Abstract
MUMMIFICATION of sacred animals is a familiar practice in the annals of Ancient Egypt, especially in the later periods. A discovery of what is thought to be the earliest known example of the mummification of a horse has recently been made on the hill of Sheikh Abdel Kurneh, on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes, by an expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of New York under the field direction of Mr. Winlock. The expedition is carrying on Mr. Winlock's excavation interrupted in 1927, when he discovered the tomb of Sen-Mut, the architect of the famous temple of Queen Hat-shepsut at Deir el-Bahari. The work of the present season, it is stated in a dispatch from Cairo in The Times of April 6, has brought to light the intact tombs of Ra'mose and Hatnufer, the father and mother of Sen-Mut. In clearing the bottom of the ravine preparatory to opening the rock chamber, in which the burials were found, the body of a horse was uncovered in the limestone clip. It had been mummified and wrapped and enclosed in an enormous coffin. It is of the xviiith dynasty and, therefore, probably the oldest horse burial found in Egypt up to the present. The rock chamber was crowded with funerary material, including jars and baskets containing linen, food, and in one instance a silver bowl and two small pitchers for mixing wine. Two jars are dated the seventh year of Tuthmosis III, while some of the linen and jar sealings bear titles of Hat-shepsut when she declared herself King of Egypt. On one side of the chamber were uninscribed rectangular coffins and on the other anthropoid coffins bearing inscriptions indicating that they contained the bodies of Ra'mose and Hatnufer. Neither had an official title.
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Horse Mummification in Ancient Egypt. Nature 137, 608 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137608a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137608a0