These 2,500-year-old crocodile mummies were found at an Ancient Egyptian tomb on the Nile River.
Credit: Patri Mora Riudavets, Qubbat al-Hawā team (licensed under CC-BY 4.0)

See you later, alligator! In a while, crocodile. How long is a while? Try over two thousand years! In a recent dig in Qubbat al-Hawā, a burial site in Aswan, Egypt, archaeologists found 10 intact mummified crocodiles. We knew ancient Egyptians mummified their dead to be preserved for the afterlife, but why would they mummify crocodiles?

What does it mean to mummify? A mummy is a body that has been preserved through natural or artificial means. The most famous and elaborately prepared mummies are from Egypt. The ancient Egyptians mummified their dead because they believed the body had to be preserved for use in the afterlife. Egyptian embalmers prepared mummies by dehydrating (removing all moisture from) the body. The earliest Egyptian mummies were naturally preserved by being buried in hot, dry, desert sand. Around 4000 B.C., the Egyptians were experimenting with resin and linen wrappings to seal the body against moisture.

These 10 adult crocodiles lived nearly 2,500 years ago! They weren’t beloved pets mummified to join masters in the afterlife, they were a part of a ritual to the fertility deity Sobek. The crocodiles were found in a tomb on the west bank of the Nile River.

Sobek is portrayed with the head of a crocodile and the body of a man. Some ancient Egyptians believed he created order in the universe. He became associated with fertility. Crocodiles were very important to ancient Egyptian life. Ancient Egyptians ate crocodile meat and the fat of the crocodile was used for different medicines. Crocodiles live throughout the Nile River.

There have been other discoveries of mummified crocodiles. Most have them have been juvenile crocodiles or only pieces of remains. Egyptians mummified other animals as well. Archaezoologists, scientists who study animal remains at archeology sites, have found mummified cats, ibises, and baboons. This practice was an offering of the animal to the gods.

One of the crocodiles measured 7 feet long! The mummies had been wrapped in linen for preservation but it was eaten away by insects. There also wasn’t any resin securing the mummies, so the archeologists were able to study them in the site without having to use advanced technology like CT scans and X-rays. They think the crocodiles were mummified naturally by being buried in hot, dry sand. The researchers estimate that the crocodiles were entombed between 332 BC and 30 BC. They will radiocarbon date and study the DNA of the crocodiles to learn more. The archeologists studied the remains and concluded that there were two different species of crocodiles represented in the tomb. Some were Nile crocodiles and others were West African crocodiles. The discovery has added to our knowledge of ancient Egyptian culture, beliefs, and practices.

A procession of 22 ancient Egyptian royal mummies (18 kings and 4 queens) leave the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square and are driven to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation, in Cairo, Egypt, on April 3, 2021.
Credit: © Abaca Press/Alamy Images

Last month, Egyptian royals paraded through downtown Cairo. Called the Pharaoh’s Golden Parade, the procession included 18 kings and 4 queens. The royals traveled from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. As they made the 3-mile (5-kilometer) journey, they were met with cheers from adoring fans. Although the fans were lively, the royals were quite reserved. In fact, the royals had been dead for hundreds of years.

The Pharaoh’s Golden Parade marked the relocation of 22 ancient Egyptian mummies. Mummy is a body that has been preserved through natural or artificial means.

The royal mummies were very fragile. Vehicles designed for the event cradled the mummies on their trip. The roads were even repaved to ensure that the kings and queens had a smooth ride. For protection, the bodies were placed in nitrogen-filled boxes. (Pure nitrogen gas is used as a “blanket” to keep away oxygen, which can further degrade the already-ancient corpses.)

Egyptians mummified their dead because they believed the body had to be preserved for use in the afterlife. The earliest Egyptian mummies were naturally preserved by being buried in the hot and dry desert sand. By about 3500 B.C., the Egyptians had developed an elaborate process of preparing mummies. Ancient texts indicate that the process took 70 days to complete. In this process, the stomach, liver, lungs, and intestines were removed from the body through an incision on the left side of the abdomen. The heart, which the Egyptians considered the center of reasoning, was usually left in place. In some cases, embalmers removed the brain with a hook through a hole pierced through the nose.

After the body was dried, it was treated with perfumes and resins that helped seal out moisture. The body could be stuffed with straw, linen, moss, or other material to give it a more lifelike appearance. The body was then wrapped in a great number of linen bandages. Mummies were usually placed in a coffin or a series of coffins, one inside the other.

Wealthy people could afford more elaborately prepared mummies than could the poor. The ancient Egyptians also mummified animals, including baboons, cats, jackals, and rams, which were associated with various Egyptian gods and cults. Pet cats and dogs were sometimes mummified as well. The ancient Egyptians practiced mummification until about A.D. 300, when it was replaced by simple burials following the introduction of Christianity.

Mummies were also made in other parts of the world. In China, some bodies were preserved using mercury salts. Among the Inca of South America, mummies were preserved through the use of smoke and resins. The dry climate of the Andes Mountains aided the preservation of the bodies. The people of the Aleutian Islands and the Ancestral Pueblo people (once called the Anasazi) of the American Southwest also mummified their dead. Mummification is still practiced today in the form of embalming. Among the most famous modern mummies are those of the Communist leaders V. I. Lenin of Russia and Mao Zedong of China.

April 9, 2013

If you believe in curses, one began 90 years ago, on April 5, 1923, when Britain’s 5th Lord Carnarvon died in Cairo, Egypt. Carnarvon (1866-1923) was an amateur Egyptologist who sponsored an expedition led by archeologist Howard Carter. Carnarvon and Carter began their search in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in 1917.

In November 1922, they entered what they believed to be a tomb. Carnarvon asked Carter, who had entered first holding a  candle, “Can you see anything?” Carter’s reply, “Yes, wonderful things” has become legendary. The men had found the tomb of a little-known boy-king, Tutankhamun (meaning living image of Amun). Tutankhamun, or King Tut, as he is affectionately known, came to the throne of Egypt in 1332 B.C., when he was about 9. He died in 1322 B.C. Because of religious disputes, later rulers destroyed or removed all monuments built by or in honor of Tutankhamun. Because of that, his was the only tomb of an ancient Egyptian king to be discovered almost completely undamaged. Tutankhamun’s four-room tomb contained more than 5,000 objects, including many beautiful carved and gold-covered items. A magnificent gold mask of Tutankhamun covered the head and shoulders of the royal mummy.

Gold funerary mask of Tutankhamun (© SuperStock)

When Carnarvon died in Egypt only five months after the opening of Tut’s tomb, the idea began to circulate that there was a curse placed on the tomb for any who dared to open it. Soon, anytime any elderly person who was even remotely connected with King Tut’s tomb died, newspapers gave intensive coverage to the story of the curse. In reality, Carnarvon died of an infected insect bite, nothing remarkable in the era before antibiotic drugs. Most of the other people said to have died of the curse were in their late 60′s or 70′s. Still, newspapers had a good reason to try to cover the story from this angle. The expedition had signed an agreement with a London newspaper, The Times, that gave exclusive coverage of the finds on the site to them. All other newspapers were trying hard to find something interesting to say about the newly discovered tomb. The curse became more widely known because of several films starring the American actor Lon Chaney, Jr., The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), and The Mummy’s Curse (1944).

In 2009, the current and 8th Lord Carnarvon opened a small museum at Highclere Castle, the ancestral home of the Carnarvon family. Most of the treasures brought home from Egypt by the 5th earl had been sold to New York’s Metropolitan Museum to pay death duties (inheritance taxes) levied at the earl’s death. Still, what remains is a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities. Highclere Castle may be better known to many Americans than you may realize. The castle–which according to the current Lady Carnarvon has “200 or 300 rooms,” give or take–is the setting for the wildly popular British television program “Downton Abbey.”

Additional World Book articles:

• Egypt, Ancient
• Tutankhamun

July 18, 2012

Mummies created over several hundred years from the body parts of different individuals have upended archaeologists’ ideas about the treatment of the dead in prehistoric Britain. The mummies, which are at least 3,000 years old, were discovered beneath the foundations of a prehistoric house on South Uist, an island off the western coast of Scotland in the Outer Hebrides. The two bodies are the first direct evidence of mummification in the ancient Old World outside of Egypt.

Archaeologists found the mummies in 2001 while excavating a village, known as Cladh Hallan, that was inhabited from 2200 to 800 B.C. Workers had already discovered the skeletons of a teenaged girl and a 3-year-old child when they came upon two unusual-looking skeletons. These remains–those of an adult man and an adult woman–were curled in a tight fetal position similar to that found in Inca “mummy bundles” from prehistoric South America. Such bundles consist of a body and personal effects wrapped in layers of colorful cloth. Changes in the mineral composition of the outer layers of the bones indicated that the bodies had been intentionally preserved, likely in the acidic environment of a peat bog, for at least one year. Soil and water conditions in a peat bog greatly slow the decay of organic (biological) matter. No intentionally mummified bodies had ever been found before in prehistoric Europe. Since then, archaeologists have found two additional human mummies in England. Holes drilled in the long bones of the arms and legs suggest that the skeletons of these mummies had been strung together.

The ancient settlement of Cladh Hallan, where the composite mummies were found, probably looked similar to Skara Brae (above), a 5,000-year-old village found in the Orkney Islands in Scotland. (Scottish Tourist Board)

While examining the adult skeletons from Cladh Hallan, archaeologists were extremely suprised to discover that the bones actually came from different individuals. The female skeleton consists of a lower jaw from one person; an upper arm bone from another; and a thighbone from a third. The male skeleton consists of a torso and limbs from one person; a skull and neck from a second; and a lower jaw from a third. A DNA analysis of the bones confirmed this finding. Moreover, the skeletons had been assembled over a period of several hundred years–from 1260 to 1440 B.C. and from 1130 to 1310 B.C.

Archaeologist Mike Parker-Pearson of the University of Sheffield, who led the excavation, speculated that the composite skeletons may have been assembled for ceremonial reasons. Another possibility is that they could represent “the merging of different families and their lines of descent,” at a time when ownership of the land was communal rather than private.

Additional World Book articles:

• Bog bodies
• Scotland (Prehistoric Scotland)
• Medical Tales from the Crypt (a Special Report)
• Archaeology 1985 (a Back in Time article)

The rediscovery of the process used by the ancient Egyptians to produce mummies more than 3,000 years ago was announced by British scientists on October 20, 2011. Chemist Stephen Buckley of the University of York in the United Kingdom reported that he and his co-workers had preserved the body of British taxi driver Alan Billis using the same techniques used to mummify the body of Tutankhamun (King Tut) and the bodies of other pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Buckley has spent nearly 20 years researching the mummification process used by the ancient Egyptians. Billis volunteered for the project after learning that he was dying of lung cancer.

Egyptian mummies were wound tightly with linen and then laid out in coffins. In some periods of Egyptian history, the coffins were painted. The Field Museum, Chicago.

Like ancient Egyptian embalmers, Buckley and his co-workers removed the lungs and intestines from Billis’s body through an opening cut in the left side of the abdomen.  The cavity in his body was filled with linen. The researchers then soaked the body in a bath of natron, a powdery mixture that includes a harsh kind of salt, for three months. The natron dehydrated (removed all moisture from) the body. The researchers protected Billis’s skin with oils. They also wrapped the body in linen to protect it from light and insects.

British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun's undamaged tomb in 1922. A magnificent lifelike gold mask of Tutankhamun covered the head and shoulders of the royal mummy, shown here as it is cleaned by Carter and an Egyptian assistant. © Getty Images.

In addition to reconstructing the mummification process in ancient Egypt, the project may help scientists develop preservation processes that do not use formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is the active ingredient in a solution used for embalming and for preserving insects and other biological specimens. Laboratory tests have shown that formaldehyde probably causes cancer.

Additional World Book articles:

• Anubis
• Pyramid
• Valley of the Kings
• Back in Time (Archaeology 1923)