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Source Description

Priests oversaw the rituals, mummifications, funerals, and burials of sacred temple animals. By the mid-1st millennium BC, people were encouraged to pay for the mummification as a sacred offering to the related deity. A cat mummy would be offered to a feline deity, such as Bastet. This was a lucrative business, and "false" mummies were sometimes created to meet the demand. Actually, this is one of those: X-rays show that there is nothing inside the wrappings.

Scholar Source Context

Document identity
localId
21582
label
Mummified Cat
core
obj
dtoType
object
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
21582
contentType
object
stage
normalized
title
Mummified Cat
description
Priests oversaw the rituals, mummifications, funerals, and burials of sacred temple animals. By the mid-1st millennium BC, people were encouraged to pay for the mummification as a sacred offering to the related deity. A cat mummy would be offered to a feline deity, such as Bastet. This was a lucrative business, and "false" mummies were sometimes created to meet the demand. Actually, this is one of those: X-rays show that there is nothing inside the wrappings.
provenance
Mrs. Frances Eaton Weld [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Heirs of Mrs. Frances Eaton Weld; Walters Art Museum, 1947, by gift.
date
3rd-2nd century BCE (Greco-Roman)
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
genreSpecific
Mummies & Cartonnage
mummies
imageCount
1
pageCount
1
source
import
dimensionsRaw
7 5/8 in. (19.3 cm)
Source extras
cul
Egyptian
dynasty
Ptolemaic Dynasty
med
linen
creator_ids
6182
collection_ids
EGY
exhibition_ids
none
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
photo
mediaId
8edcd49138c7bd58