Dear Kitty. Some blog

June 29, 2007

Animals found at predynastic Egyptian cemetery [Mammals, Archaeology] — Administrator @ 9:03 pm

Mask of Egyptian cat mummy, Roman period

From Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad of 28 June:

On a 5,700 years old animal cemetery in Hierakonpolis, southern Egypt, the buried skeleton of a young cat, which had been captive for one or more months before it died, has been found.

The archaeologists of the Katholieke Universiteut Leuven [in Belgium] who found the animal, think this was a captive cat, not a tame cat.

Soon, their article will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

At the cemetery, also remains were found of baboons, elephants, wild donkeys, hartebeest (an antelope species), hippopotamuses, and auerochs.

UPDATE: NRC 15 May 2008, page 11: Veerle Linseele et al. retract their earlier captive cat statement; they now think these remains were of Felis chaus.

Cat mummies of Egypt: here.

Cat taming in ancient Egypt: here. And here.

Roman age Egyptian mummies found: here.

Ancient Egyptian ball game found: here.

Olive baboons: here.

Mummies in Egypt vs. in Yemen: here.

Predynastic Egypt: here.

Comments »

The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://dearkitty.blogsome.com/2007/06/29/animals-found-at-predynastic-egyptian-cemetery/trackback/

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>


Get free blog up and running in minutes with Blogsome | Theme designs available here

free web site hit counter