Lecture: Beloved Beasts: Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummies, Salima Ikram

Daily Beacon (Elizabeth Storey)

This page reports on a lecture delivered by Salima Ikram in Cairo, about animal mummification in ancient Egypt.

Animal mummies, long overshadowed by human mummies, hold much more useful information about ancient Egypt than has previously been thought.

Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at the American University of Cairo, discussed the increase in research on animal mummies in her lecture, “Beloved Beasts: Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummies,” Thursday.

“For a long time people would regard animal mummies with curiosity, tuck them under their arm and take them home,” Ikram said. “Animals were of great importance and significance in ancient Egypt as in many other cultures. On one level, they were important for their gods, part human, part animals. On another level, animals are of crucial significance because they give you food.”

Ikram referred to four different types of animal mummies, their uses in ancient Egypt, how they were mummified, and what they meant to humans.