Mummified Cats.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 461, 9 April 1890, Page 6

Mummified Cats.

The following particulars are published of the recent importation from Egypt 'of mummified cats and their sale for fertilising purposes, to which we referred the other day : —A consignment of 19£ tons of embalmed cats from Beni Hassan, Central' Egypt, has just reached Liverpool. In this parcel there are remains of about 180,000 cats. They were discovered by an Egyptian fellah employed in husbandry, who fell into a pit which, on further examination, proved to be a large subterranean cave completely filled with cats, every one of which had been separately embalmed' and dressed in cloth, after the manner of Egyptian mummies, all being separately laid out in rows. Specimens of these have been taken by Mr Moore, the curator of the Liverpool Museum, where they can be seen. The remainder are about to be employed as manure. The Rev. H. H. Higgins and Mr Moore fix tbe date of their interment at 2,000 years before Christ. A correspondent writes :— * The totem of a section of the ancient Egyptians was the cat; hence when a cat died it was buried with all honours, being embalmed and sometimes fully decorated, and, in short, had as much attention paid to it as a human being. It had been long believed that a cat cemetery existed on the east bank of the Nile, and in the autumn of 1889 a lucky Egyptian, as stated above, found this ancient burial ground at Beni Hassan, about 100 miles from Cairo. Labourers were soon at work, and dug out hundreds of thousands. Some were quickly sold to local farmers, and other lots found their way to an Alexandrian merchant, thence by steamer to Liverpool, where they were knocked down at £3 13s 9d per ton to a local fertiliser merchant. The auction was only known to the “ trade,” but even the “bone” buyers looked nervously at the large sample exposed. The broker knocked the lot down with one of the eats’ heads for a hammer.’