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00:00In 1871, three Egyptian brothers, Muhammad, Ahmed, and Hussein el-Rasul, were scrambling
00:18up a steep cliff path in the western desert, when they came across a secret that had remained
00:24hidden for 3,000 years.
00:30Several boulders had shifted to reveal a narrow cleft in the base of the rocks.
00:41Clambering inside, they discovered a shaft 12 meters deep, but at the bottom, a tiny man-made
00:51passageway.
00:54The brothers crawled into the blackness and uncovered something they would never forget.
01:09Dozens of mummified bodies.
01:13One of them was discovered to be a high priestess and daughter of a pharaoh.
01:18Her name was Matt Caray.
01:24But Matt Caray was not buried alone.
01:28At her feet was an infant-sized bundle.
01:32For over 100 years, it was presumed Matt Caray had died in childbirth, her baby buried with
01:39her, but modern medical techniques revealed the bundle to be something very different.
01:48We'd always thought it was a child, but the X-ray showed that, in fact, it contains a green
01:54monkey, a vervet, and not to a baby at all.
01:57This monkey was found with Matt Caray, sort of cradled against her body, so I think it
02:02must have been a beloved pet.
02:07The brothers' discovery was yet another episode in centuries of interest in Egyptian mummies,
02:14both human and animal.
02:18Nineteenth-century collectors removed thousands of them, and many have ended up in museums
02:24across the world.
02:27Now, experts are applying twenty-first century science and technology to look inside these
02:33animal mummies, revealing fascinating new details about religion and belief in ancient
02:40Egypt.
02:42These mummies give an insight into understanding the relationship between human beings and
02:48animals.
02:50Animals were magical creatures who could, in fact, speak to the gods.
02:55And new techniques are helping archaeologists to expose the shocking reality at the heart
03:01of this ancient ritual.
03:18In the dead of night, at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, medical experts are at work, not on the living, but on the ancient dead.
03:46Radiographers and Egyptologists working here are collecting information on hundreds of animal mummies, the biggest survey of its kind in history.
04:05The team are using the latest medical imaging technology when it's not needed for human patients, so they can see inside the mummies without damaging them.
04:20First on the X-ray table is a small bundle that's usually on display at Manchester Museum.
04:28It was made in southern Egypt between 664 and 332 BC.
04:35Next, a CT scanner takes hundreds of X-ray images, or slices, from 360 degrees around the mummy.
04:46These images are combined to create a three-dimensional model.
04:55It brings up a nice definition of the wrappings, doesn't it?
04:57Mm, yeah.
04:59And before your very eyes...
05:03Oh!
05:04There we are.
05:05There we are.
05:06Little rodent.
05:07He's got very, very prominent incisors, because then he's got a space until you reach the molars.
05:12Mm.
05:13He couldn't be a shrew, could he?
05:15Possibly.
05:16To be able to look at the inside of something that was wrapped, possibly two and a half thousand years ago, in the deserts of ancient Egypt, is absolutely astounding.
05:27And it never, ever fails to amaze me what we find when we have scanning sessions at the hospital.
05:34There's always something that's a little bit surprising, and that's what makes every mummy different.
05:39Egyptologists have long been fascinated by the bizarre practice of animal mummification.
05:58During the 19th and 20th centuries, hundreds of such mummies were unwrapped, including at least two for a 1970s BBC documentary.
06:09The wrappings contained dozens of creatures, including cats, crocodiles, hawks and wading birds, snakes, shrews, and even fish.
06:20But unwrapping the mummies in this way completely destroyed them, and much of the information they contained was lost.
06:30Every mummy is unique, and it's impossible to know what's in it until it's been scanned.
06:36This mummified rodent has been made in two parts.
06:40So we've got the main mummy bundle here, and then on its back we've got the secondary package, which is sort of fixed to the top.
06:48So if we scroll through, we should see if there's anything.
06:50Is there anything in it?
06:51No, it just goes.
06:53It could be constructed just of linen.
06:57But why would you put an empty linen bundle onto a mummy of a tiny shrew?
07:06Because we did think that would contain something.
07:09Basically looking for anything that could be grain, which is what it's always been presumed that the little package contained a food offering for the rodent in the afterlife.
07:21But we certainly can't see anything on this scan.
07:29With or without grain, the backpack was there to help this little animal's journey into the afterlife.
07:35The ancient Egyptians believed that animals, like humans, had a soul that survived death.
07:48Professor Joanne Fletcher is an expert on ancient Egyptian beliefs.
07:53It's quite clear that for the ancient Egyptians, death was simply a transition into another world that replicated life on earth.
08:01For instance, the bases of some coffins have maps of the afterlife, so the deceased would know just where to go to find their way through into the next world.
08:12Whether human or animal, by mummifying a body, the ancient Egyptians believed they were providing the soul with a physical vessel for its journey to the afterlife.
08:22Mummification is very important for animals, just as it is for humans, because that is the act which makes sure that they can make it from this life to the next and live forever.
08:34Nice and gentle.
08:36There we go.
08:38Oh.
08:39Oh.
08:40Lovely.
08:41Back at the hospital, the team are scanning a crocodile mummy.
08:46He's a lovely one, I like him.
08:48He's got a very unnatural shape though, because he's quite short.
08:51Yeah.
08:52Do the scan now, and in we go.
08:59Continuing the Victorian obsession of mummy collecting, this specimen found its way into the Manchester Museum, via German collector Maximilian Robineau, who visited Egypt in 1896.
09:13Its exact contents have remained a secret for thousands of years, until now.
09:19Well.
09:20Ooh.
09:21Didn't expect that, did we?
09:23Mmm.
09:24So we had what looked like a complete crocodile mummy bundle, so we're expecting one crocodile.
09:31And we've got four skulls in a line.
09:35Mmm.
09:36So we've got, it's picking something up here.
09:38Oh.
09:39And there.
09:40What's that?
09:41So there's something else in there as well.
09:45Mmm.
09:46Ooh.
09:47Ooh.
09:48There we go.
09:49There you go.
09:50There's your little crocodile.
09:51Oh wow.
09:52Oh look, a complete one.
09:53Is it complete?
09:54A complete crocodile, and just look, there's one there.
09:57Oh wow.
09:58So that's one, two, three.
10:01So how many in total do you think?
10:03Four skulls and four babies.
10:04Yeah, four baby crocs and four.
10:06Oh, eight.
10:07So eight all in one.
10:08But the question is why on earth would you have eight individual crocodiles represented
10:13in one quite small mummy?
10:16Each mummy should have one animal.
10:18They have got crocodile mummies where they've buried babies with an adult one, haven't they?
10:23Oh.
10:24But I mean, these aren't adult sized, are they?
10:28They're quite, they're still quite small.
10:30And then there's sort of hatchling ones.
10:32That's interesting.
10:36The scan reveals more.
10:38There's evidence of tricks of the embalmer's tread.
10:42Ooh.
10:44So they've used a stick or a reed to create the shape.
10:49Of course you've not got the complete skeleton to provide shape and rigidity.
10:53Obviously a great amount of time and effort's gone into producing what looks like a complete crocodile from bits and pieces essentially.
11:02Whoever mummified these eight crocodiles did so with considerable care and attention to ensure their souls made it to the afterlife.
11:12And we know that for very important animals, like Mark Carré's monkey, the process of mummification could be as involved and complex as it was for humans.
11:27These ancient techniques are being studied by Dr. Stephen Buckley at the University of York with hands-on experimental archaeology.
11:40And what the experimental archaeology does is it allows you to get your hands dirty and in that way allows a far better understanding of the processes, the methods, the materials they must have used.
11:53Like all the animals he uses, the piglet Stephen's mummifying today died of natural causes.
12:00Every animal the ancient Egyptians mummified was treated with the utmost respect and the embalmer's first job was to remove the internal organs to stop the body from decaying.
12:14Here I have the stomach.
12:21That's the liver.
12:24And I have one of the lungs.
12:29In very special cases, the embalmers even placed the internal organs in their own sacred jars to be buried alongside the animal.
12:42Just feeling the heart.
12:44The idea certainly was to try to leave the heart in because it was the seat of the soul.
12:49And so the heart was important to leave in so that it would be there for judgment day really.
12:56And so seen as a vital organ in the context of the afterlife.
13:02With the internal organs removed, the cavity could be sterilised with alcohol.
13:13Embalming was a highly, highly technical and skilled practice and there were groups of people who were specialised in it.
13:21So it wasn't something that, oh, I'll do it myself and then take it off and give it to the god.
13:26So you had to go to the temple and someone else would do the whole thing for you.
13:32The embalmers then filled the cavity with linen bags containing rare spices such as cinnamon and myrrh.
13:39Myrrh came from possibly Somalia, possibly the other side of the Red Sea as well, Yemen, an expensive ingredient.
13:48And also cinnamon, of course, coming from India, coming some distance.
13:53And all these ingredients have antibacterial components.
13:56So not only do these packages retain the original shape, but they also protect it.
14:02With the body packed out, the embalmers could begin the ritual of covering it with a special resin.
14:14The recipes for these sacred resins remained a mystery for thousands of years.
14:20But Stephen has been able to isolate the exact ingredients.
14:25This recipe is made up of sesame oil, pine resin and beeswax.
14:32The mixture sets so that it would seal the body and so provide a complete protective barrier to insects that might want to get in, but also kills bacteria.
14:47The key to successful mummification was to dry out the body completely.
14:54So the embalmers used a naturally occurring salt called Natron, mined from two hidden locations in the north and south of Egypt.
15:05What the Natron does is to effectively suck out the water from the body, but also the alkaline content helps inhibit the bacteria and enzymes that cause decay.
15:15The largest animals were packed in Natron for up to 40 days before the ceremonial wrapping of linen bandages could begin.
15:24The final hallowed act was to coat the bandages in the sacred resin before the animal was found.
15:52Finally ready to embark on its long journey to embark on its long journey to the afterlife.
15:57Ancient Egyptian mummification was actually involved and costly because some of these ingredients were coming from quite some distance.
16:04They clearly went to great effort to mummify some animals in the similar way that they did with humans.
16:10The care, attention and expense lavished on an animal to help it on its journey to the afterlife may seem extreme, but there was one creature whose treatment overshadowed all others.
16:32A few kilometres south of Cairo is one of the most important sites in ancient Egypt, Saqqara.
16:45Overlooking the ancient city of Memphis, Saqqara was a sacred place five kilometres square.
17:04And it was the final resting place of the most important animal in ancient Egypt.
17:13A beast so strong, so powerful, so virile, it could symbolise the very moment of creation itself.
17:30It was called the Apis bull, an animal venerated since the dawn of ancient Egypt as far back as 3000 BC.
17:42It was called the Apis bull.
17:43It was called the Apis bull.
17:44It was called the Apis bull.
17:45It was called the Apis bull.
17:46It was called the Apis bull.
17:47It was called the Apis bull.
17:48It was called the Apis bull.
17:51Dr. Aidan Dodson of Bristol University has been studying this bull cult for over 20 years.
17:58The bull was very much a pampered individual.
18:02It would be massaged.
18:04It would be adorned with flowers.
18:07It was certainly a life far above the farmyard.
18:11Only one sacred Apis bull could exist at any one time.
18:16And when it came to the end of its natural life, it was given the equivalent of a state funeral.
18:24In many ways, the death of one of these sacred bulls was almost like the death of the king.
18:30After taking over two months to mummify, the bull was then interred in its own huge sarcophagus alongside the Apis bulls that had lived before it.
18:42They're perhaps two metres high, three, four metres long, absolutely vast things.
18:57The burial of a sacred bull like the Apis clearly involved a vast amount of human effort.
19:04The people who are quarrying the tomb, those who are making the sarcophagus for it, those who are doing the embalming process.
19:10There's also going to be all kinds of ceremonial around there.
19:15There's probably feasting around it as well.
19:18So there is a huge amount of resource being put into this.
19:25More than 50 Apis bulls were buried at Saqqara.
19:28None of their remains survive, as they were either stolen or destroyed centuries ago.
19:39But experts do know an extraordinary amount of care and effort went into mummifying and burying every one of these great beasts.
19:47Making the cult of the Apis bull one of the greatest examples of devotion to animals in human history.
19:58But these bulls weren't the only creatures the ancient Egyptians venerated.
20:13The fertile plains of the Nile Valley once teemed with animals,
20:18and the people who lived there were fascinated by their seemingly superhuman abilities.
20:24Each type of animal embodying certain powers that humans didn't have.
20:35So this made them special.
20:40It almost seemed as if the animals did have these magic qualities.
20:43Cats, for instance, that can see in the dark.
20:45What a brilliant skill to have.
20:47So they had great respect for animals.
20:50This is because animals had a sort of supernatural sense of how nature worked.
20:57The ancient Egyptians observed that crocodiles could predict the levels of the Nile's yearly flood.
21:04Crocodiles build their nests just above where the flood will come.
21:09And they do this long in advance of any of the water rising.
21:13So by looking at where the crocodiles had made their nests, the Egyptians could help predict the height of the flood.
21:20These seemingly supernatural powers linked animals to their gods.
21:26Animals were able to do things simple humans couldn't.
21:30They'd see a falcon, the black outline against the sun, flying at great heights, which to them appeared to almost touch the sun.
21:38So what better creature to embody, to exemplify the great sun god Ra than this wonderful falcon?
21:45Baboons are associated with the sun god because in the morning, just before sunrise, they turn towards where the sun rises, stretch up their arms and make a terrible racket.
22:06So the Egyptians thought the baboons are singing to the sun and helping the sun rise and they're protecting the sun from his enemies.
22:21Animals were magical creatures who could in fact speak to the gods.
22:26Of course not all of them were sacred, otherwise they wouldn't eat them or use them to plow the field.
22:32So it is only special animals that were regarded as sacred.
22:53It was believed one of the creatures that could communicate with the gods was also one of the most common birds in ancient Egypt.
23:00It was called the sacred ibis.
23:04So we can see that the skeleton is in the central part of the bundle.
23:09In Manchester, the team are scanning an ibis mummy, which is thought was buried at a site in Middle Egypt called Abydos.
23:18This is a mummy bundle presumed to be that of an ibis, from the external appearance.
23:27Ah, there we go, you see.
23:30The sacred ibis bird has been extinct in Egypt since the 19th century.
23:34But similar species can still be found in Africa.
23:39So there we can see the complete skeleton there.
23:43So it's been positioned with the limbs folded in, the wings folded in and then the neck bent all the way back round the top of the spine.
23:51So it's essentially upside down, is it?
23:55Yes, the head is down towards the feet.
23:58Two and a half thousand years ago, huge flocks of ibis would migrate to the wetlands of the Nile Valley when it flooded.
24:09The birds were associated with the Egyptian god of wisdom, Thoth, because their long beaks evoked the crescent moon.
24:17Artifacts found buried with sacred ibis birds provide clues to why the ancient Egyptians mummified them.
24:30Written in ancient Demotic script, it's thought these scraps of papyrus,
24:46date from between the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.
24:58Experts think they were buried to the south of Saqqara, at another religious site, called Tuna el Gabel.
25:10Now the papyri are held in the storerooms of the British Museum.
25:16Kerry Martin is an expert in ancient languages and can translate this Demotic text.
25:23It's a plea from a son whose father is desperately ill and the son is worried that his father is about to die.
25:30And he says to the god, he's praying to the god, he said, look, if my father recovers, if he doesn't die of the illness that he's currently suffering in,
25:41I will make an offering for the burial of the sacred ibis.
25:44I will provide money for this and I'll provide it on a regular basis.
25:50If my father lives, I will help you, I will honour you, O God.
25:55So he's desperate. His father is dangerously ill.
25:59He doesn't know what else to do. He's appealing to the gods for help.
26:02Pleased to the gods like this one would have been placed with the animal mummy before burial.
26:11An animal mummy was more potent than anything else to get your message to the god because, of course, once the animal died and was mummified, its spirit immediately moved into the land of the gods.
26:23So there it had direct access to the gods and could take your request to them and constantly be there saying, you know, hello, god, so-and-so, what, such-and-such and constantly be there reminding the god of your request.
26:38The divine was an integral part of day-to-day life. It was totally and completely tied up in their normal existence.
26:47And the Egyptians must have had so much faith in what this mummy would do for them in terms of the gods granting them their wishes.
26:58The ancient Egyptians were using animal mummies as what are termed votive offerings, vessels to carry their pleas to the gods.
27:08Votive offerings are not just something that you see in ancient Egypt.
27:11This practice continues today because votive candles, which are the same as a votive mummy really, are burnt in churches and the smoke is supposed to take your prayer off to God.
27:22So you can see how organised religion today still uses the same trope that ancient Egyptians did.
27:28Different animals were mummified to carry pleas to different gods.
27:46Just how extensive this practice was can be revealed at the sacred site of Saqqara.
27:53A few hundred metres from the catacomb of the Apis Bulls are another set of underground tombs.
28:13Buried by shifting desert sands, they were lost for nearly two millennia.
28:32Professor Paul Nicholson has been excavating and mapping the Saqqara site for over 20 years.
28:37He first entered this tomb in 1995.
28:46Now he's returned to explain what he found.
28:50We have masses and masses of dog mummy.
29:07You can see it piled here to a depth of over a metre.
29:11Some thousands of them running back 20 or so metres to the end of the burial gallery.
29:17Originally, we can imagine that most of them would have been nicely stacked one on top of the other in layers.
29:26They would have been well wrapped and soaked in resin.
29:30But what's now happened is that that resin has broken down.
29:35The bandages have gone to powder.
29:38They've been turned over by robbers.
29:40So that we're left with only a few complete examples sitting on the surface of the pile.
29:48And this is only one of over 40 galleries in the catacomb itself.
29:53Our estimate is that there were somewhere between seven and eight million animals originally placed in the dog catacomb.
30:06It's likely the dog catacombs were in use for around 500 years, meaning up to 16,000 dogs were mummified and buried here every year.
30:15The dog catacombs are huge.
30:25The main corridor is around 170 metres long, with galleries leading off it every few metres.
30:32Originally, each gallery was a metre and a half deep in dog mummies.
30:36But this catacomb is only one of at least eight underground animal tombs at Saqqara, filled with up to 15 million animal mummies of different types.
30:49And Saqqara is not the only site.
30:52Thirty more have been found right across Egypt that may have held up to 70 million mummified animals.
31:00Most experts believe the vast majority of these animal mummies were votive offerings.
31:17These millions of votive mummies that we have, each one is the prayer of an individual.
31:23So they don't just represent a prayer, but they represent millions and millions of believers
31:28who actually went to the temple, made this dedication, and believed in that God.
31:35When animal mummies were given, it was a very formalised system.
31:40The person who wanted to give the gift would go to the temple, talk to a priest, and then purchase from the priest,
31:47because the temples were not foolish, one kind of animal mummy,
31:51and then the priest would be in charge of dedicating it formally to the God,
31:54after, of course, the person had paid the temple.
32:00It depends on how much one could afford.
32:02Of course, if you were elite and noble, you could easily go and get lots of animal mummies.
32:07Or else, entire families might club together so that one mummy would be dedicated,
32:12but with the name of lots of people.
32:13From 500 BC, the demand for animal mummification increased massively.
32:22More and more people were drawn towards it as Egypt's political fortunes changed.
32:28It seemed there was a never-ending series of waves of foreign invasion,
32:32which really threatened their very way of life.
32:35And so they sought ways in which they could best express themselves as a nation.
32:42And what typified the Egyptians above all other nations was their ability to mummify, to preserve their dead.
32:49The Egyptians turned to their religion, turned to animal mummification,
32:55as a kind of means of demonstrating that to all these foreigners that were coming in.
32:58This was a way for them to define themselves, feel more secure and establish their identity.
33:16To account for the millions of animal mummies found at Saqqara,
33:20experts think that large religious festivals must have been held there,
33:24attracting pilgrims from across the country.
33:26Thousands and thousands of people would probably flock there for the big celebrations.
33:33So you would have lots of people there,
33:37you would have lots of people buying things, selling things, food, drink.
33:41So it would be densely populated, very lively, noisy, smelly.
33:47And it would be really sort of a mass festival,
33:50the same way you have at important shrines nowadays.
33:53Early writers suggest hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were visiting Saqqara,
34:01spending huge amounts on votive offerings.
34:05The personal ritual of offering an animal mummy to a god had become big business.
34:11When one looks at the number of sites where animal mummies occur throughout Egypt,
34:19you can tell that this was a massive industry.
34:22Because you had to have people all over the country who were rearing different kinds of animals.
34:27You have to feed them, you have to look after them.
34:30Then there were people who were going to mummify them.
34:31So you need all the materials that were used for mummification as well as all the personnel.
34:39People were expending huge amounts of money on bandages and paint, plaster, gilding,
34:47maybe even glass eyes, all kinds of stuff in order to produce these animal mummies.
34:52And this had a huge impact on the economy of Egypt.
35:02In using animal mummies to carry their pleas to the gods,
35:07the ancient Egyptians transformed the rare and special act into a mass industry.
35:11Latest imaging techniques have given archaeologists more insight into why.
35:24But now, medical and forensic science is also revealing how this huge industry actually works.
35:29At Swansea University, material scientist Dr Richard Johnston is using the latest industrial technology to study a mummified cat.
35:54Little is known about its origins, but the style of its wrappings suggests it died around 600 BC.
36:14The micro-CT scanner produces images with 100 times the resolution of normal CT scans.
36:21Zoo archaeologist Dr Richard Thomas from the University of Leicester can use them to determine how this cat may have lived and died.
36:32And then if we remove the wrappings completely, so we can just see the bones then.
36:39Fantastic. I mean, it's amazingly clear.
36:41The scans are so detailed, they allow a 3D printer to create an exact replica of the skull.
37:04For the first time, Richard can actually feel the bones for himself.
37:08This is around two and a half times the size of the original skull.
37:12OK. It's amazing, the level of detail, it's incredible.
37:16There may be evidence this cat didn't die naturally.
37:20One of the things that's strikingly obvious is that you've got a really big piece of skull missing.
37:25Yeah.
37:26So, where on earth did those bits of skull go?
37:30OK.
37:31And if that damage occurred before mummification, then we wouldn't expect to find any evidence for those bits of skull.
37:37They would have tend to have fallen away from the skull.
37:39Yeah.
37:40Can you show me an image that might help see if you've got any parts of that skull actually within the brain case?
37:46Yes. If we look at this image, this is a slice or a plane through the skull.
37:52Now, this is a really helpful image, in fact, actually.
37:55You can see where the missing portions of the skull are that have broken away and fallen into the brain case.
38:01So, what that tells us immediately is that this damage must have happened after mummification.
38:07OK.
38:08So, clearly this cat mummy has not been well treated following mummification.
38:12But is there anything within this that suggests that we might come up with a theory for how it was killed?
38:19Well, can we have another look? That might give us some useful clues.
38:22OK.
38:24So, can we have a look at the teeth?
38:27Yeah.
38:28So, the first thing that I can tell is that this cat has a full adult set of teeth.
38:33So, this cat must have been older than six months.
38:37And if we take a really close look at the mandible, we can see that there's no signs of gum disease,
38:42there's no tooth loss that's happened during the course of the life of this animal,
38:47which is the kinds of things we'd expect if it was a very old cat.
38:51So, what else can we see? I mean, here you've got the vertebrae of the neck.
38:55And you see how tightly packed and close together they are.
38:57Whereas, in between these two vertebrae, you've got this separation.
39:00There's this kind of big gap that shouldn't be there, effectively.
39:04In all mammals, the atlas and axis are the top two vertebrae of the neck.
39:10In a cat this size, they should only be a few millimetres apart.
39:14Now, one possibility is that that kind of displacement of the cervical vertebrae can occur through strangulation,
39:25or the breaking of the neck of an animal.
39:27And that would be a fairly instantaneous cause of death.
39:31Okay.
39:32And I think the strongest possible clue we have to how this animal may have died.
39:35But this cat isn't the only animal mummy which shows signs of being deliberately killed.
39:53So, this is the upper part of the skull, and actually there looks to be a defect there.
39:58Can you see in the skull and the top of the skull?
40:00Yeah.
40:01So, there's a bit of bone actually missing there.
40:04The Manchester team are grappling with their largest mummy, a Nile crocodile.
40:09Get ready to catch him.
40:10He's actually quite heavy.
40:12It's all like resin, I think.
40:14Just move him back in there.
40:16That's it.
40:17Just check nice and slowly.
40:19Make sure he doesn't come a cropper.
40:23That's brilliant.
40:25At nearly two metres long, the team estimate it must have been around five years old
40:29when it died.
40:32The fracture pattern to the crocodile's skull suggests this was a fatal blow,
40:37delivered before it was mummified.
40:40But the scans reveal more.
40:42Something's happened here.
40:44The ancient embalmer who mummified this crocodile didn't use the most thorough techniques.
40:51So, can we scroll through?
40:54Mmm.
40:56So, these little opacities here are most probably gastroliths, which crocodiles swallow.
41:02So, they ingest food in big chunks, often whole, and then they use stones which they've ingested
41:09to break up the food.
41:12But, of course, that does prove that it's still got its internal organs, because they're still on the abdomen.
41:17They've not been taken away.
41:18So, it's not been eviscerated.
41:21The reason that votive animal mummies are probably not as carefully made as other kinds of animal mummies
41:27mummies is because they were mass-produced.
41:30Because when you had pilgrims come, you need thousands and thousands of these things.
41:34And so, if you want to have a quick production line, you can't expend the same amount of time,
41:40effort, energy, and quality of materials as you would for a pet or a human being.
41:46These less sophisticated mummification techniques enabled the embalmers to produce animal mummies
41:55more quickly and cheaply.
41:58But that couldn't solve the most serious problem they faced.
42:05How to ensure they had a steady supply of animals to meet the demand of visiting pilgrims.
42:11Lost for over 2,000 years, this ibis bird catacomb at Saqqara was rediscovered by archaeologists in the 1960s.
42:40It's been sealed for 20 years.
42:45Now, molecular biologist Sally Wassef is going to re-enter the tomb.
42:52Over 2 million mummified ibis birds are buried in this catacomb.
43:19Sally's hoping to understand how they were supplied for mummification by comparing samples of their DNA.
43:28The DNA is usually not in a very good condition because inside the catacomb it's really hot and humid.
43:35And that helps the degradation to be faster for the DNA.
43:39But the ancient Egyptians helped us by mummifying the birds, which slowed the degradation process.
43:46So it helped to preserve some of the DNA.
43:50Unlike the mummy collectors of the 19th century, Sally works to strict rules on which bones she can take away as samples.
43:58Such a mummy I'm not allowed to open it or take samples from because it's fully wrapped and inside the jar.
44:08So, I usually sample from those broken stuff where you can see the bones loose.
44:15And such a bone is nice, still have the skin intact, the feathers and everything.
44:22Which gives me more indications that most likely I'll be ending up with good DNA quality from this bone.
44:29Back in the lab, Sally will be able to reconstruct the DNA of this mummified bird from the fragments still contained in its bones.
44:40She can then compare it to other birds in the catacomb to determine how closely they were related to each other.
44:49Once we have the DNA picture completed, what we do is that we look at how those are different from each other.
44:58Are they close together?
45:01And we find a lot of similarity between a very large number of birds.
45:05We can say, okay, those birds were raised together, they were farmed.
45:10Or if you have too many variations, actually they are cold from the wild or migrating from outside Egypt.
45:21Sally's research is ongoing.
45:24But so far, results have suggested there is a low genetic variance between mummified ibis birds at Saqqara.
45:32If proven, it's evidence the birds were being farmed to satisfy the increasing demand for animal mummies.
45:47700 metres away in Saqqara's dog catacomb, the remains of 8 million dog mummies suggest a mass breeding programme for dogs, as well as ibis birds, must have been in place.
45:59Professor Ikram has been studying the piles of bones.
46:05She's found more evidence of how this animal production line could have worked.
46:11One of the things we've found is that there are really diverse ages.
46:16And you can tell this from the jaw bones because you get these sort of teeny-weeny little jaws.
46:22And then you have huge things.
46:24And then they would have taken the puppies away when they were, well, very young.
46:30Either drowned them or just remove them from their mother's care.
46:34So they would have died quite quickly and could have been mummified.
46:37And then, of course, their mothers would have whelped again.
46:40And so you would have forced the breeding to, instead of once or twice a year, to twice or three times a year.
46:46Which kept this puppy farm going and gave us the 8 million dogs that we have here.
46:51Now these bones can reveal more.
46:54There is evidence of how the dogs at Sakara were treated.
47:00We have evidence for a lot of sick animals.
47:03For example, something like this, where there are holes.
47:07And you can see whether the bone has grown over.
47:11So this has been a diseased animal that would have been limping in its foreleg and it died when it was quite young.
47:18And here's another one, which has some sort of horrible growth coming out from an infection.
47:26Often you see this kind of extreme disease on zoo animals, where they have been kept in confined spaces.
47:33So this is why we think that quite possibly the dogs were kept in enclosures.
47:38They weren't always allowed to move freely if they got infected because the people who were looking after them knew that they'd be dead soon enough.
47:45They didn't really bother to take care of them.
47:47It's very likely that many of the dogs that ultimately find their way into the dog catacomb would have been bred in and around ancient Memphis.
47:58Probably in a series of puppy farms, breeding perhaps dozens of animals at a time for mummification.
48:06The whole question of the killing of animals is quite a difficult one, quite an emotive one for us from a 21st century perspective.
48:18However, what we have to bear in mind is that what they were doing was providing for the eternity of that animal, providing a suitable burial for a representative of a god.
48:31So what they were doing was a sacred act.
48:34By the end of the 5th century BC, these private rituals had grown into a national obsession.
48:42Animals were being bred, killed and mummified at sites right across the country, employing thousands of workers and generating huge profits.
48:53And then, 200 years later, another huge political upheaval shook ancient Egypt.
49:08The ruling Persians were replaced by Greeks who poured money into animal cults.
49:15It became a massive, massive growth industry, even more than before.
49:19They were spending the equivalent of millions today on maintaining cults that were, for the Egyptians, crucial to the continuation of this culture.
49:28Animal mummification had become a tool of state control.
49:35Religion is a very unifying force, and politically, it's every politician's dream.
49:40If you've got this idea of mass control over millions of people through a form of religion, you ultimately fund and sustain.
49:49It's brilliant, because you have control of those people.
49:59Dozens of new temples were built, encouraging more and more pilgrims to visit sites like Saqqara and purchase animal mummies.
50:09But cracks were beginning to appear in the burgeoning industry.
50:13It seems the embalmers had problems keeping up with the demand.
50:18Move the tissue paper.
50:21Oh!
50:22Oh, that's cute.
50:23Lovely.
50:24You've got a nice face.
50:25Nice face, nice ears.
50:26Shall we move them in, then?
50:28OK.
50:29It's thought this beautiful cat mummy was buried at a site called Beni Hassan in Middle Egypt.
50:38But this mummy is not all it seems to be.
50:42It's got the nice modelled face with a little roll of linen for the nose and then two eyes.
50:50It's just very cylindrical, it's quite typical of a cat mummy.
50:54Shall we have a look what's inside?
50:57What's inside?
50:59Ooh.
51:01Ooh.
51:02Not an awful lot, that's the answer to that.
51:05Oh, yeah.
51:06Would you say they're bone?
51:08They've got the density of bone.
51:10Would you agree?
51:11There's not limbs or anything like that.
51:13There's no.
51:14You can't see long bits of, you know, limbs or anything like that.
51:17No substantial remains.
51:18Ooh!
51:19That's...
51:20Vertebra.
51:21That's about the most substantial, isn't it, really?
51:23Certainly not the complete cat skeleton that we were imagining we would see.
51:27What you see on the outside is not always what you see on the inside.
51:32If they are skeletal remains, they're in sort of that area there.
51:35So if they'd made a kind of core, if you like, from bits and pieces that were lying around,
51:41and then they've made it quite deliberately elongated and made into a much bigger bundle,
51:45artificially.
51:46It's been very decoratively wrapped.
51:48Yeah.
51:49And then given this wonderful modelled face.
51:52In fact, these incomplete or partial animal mummies have been a common feature of Lydia's study.
52:00Their contents hidden from pilgrims and museum curators for thousands of years.
52:06We found that in about two thirds of the cases we have got some animal skeletal material,
52:13but then only in about half of those do we have a complete animal skeleton.
52:17So somewhere between a third and a half of all the mummies we've looked at have a complete animal inside.
52:25Most 19th and 20th century Egyptologists thought this was evidence the embalmers,
52:31either struggling to keep up with the demand for animals or just keen to make some easy cash,
52:36were swindling pilgrims by selling them fake mummies without their knowledge.
52:43But by analysing the wrappings and resin used in the mummification process,
52:48scientists like Stephen Buckley are challenging this assumption.
52:52What's interesting is that we're seeing recipes, different recipes for different animals.
52:58We found with cat mummies, for example, pistachio resin from North East Mediterranean.
53:05And yet the crocodile mummy, we found sandarach, a resin from North West Africa, from the Atlas Mountains.
53:14The molecular fingerprint, if you like, is showing us that they were using exotic, expensive ingredients
53:19from far and wide, so quite a lot of care and expense.
53:24Crucially, Stephen's found traces of expensive resins not only on the complete animal mummies, but on the partial ones as well.
53:35With these so-called fakes, the embalming agents, where they're using costly imported ingredients,
53:42the recipes are the same as those used on those mummies where the full animal is there.
53:49So the fake mummies are actually, as far as the embalming agents are concerned, treated with the same amount of effort and care and expense.
53:58And it seems to be that with that, whether it was just a bone or the real animal,
54:03as long as the recipe was there, as long as it looked right, that was good enough for the gods.
54:09It's scientific proof of the embalmer's intentions. To the ancient Egyptians, even the tiniest fragment of bone must have been deemed sacred and worthy of mummification.
54:22You've got to remember these things were presumably made to be sold, sold to pilgrims, so you want your product to be attractive.
54:31And maybe it's sufficient to have the sweepings from the workshop that's got enough magical religious power to satisfy your plea to the gods.
54:41It's suitable for the goddess Bastet, presumably the cat goddess, and that's, you know, the job's a good one.
54:49700 years after High Priestess Matt Caray had been buried with her pet monkey,
55:03ancient Egyptian animal mummification had grown from a few elite pets and sacred animals into a vast religious cult
55:13and an industry engrained in the fabric of society, where animals were not only killed to be mummified,
55:20but were intensively bred in their millions to satisfy a national obsession with animal mummification.
55:30These mummies give one an insight, a way into understanding Egyptian history, the culture, the religion, the technology,
55:39the way people might have felt, believed and thought, and also the relationship between human beings and animals.
55:48So it really is an astonishing way in to understanding a vast number of things about the ancient Egyptians.
55:59But the ritual of animal mummification wasn't to last.
56:03In 380 AD the Romans, who had conquered Egypt nearly four centuries before, officially converted to Christianity,
56:20a new religion that fiercely opposed all forms of mummification and animal cults.
56:25All Egyptian temples were closed down, and not only did this prevent worship continuing,
56:34but each temple functioned as a kind of town hall for every settlement throughout Egypt.
56:39So by closing the temple, you not only put an end to the pagan practices of worship,
56:44but also the transmission of ideas, the mummification of humans and animals.
56:49The demise of animal mummification didn't only signal the end of its religion, but the entire Egyptian civilization.
57:00The early Christians did everything they could to distance themselves from these pagan practices,
57:06and that's when you see a great divide.
57:08And of course, we in the modern West have gone with the Christian notions.
57:10The ancient Egyptians are left over there, and that's why today we see their practices, their beliefs, as quite strange, different to ours,
57:20and they can be quite difficult to understand, and I think this is nowhere better exemplified than in their practice of animal mummification.
57:26The great era of ancient Egypt had ended. The immense pyramids and imposing temples would stand for thousands more years.
57:44But the rituals of animal mummification became a distant memory.
57:48The desert sands gradually covered the catacombs and locked away their secrets.
57:57Now, modern scientific techniques are allowing these sacred animals finally to tell their story.
58:06One last message carried from the afterlife.
58:18Oh, happy days here next on BBC Two.
58:26It's go for the new series of episodes, and Matt LeBlanc has big money worries.
58:31Over on BBC Four, Neil Oliver follows in the footsteps of four Scottish explorers, starting with David Livingstone.
58:37I'm David Livingstone.
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