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Animal mummification originated in Egypt. They mummified various animals. It was an enormous part of Egyptian culture, not only in their role as food and pets, but also for religious reasons. They were typically mummified for four main purposes — to allow beloved pets to go on to the afterlife, to provide food in the afterlife, to act as offerings to a particular god, and because some were seen as physical manifestations of specific gods that the Egyptians worshipped. Bast, the cat goddess is an example of one such deity.〔Jackowski, Christian. "Common and Unexpected Findings in Mummies from Ancient Egypt and South America revealed by CT." CMIV Seminar. Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization, Linköping, Sweden. 17 September 2007.〕 In 1888, an Egyptian farmer digging in the sand near Istabl Antar discovered a mass grave of felines, ancient cats that were mummified and buried in pits at great numbers. == Egyptian beliefs about animals == Throughout the history of Ancient Egypt, animals were highly respected. In no other culture have animals been as influential in so many aspects of life, nor has any culture depicted animals as often in their artwork or writing.〔Velde, H. "A Few Remarks upon the Religious Significance of Animals in Ancient Egypt." Numen 27 (1980): 76-82. 〕 It is estimated that 2 in every 4 or 5 Egyptian hieroglyphs relates to animals.〔 Egyptians believed that animals were crucial to both physical and spiritual survival—vital to physical survival because they were a major source of food and to spiritual survival based on how well a person treated animals during their life on earth.〔 Some animals were considered to be literal incarnations of the gods, and therefore, it is understandable why Egyptians would have wanted to hold such animals in the highest regard, giving them a proper burial through mummification.〔Leca, Ange P. The Egyptian Way of Death. Doubleday, 1981.〕 The Egyptian religion taught of life after death. In order to determine a person’s admittance or denial to the afterlife, the gods would ask a series of judgment questions.〔 One of these crucial questions would be whether they had mistreated any animals during their life on earth.〔 Because of this religious belief, the killing of an animal was considered a serious crime punishable by death.〔Aufderheide, Arthur C. The Scientific Study of Mummies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.〕 Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian from the 1st century B.C., witnessed the lynching of a Roman who had accidentally killed a cat during a visit to Egypt. Understandably, this punishment frightened many Egyptians to the point that if one would happen upon a dead animal, they would flee from it as to avoid the accusation of being its killer.〔Pettigrew, Thomas J., and George Cruikshank. A History of Egyptian Mummies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Animal mummy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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