Crocodiles had been mummified in a novel method on the Egyptian website of Qubbat al-Hawā throughout the fifth Century BC, based on a examine revealed January 18, 2023 within the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Bea De Cupere of the Royal Belgian Institute of Pure Sciences, Belgium, and the College of Jaén, Spain, and colleagues.
Mummified animals, together with crocodiles, are frequent finds at Egyptian archaeological websites. Regardless of a number of hundred mummified crocodiles being accessible in museum collections worldwide, they don’t seem to be usually examined totally. On this examine, the authors present an in depth evaluation of the morphology and preservation of ten crocodile mummies present in rock tombs on the website of Qubbat al-Hawā on the west financial institution of the Nile.
The mummies included 5 remoted skulls and 5 partial skeletons, which the researchers had been capable of look at with out unwrapping or utilizing CT-scanning and radiography. Based mostly on the morphology of the crocodiles, two species had been recognized: West African and Nile crocodiles, with specimens starting from 1.5 to three.5 meters in size. The preservation fashion of the mummies is completely different from that discovered at different websites, most notably missing proof of resin use or carcass evisceration as a part of the mummification course of. The fashion of preservation suggests a pre-Ptolemaic age, which is in step with the ultimate section of funerary use of Qubbat al-Hawā throughout the fifth Century BC.
Evaluating mummies between archaeological websites is helpful for figuring out traits in animal use and mummification practices over time. The restrictions of this examine included the dearth of obtainable historical DNA and radiocarbon, which might be helpful for refining the identification and relationship of the stays. Future research incorporating these methods will additional inform scientific understanding of historical Egyptian cultural practices.
Credit score: De Cupere et al., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0
The authors add: “Ten crocodile mummies, together with 5 roughly full our bodies and 5 heads, had been present in an undisturbed tomb at Qubbat al-Hawā (Aswan, Egypt). The mummies had been in various states of preservation and completeness.”
Journal Reference
- De Cupere B, Van Neer W, Barba Colmenero V, Jiménez Serrano A (2023) Newly found crocodile mummies of variable high quality from an undisturbed tomb at Qubbat al-Hawā (Aswan, Egypt). PLoS ONE 18(1): e0279137. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0279137
