gifts to deities. These categories are useful, but a mummy’s external appearance seldom establishes its purpose. Its species and wrapping, where it was buried, associated objects and the results of modern scans all provide clues. A pet placed beside a dead owner served a different purpose from one of thousands of bundles in a temple gallery.
Egyptians sometimes wanted their pets to accompany them into death. Dogs, cats and monkeys are among the animals found in human burial settings, and some received painstaking preparation. A second type of animal mummy provided food for the deceased. Wrapped joints of meat and birds were put into tombs because people expected to need nourishment in the next life. A duck prepared for a tomb and an ibis dedicated at a sanctuary belonged to different funerary and religious practices.
Other animals were sacred as individuals during their lives. At Memphis, the Apis bull was honoured as a living manifestation of Ptah. Priests chose a particular bull, cared for it as the focus of a cult and arranged its burial when it died. Successive Apis bulls were laid to rest in the great stone coffins of the Serapeum at Saqqara. The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities describes the Serapeum as a burial ground used from the New Kingdom through the Ptolemaic period. The funeral of an individually sacred bull differed from the repeated preparation of young animals dedicated by individual worshippers.
The largest groups of animal mummies were votive gifts. The term votive describes an offering connected with a prayer or vow. A cat could be dedicated to Bastet, an ibis to Thoth or a dog or other canid to Anubis. People made such offerings repeatedly, and sanctuaries needed arrangements for receiving, storing and eventually interring them. Galleries full of mummies accumulated through this recurring worship. They do not suggest that Egyptians buried animals at random.
Why an Animal Could Bring a Worshipper Closer to a God
Gods in Egyptian art could have human bodies, animal heads or fully animal forms. Some living creatures were also regarded as manifestations of divine power. The relationship did not make every cat Bastet herself or every ibis the god Thoth. Beliefs differed from one deity and sanctuary to another and changed over time. The Egyptian idea of ba, understood in some contexts as an aspect or manifestation of a person or god, helps explain why a particular creature might carry sacred significance.
Caring for an animal after death also had a religious meaning. Proper burial and the preservation of bodies were central to Egyptian ideas about continued existence. A person could therefore honour a deity by funding the funeral rites of a creature associated with it. The Yale Peabody Museum explains how this practice related to the divine example of Horus burying his father Osiris. The animal’s treatment mattered as an act of devotion, alongside its identification with a god.
By the fifth century BCE, foreign visitors were already commenting on the place of animals in Egyptian religion. Herodotus described keepers of sacred animals and noted that donations supported their care. He also claimed that families sometimes cut a child’s hair in fulfilment of a vow, weighed it against silver and donated the equivalent amount to the animal keepers. Herodotus wrote from the perspective of a Greek observer, so his account cannot explain all Egyptian religious thought. It nevertheless records a connection between vows, payments and the maintenance of sacred animals.
Worshippers did not necessarily wrap or bury the offerings themselves. Temple personnel and associated suppliers could arrange preparation, storage and collective burial. Documents linked to Hor, a priest active at Saqqara in the second century BCE, discuss the administration of ibis burials. These administrative papers record practices inside an Egyptian religious institution. Herodotus described animal worship from the perspective of a Greek visitor. Even so, they do not supply a universal list of prices or tell us exactly what took place for each visitor.
The Millions of Dogs Buried at Saqqara
The Catacombs of Anubis at North Saqqara have produced the largest well-studied single estimate. Paul Nicholson, Salima Ikram and Steve Mills published a 2015 archaeological study of the complex, whose main corridor runs for approximately 173 metres and whose galleries span a maximum width of around 140 metres. Although earlier explorers had entered the site, the researchers undertook systematic mapping and examined the animal deposits that remained. Their mapping and examination of the deposits allowed them to estimate the number of animals buried.
From samples of fragments and mummified material, the researchers calculated a minimum number of animals and projected it across the spaces available for burial. Their resulting estimate was about 7.7 million. Leaving out the central corridor lowered the estimate to roughly seven million. Both calculations rely on assumptions about how full the passages had originally been. These figures estimate the scale of the original deposits. They are not counts of millions of surviving, complete mummies.
Most animals that the excavators could identify were domestic dogs. The deposits also contained jackals, foxes, cats, mongooses and falcons. Newborn and very young puppies were especially common, and their small bodies help account for the enormous numbers accommodated in the tunnels. The researchers considered deaths resulting from starvation or dehydration after separation from their mothers, as well as drowning. They could not establish a single method. In particular, the Saqqara evidence does not support the general claim that all votive animals had their necks broken.
Preparation and burial varied even within the same catacombs. Small puppies sometimes appear to have been dried with little additional treatment before wrapping. Larger specimens could receive oils, resins or other preserving materials. Some adult dogs occupied separate niches in the walls, at times in coffins. Nicholson and his colleagues suggested that these might have been particularly valued temple animals, although their status cannot be demonstrated conclusively. Both kinds of burial were linked with Anubis, but their treatment suggests differing places within the cult.
The sanctuary could not have housed millions of puppies at once, so their supply must have extended across successive periods of burial. Nicholson and his colleagues proposed that breeders in or around Memphis supplied animals for burial at Saqqara, perhaps through several separate arrangements. No procurement records have survived to establish exactly who bred and sold them. The enormous demand is clear from the deposits, but a temple-controlled breeding enterprise with fixed quotas and known profits remains an unsupported reconstruction.
The arrangement of the galleries provides evidence of work repeated over many years. Animals were laid down in successive deposits, and low walls sometimes sealed passages that had filled up. Later excavation disturbed certain piles, while others remain comparatively intact. The researchers also found resin associated with a niche burial. The arrangement records repeated burials over time rather than a single mass interment.
Cats, Bastet and the Difference Between Reverence and Killing
Cats were associated above all with Bastet, particularly at her major cult centre of Bubastis in the Nile Delta. Bastet’s associations included protection, domestic life and fertility, although her character changed over time. Cats were also familiar in Egyptian homes as companions and hunters of pests. Their place in daily life made their religious importance understandable. Yet there is no complete national count by species, so we cannot establish that cats made up the greatest proportion of all Egyptian animal mummies.
In Book 2, chapters 66 and 67, Herodotus claimed that a household mourned a cat’s natural death by shaving its eyebrows and that dead cats were taken to Bubastis for embalming. He also described Egyptians trying to protect cats during fires. Herodotus recorded customs that struck him as noteworthy during the fifth century BCE. They should not be extended to every Egyptian community or every century of Egyptian history.
Reverence for cats could coexist with the killing of cats destined to become offerings. The British Museum’s Roman-period cat mummy EA6753 still has patterned linen wrappings and a carefully shaped face. According to the museum, examinations of other cat mummies frequently reveal young animals, sometimes with broken necks or head trauma consistent with deliberate killing. In these cases, the religious value of cats coexisted with their deliberate killing for offerings. The results concern specimens that have been studied, not an established proportion of all cat mummies.
A cat mummy required preparation as well as decorative wrapping. The body might be dried, treated with preserving substances and positioned before linen was built up around it. Workers could weave coloured strips into patterns and shape a face in plaster, producing a recognisable animal form. The finished bundle presented a recognisable animal form for dedication. It also means that the appearance of a finished bundle cannot tell an archaeologist whether it contains an intact animal without examining its interior.
The Ibises of Thoth and the Question of Animal Breeding
The ibis was associated with Thoth, a deity of writing, calculation, knowledge and divine judgement. Thoth was often shown with the head of this long-legged bird, recognisable by its curved beak. Dedicating an ibis therefore expressed devotion to a god whose responsibilities went far beyond writing alone. Ibises were mummified as bundles or deposited in jars at sites including Saqqara, Abydos and Tuna el-Gebel. The quantities were immense, but dates and burial arrangements differed between those sanctuaries.
Saqqara’s Sacred Animal Necropolis contained burial galleries for ibises and other birds. The University College London’s Digital Egypt account describes the galleries and their mention in Egyptian demotic records. Early twentieth-century excavations at Abydos also provide documented ibis finds. One ibis mummy in the Metropolitan Museum, excavated in 1912–13, contains a remarkably well-preserved bird within dark-lined wrappings. The Metropolitan Museum records it as 13.186.8 and gives it a broad date between roughly 400 BCE and 100 CE.
The number of ibis mummies led researchers to propose permanent breeding establishments within temple precincts. Sally Wasef and colleagues examined that hypothesis in 2019. In their study of sacred ibis mitochondrial genomes, they recovered complete mitochondrial DNA sequences from fourteen ancient ibises and compared them with modern birds. The ancient group showed genetic diversity comparable to wild populations. That finding is compatible with the capture of birds from wetlands, followed by temporary keeping, rather than generations of breeding within a small isolated population.
Ancient DNA can test some possibilities, but it cannot retrace each ibis’s life. A very large breeding population with substantial genetic diversity might also produce those results, and fourteen birds are a tiny sample beside the millions that were mummified. The results cast doubt on the assumption that every temple offering came from a permanent breeding farm. Dogs and ibises may well have reached sanctuaries through different systems. The Saqqara dogs point to extensive external supply, while the ibis evidence leaves room for wild capture and seasonal or short-term management.
Dates from individual finds also matter. Wasef and colleagues’ 2015 radiocarbon study used radiocarbon measurements on ibises from Saqqara, Roda and Thebes, dating the sampled birds to approximately 450–250 BCE. None was Roman-period. Those dates apply to the sampled birds and do not establish that all ibis mummification stopped by 250 BCE. Finds from other sites and museum collections have different dates. There is little basis for assigning one precise peak to every animal cult.
How an Animal Was Prepared for Burial
An animal mummy was not made by following one standard embalming procedure. A sacred bull, a puppy, a small bird and a cut of meat presented different practical needs and carried different meanings. Some bodies were dried, treated with oils or resin, arranged and enclosed in linen. Others were represented by selected bones or other remains. At Saqqara, many newborn dogs had received limited preparation, whereas some larger animals were treated more extensively. The word ‘mummified’ covers these different treatments.
Linen wrappings could themselves be elaborate. Workers arranged coloured or darkened strips in chevrons, diamonds and other geometric patterns. A 2025 study by Salima Ikram and colleagues examined these arrangements as a source of archaeological evidence. Patterns can be compared across objects and may help connect museum pieces with particular excavated groups. They cannot, without further information, determine the exact origin, date or contents of a mummy whose findspot has been lost.
Not every offering went into a linen bundle laid directly in a corridor. Some were deposited in pottery jars, while others occupied niches or accumulated in larger galleries. They might be stored and buried collectively, without the donor watching the interment. Archaeological evidence at Saqqara points to burials carried out in batches. Such a system required transport, space, workers and continuing religious supervision. The deposits survive more clearly than the arrangements through which this work was financed and organised.
Why Some Mummy Bundles Are Empty
X-rays and computed tomography now allow researchers to inspect wrapped mummies without opening them. CT combines X-ray measurements into sectional images that can show bones, linen and some packing materials. Researchers at the University of Manchester examined bundles holding whole animals, partial skeletons and, in some cases, no recognisable bones. The university reported in May 2015 that roughly one third of the material examined lacked skeletal remains. That proportion describes the research sample and cannot be applied to all animal mummies produced in Egypt.
An empty-looking bundle need not necessarily have been a fraud. Some contained feathers, eggshells or fragments associated with sacred animals, and those materials could have religious meaning. One ibis-shaped bundle from Abydos in the Metropolitan Museum proved to hold several young birds even though its external form suggested a single adult ibis. Wrapping could conceal important differences between appearance and contents. A scan alone cannot establish whether worshippers or priests considered a particular bundle an acceptable offering.
Egyptian sources also document disputes over such practices. The second-century BCE priest Hor objected to a single ibis being divided into several packages and represented as multiple complete birds. As the Yale Peabody Museum’s discussion of the Hor archive explains, he insisted that each pot should contain one bird. Hor’s complaint indicates that at least some temple participants regarded the substitution as an abuse. Partial mummies were not automatically accepted as equivalent offerings, although other uses of animal fragments may have been legitimate.
The survival and collection of mummies complicate the statistics further. Museums often hold attractive intact objects acquired in circumstances unlike the masses of fragments left in catacombs. A 2015 radiological review by Lidija McKnight and colleagues described research using imaging on 152 mummies from seventeen British collections between 2000 and 2012. It is a valuable, defined group of specimens, but it cannot stand for every time and place in which Egyptians mummified animals. Any proportions given for complete, partial and apparently empty bundles need to be identified with the collection from which they were calculated.
How the Temples and Their Suppliers Worked
Every large deposit required considerable work. Animals had to be obtained, bodies prepared, cloth and containers procured, burial space maintained and completed offerings interred. Donors supported religious institutions, while keepers, craftspeople and suppliers undertook work associated with them. These activities had economic consequences, yet we cannot calculate their total revenue across Egypt or assume every payment became a priest’s personal profit. Different temples left different kinds of evidence, and there was no single documented national system.
The dogs at Saqqara and the genetic evidence from ibises suggest different supply arrangements. From the number of puppies, Nicholson and colleagues inferred supply networks well beyond the sanctuary itself. They could not establish whether breeders worked independently or under direct temple management. Meanwhile, the ibis genetic findings are consistent with capture and short-term holding for at least some offerings. A uniform model of factory-style enclosures run by an all-powerful priesthood would flatten these distinctions and exceed what the archaeology demonstrates.
Herodotus records money donated for the care of sacred animals, and the archive of Hor reveals rules governing the packaging and burial of ibises. Together with excavated remains, these sources show religious offerings sustained by supplies, labour and institutional oversight. They provide no evidence for standard ‘premium’ and ‘economy’ packages offered throughout Egypt, or for precise weekly production targets. Such reconstructions require account books or workshop records that have not been found.
When Animal Mummification Became So Widespread
Individually sacred animals such as the Apis bull were honoured before the Late Period, long before the mass burials of votive creatures reached their greatest scale. The Serapeum’s burials began in the New Kingdom. Millions of mummies of more ordinary creatures associated with the gods became especially prominent during the first millennium BCE. The Catacombs of Anubis study places their broad flourishing in the Late and Ptolemaic periods, with the practice surviving into Roman Egypt. The practice grew over centuries. The evidence does not identify 664 BCE as the founding year of a single animal-mummy industry.
The offerings also survived successive changes of government. Egypt passed through Persian conquest and renewed native rule before Alexander the Great conquered it in 332 BCE. The Ptolemies then ruled, followed by Roman annexation in 30 BCE. Animal cults continued across these changes. Some historians regard them partly as expressions of Egyptian religious identity under foreign rulers; others give more weight to worshippers seeking a direct relationship with deities. Both explanations are possible. The deposits themselves cannot reveal every donor’s reason for making an offering.
The practice also ended at different times in different places. Roman-period cat mummies demonstrate its survival after the end of Ptolemaic rule. Changes in religion, the resources available to sanctuaries and the spread of Christianity eventually undermined many of the institutions that supported animal cults. The dating evidence is too uneven to claim that every catacomb shut in 400 CE. Nor does it establish that animal mummies were universal souvenirs for Roman tourists. Every surviving deposit, written account, dated object and museum collection has its own evidentiary limits.
Saqqara’s galleries were filled through repeated offerings, each representing one person’s or group’s act of devotion. A small wrapped bird in a jar might have been deposited alongside hundreds of others, and successive generations gradually filled corridors cut into the limestone. The remains preserve the work of animal suppliers and embalmers, the choices of worshippers and evidence both of careful treatment and of deliberate killing or disputed practices. The number of mummies is immense. The details of their preparation and burial offer the clearest evidence of how Egyptians put this devotion into practice.
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