The Ure mummified cat's head is the unwrapped head and neck remains of an ancient Egyptian mummified domestic cat. The animal mummy has been displayed in a glass jar contemporary with its discovery in the late 1800s. The cat's remains are in the collection of the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology in Reading, England. [1]
Only the cat's head and neck remain, with most of the original wrapping having been removed. The head has been preserved well enough that teeth and whiskers remain clearly visible, and most of the skin remains intact. [1]
The head is sealed in a Victorian glass jar closed with a newspaper-wrapped cork lid. Within the jar, alongside the head, is an invitation card the reverse of which has been used as a makeshift label for the contents, helping to date the jar. [1]
The item as-is entered the collection of the Ure Museum, along with a number of other ancient Egyptian items, in 1958 as part of a donation by Henry Bassett, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Reading from 1912 to 1946 and Dean of the Faculty of Science from 1926 to 1930. [1] How Bassett came to own it and its prior history are currently unknown. It is, however, very likely that the mummy was one of a number saved from being processed into fertilizer in the 1890s. [2]
In February 1890, several tons of mummified cats of varying conditions arrived at Liverpool Docks and were auctioned for processing into fertilizer (and fuel). These had been discovered (by accident) in 1889 at Speos Artemidos, close to Beni Hasan, Egypt. Some of the better-preserved cats, or parts of them, were auctioned off singly; a number of these are on display at the National Museums Liverpool’s World Museum. [3] The importation and subsequent auctioning of the mummified cats became a media phenomenon, with numerous national and international newspapers reporting on the proceedings; locals and tourists attended the auctions, too, leading to notable crowds at the related events.
A FORTUNATE CAT-ASTROPHE.—In the category of consignments surely that of twenty thousand mummified cats, recently arrived at Liverpool from Egypt, is the queerest. It impresses the imagination and appeals to the feelings to consider that, after being buried decently for four thousand years, they have been exhumed to furnish manure for a distant land. They were discovered in a cats' cemetery—a famous catacomb in its day, about a hundred miles from Cairo—somewhere about the first cataract, isn't it? —by an Egyptian fellah—lucky fellah this!—who accidentally fell-ah into it and a good thing at the same time. From the locality of the discovery, we presume that on this special occasion Cairo did neither kill the cats nor bury them.
— Manchester Times , 15 February 1890
The cat's head is on permanent display in the museum's Death section. The object has also played a prominent role in previous marketing for the museum and is one of the best-known items of the collection.
A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay further if kept in cool and dry conditions. Some authorities restrict the use of the term to bodies deliberately embalmed with chemicals, but the use of the word to cover accidentally desiccated bodies goes back to at least the early 17th century.
Egyptology is the scientific study of ancient Egypt. The topics studied include ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the 4th century AD.
Saqqara, also spelled Sakkara or Saccara in English, is an Egyptian village in the markaz (county) of Badrashin in the Giza Governorate, that contains ancient burial grounds of Egyptian royalty, serving as the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis. Saqqara contains numerous pyramids, including the Pyramid of Djoser, sometimes referred to as the Step Tomb, and a number of mastaba tombs. Located some 30 km (19 mi) south of modern-day Cairo, Saqqara covers an area of around 7 by 1.5 km.
The tomb of Tutankhamun, also known by its tomb number, KV62, is the burial place of Tutankhamun, a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb consists of four chambers and an entrance staircase and corridor. It is smaller and less extensively decorated than other Egyptian royal tombs of its time, and it probably originated as a tomb for a non-royal individual that was adapted for Tutankhamun's use after his premature death. Like other pharaohs, Tutankhamun was buried with a wide variety of funerary objects and personal possessions, such as coffins, furniture, clothing and jewelry, though in the unusually limited space these goods had to be densely packed. Robbers entered the tomb twice in the years immediately following the burial, but Tutankhamun's mummy and most of the burial goods remained intact. The tomb's low position, dug into the floor of the valley, allowed its entrance to be hidden by debris deposited by flooding and tomb construction. Thus, unlike other tombs in the valley, it was not stripped of its valuables during the Third Intermediate Period.
The Mummification Museum is an archaeological museum in Luxor, Upper Egypt. It is dedicated to the art of Ancient Egyptian mummification.
The ancient Egyptians had an elaborate set of funerary practices that they believed were necessary to ensure their immortality after death. These rituals included mummifying the body, casting magic spells, and burials with specific grave goods thought to be needed in the afterlife.
In ancient Egypt, cats were represented in social and religious scenes dating as early as 1980 BC. Several ancient Egyptian deities were depicted and sculptured with cat-like heads such as Mafdet, Bastet and Sekhmet, representing justice, fertility, and power, respectively. The deity Mut was also depicted as a cat and in the company of a cat.
The Royal Cache, technically known as TT320, is an Ancient Egyptian tomb located next to Deir el-Bahari, in the Theban Necropolis, opposite the modern city of Luxor.
The Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology is a museum of ancient Mediterranean archaeology, primarily that of ancient Greek civilisation but with smaller collections of Egyptian, Etruscan and Roman items. It contains one of the most important collections of ancient Greek pottery in the United Kingdom. The museum is part of the University of Reading's University Museums and Special Collections Services (UMASCS), and is located in and works closely with the university's Department of Classics. The museum is situated on the university's Whiteknights Campus, about 2 miles (3.2 km) from the centre of the English town of Reading, Berkshire. The museum is open to the public and entry is free.
Tomb KV54 is located in the Valley of the Kings, in Egypt. It was originally excavated by Edward R. Ayrton on behalf of the American lawyer Theodore M. Davis, who funded the work.
Hetepheres I was a queen of Egypt during the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt who was a wife of one king, the mother of the next king, the grandmother of two more kings, and the figure who tied together two dynasties.
The Gebelein predynastic mummies are six naturally mummified bodies, dating to approximately 3400 BC from the Late Predynastic period of Ancient Egypt. They were the first complete predynastic bodies to be discovered. The well-preserved bodies were excavated at the end of the nineteenth century by Wallis Budge, the British Museum Keeper for Egyptology, from shallow sand graves near Gebelein in the Egyptian desert.
Animal mummification was common in ancient Egypt. Animals were an important part of Egyptian culture, not only in their role as food and pets, but also for religious reasons. Many different types of animals were mummified, typically for four main purposes: to allow people's 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 deities that the Egyptians worshipped. Bastet, the cat goddess, is an example of one such deity. 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.
Gebelein was a town in Egypt. It is located on the Nile, about 40 km south of Thebes, in the New Valley Governorate.
In some European cultures it was customary to place the dried or desiccated body of a cat inside the walls of a newly built home to ward off evil spirits or as a good luck charm. It was believed that the cats had a sixth sense and that putting a cat in the wall was a blood sacrifice so the animal could use psychic abilities to find and ward off unwanted spirits. Although some accounts claim the cats were walled in alive, examination of recovered specimens indicates post-mortem concealment in most cases.
The Ritual of Embalming Papyrus or Papyrus of the Embalming Ritual is one of only two extant papyri which detail anything at all about the practices of mummification used within the burial practices of Ancient Egyptian culture.
The Ure Museum’s ancient Egyptian funerary boat is a 12th Dynasty, Middle Kingdom model boat; believed to have been manufactured between 1991–1786 BC. It was discovered during excavations in the group of tombs described as the ‘Tombs of the Officials’ at Beni Hasan, Egypt.
The archaeology of Ancient Egypt is the study of the archaeology of Egypt, stretching from prehistory through three millennia of documented history. Egyptian archaeology is one of the branches of Egyptology.
Ta-Kr-Hb is a female mummy who was donated to the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Scotland in 1936, believed to be the remains of a princess or priestess of Thebes. The remains are estimated to be up to 2,700 or around 3000 years old. The name of the mummy 'Ta-Kr-Hb' and her status as a princess were revealed by the hieroglyphs on the lid of her coffin.
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