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Mummification was a controversial practice for many centuries in Egypt,

May 4, 2019 by Catherine Pope

Mummification was a controversial practice for many centuries in Egypt, but researchers from the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Cruz (USC) took advantage of the fact that the archaeological research at Saqqara was of an international nature, and they sought to find out what was in those mummies and how they might have evolved in different cultures. In 2013, researchers led by the lead author, Dr. J. L. L. Paz-Mélan and Dr. Robert M. Zizek, published their findings in the journal PLoS One as well as in an article in the August issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mummification was still relatively rare in the Middle East in the 1500s, but it had become a common practice within Egypt for centuries. The Egyptians considered that a mummifying cat was a symbol of life in her culture, so they sought to bring back this ancient tradition by preserving animals that have been mummified several times. The ancient Egyptians brought mummified animals to be kept at the funerary altars. But the ancient Egyptians did not make the effort.

Dr. J. L. Paz-Mélan and Dr. Robert M. Zizek, of the University of Chicago, have published their results in the journal PLoS One.

"Mummification was a controversial practice for many years in Egypt, but researchers from the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Cruz (USC) took advantage of the fact that the archaeological research at Saqqara was of an international nature, and they sought to find out what was in those mummies and how they might have evolved in different cultures."

This study reveals that when the mummified cats were kept together in tombs for thousands of years, their fur and skin grew darker and heavier than the animals that were lost. These animals were much smaller than those that died, and their fur was much more easily cut off, with their eyes closed, whereas those that were preserved were much more sensitive to the cold of the environment. In other words, the people who kept these mummies for the millennia saw that they could easily live under conditions of freezing temperatures, but, under certain conditions — such as when they were kept in small rooms to keep warm at night — they would not be able to see their faces.

"These cats and the mummified animals were very similar in the way that they lived," Dr. Paz