Discover animal mummies in Egypt

Wrapped in linen and reverently resting, animal mummies contain amazing mysteries about life and death in ancient Egypt.

A set of photos of animal mummies captured by photographer Richard Barnes at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The identifiers of these mummies start with the letter CG.

The queen's antelope pet survives thanks to the burial that is only reserved for royal members. Wrapped carefully and placed in a custom-made wooden coffin, the antelope was always next to its owner inside the grave built around 945 BC (CG 29835).

Food mummies on display at this Egyptian Museum are food prepared for royal family meals in the next life. Duck, beef, rib, grilled meat and even a cow tail to cook soup, all dried with natron powder (a mineral commonly found in salt water residues), rolled in linen, placed in a reed basket and buried in the queen's grave (CG29840 - CG29858).

Filled in the temple for the rest of her life, a baboon was treasured to be preserved after dying in the tomb of Tuna el-Gebel. Priests prayed and offered it as a sign of eternal reverence.

Thanksgiving mummies, each buried with a prayer, is varied but not always the same as the outside coffin. This sophisticated crocodile coffin is made like the real thing but nothing inside (CG29712).

A linen wrap hiding storks (CG29864)

A mummy of a carnivorous bird with only a few bones (CG29881).

A sacred lamb on Elephantine Island. In a sophisticated shell with gold and paintings, the mummy is one of seven mummies that exist for centuries and is now concentrated in Egyptian museums. As a living embodiment of the creation god Khnum, the animal was kept at a temple and preserved by the monks (Nubia Museum, Aswan, JE39747).

The gold and copper gilt stork is displayed at Mallawi Museum.

Very gently, Salima Ikram archaeologist lightly sliced ​​the mud to free a stork from a jar of earthenware that was buried 2,700 years ago at Abydos. Symbolizing Thoth god, this bird is more embalmed than any animal buried in revered places throughout Egypt.

Conducting work from the late 1800s in Abydos, archaeologists clean sand from the only surviving funeral temple in the area. This mud brick structure belonged to Khasekhemwy, the ruler of the second dynasty, who died around 2650 BC. Later, the Egyptians associate it with the myths of early childhood. In the first millennium BC, it became a cemetery of thanksgiving mummies and continued to be excavated until today.

Under the ground in the ancient land of Abydos in 1914, the stork of thanksgiving gave thanks to the sophisticated crown hat of god Osiris, the lord of the underworld. (CG29868)

The incredible wraps of corpses of corpses - linen and plaster shells recreate the bird's head, long beak and glass beads attached to the eyes. The decorative pictures along the sides draw the sitting gods alternating with the offerings (CG29874).

At Tuna el-Gebel, hundreds of thanksgiving mummies are placed by monks in alcoves. There are still many undiscovered mummies.

The linen folds look like a cat's necklace, but the animal inside this delicate cover is not a pet. The cat died of strangulation - the cause of death was revealed by the x-ray table, so it could be embalmed and given to the temple by a pilgrim (CG29657).

The biggest secret of mummies at the Egyptian Museum has been revealed in a recent study. A wooden cat coat, plaster and white wax to fake limestone (right) with a height of about 14.5 inches store a tiny kitten inside (see photo 16). Decorative spiral covers and masks (on the left) store an adult cat - one of thousands of cats buried in the sand like a thanksgiving in the Istabl Antar area (CG29655).

The x-ray film shows a kitten buried in a cat-shaped vest (CG29776).

Ruined mummified tombs of Apis cows - sacred animals in the ancient city of Memphis in Egypt, are now near Mit Rihina village. For 40 days, cows were placed with natron powder on a large stone bed in the yard where the sun could dry and disinfect it.

The memorial depicts the Pharaoh Ptolemy V worshiping the deceased - symbolized by Buchis the ox of Armant. Like the cows in Memphis and Heliopolis, Buchis cows were embalmed and buried in large cemeteries.

Thanks to the mummification, not any modern technology, the dog's remains and the two cows are completely preserved and displayed at the Agricultural Museum in Cairo.

A mouse on a small stone sarcophagus resembles a mummy inside perfectly (CG29888).

Linen and paper sedge depict the lines of the antelope.

Perfectly preserved, this hound can belong to a pharaoh. As a royal pet, when he died, he was buried in a carefully prepared tissue in the valley of the kings (CG29836).

Buried with the dog in the previous photo, this baboon has secrets to identify a dog as a pet: an x-ray image shows the dog's missing fangs and it has could be a hunted animal (CG29837).