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Scientists have revealed that about a third of the mummies don’t contain any animal material at all – so no skeletal remains.

18:13 11 May 2015

Scientists have exposed a scandal at the heart of Ancient Egypt’s animal mummy industry – about a third of the mummies don’t contain any animal material at all.

The scanning project at Manchester Museum and the University of Manchester, which has been followed by the BBC’s Horizon Programme, has so far looked into more than 800 mummies, ranging from cats and birds to crocodiles. 

 

Of the 800 scanned using x-rays and CT scans, about a third contain complete animals while another third contain partial remains. The rest have been found to be completely empty. 

 

Dr Lidija McKnight, an Egyptologist from the University of Manchester, said: "There have been some surprises.

 

"We always knew that not all animal mummies contained what we expected them to contain, but we found around a third don't contain any animal material at all - so no skeletal remains."

 

She revealed that the linen was padded out with other materials. "Basically, organic material such as mud, sticks and reeds, that would have been lying around the embalmers workshops, and also things like eggshells and feathers, which were associated with the animals, but aren't the animals themselves."