Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt
By Edward Bleiberg; Yekaterina Barbash; Lisa Bruno
Brooklyn Museum and GILES
October 2013
978-1-907804-27-4

The more you learn about the ancient world, the more you realize how much more there is to know. If you've looked at pictures of the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt, you may have noticed the presence of animal parts combined with humanoid aspects, as for instance, the ibis-headed god Thoth or the falcon-god Horus.

You may think of Egyptian artifacts in terms of William, the faience blue hippopotamus, bird-shaped hieroglyphs, or dung beetle scarabs, but have you ever noticed the animal mummies? Just at Saqqara's necropolis there were more than four million ibis and seven million dog mummies. If that's not enough, their pantheon of gods with animal parts suggests that the Egyptians held animals in high esteem. It is this regard that a beautiful coffee table book from the Brooklyn Museum, home of an impressive collection of Egyptian artifacts, explores in Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt.

The Brooklyn Museum houses a storage vault of birds, cats, dogs, snakes, and other animal artifacts from ancient Egypt, including thirty mummies. Soulful Creatures is based on this collection and features a multi-disciplinary approach to questions of the religious and social roles of the mummies. The writers are curators from the museum. While they wrote the chapters individually, the chapters are inter-connected.

The book is not written for professionals, but for anyone with an interest. To that end, the first chapter provides a timeline of ancient Egyptian history with animal artifacts illustrating each major period.

The second chapter, Assistant Curator of Egyptian Art at the Brookln Museum, Yekaterina Barbash's "How the Ancient Egyptians Viewed the Animal World," describes the presumed process by which the ancients came to believe animal species were connected with the divine world. It also describes attitudes towards individual species, the association of the bull with fecundity and strength and his role in the religious rituals, the importance of various dogs/jackals, some buried with their owners, and that iconic Egyptian animal, the cat, an animal that could catch vermin and yet be nurturing of her young. Barbash also covers the antelope, baboon, shrew, various air and water birds, the crocodile, fish, snakes, lizards, and, of course, the beetle.

The third chapter, by Edward Bleiberg, curator of Egyptian, Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Brooklyn Museum, is "Animal Mummies: The Souls of the Gods." Bleiberg looks at why we find the homage paid to the animals by the Egyptians so odd. Among other differences from other cultures, the Egyptians did not consider animals as a group and that group distinct from human. Nor were they inferior, but like humans, were thought to have souls. Ancient cultures, like the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, who had dealings with the Egyptians, considered their behavior towards animals odd. Bleiberg then looks at the cults themselves. He explains that the animal mummies (of ibises, hawks, dogs, cats, crocodiles, shrews, fish and snakes) are often called votive because it was thought they were offerings or sacrifices to the Egyptian gods. They might also be connected with an annual festival or pilgrimage festivals. Bleiberg believes the votive animal mummies' souls were messengers between people and their gods and that once mummified, the animal was the ba of the god with which it was associated. Ba is a spiritual part that could refer to personality of an individual or royal pwer, for a king. After death, the ba could communicate and consume food and drink.

The fourth chapter, by Lisa Bruno, Conservator of Objects at the Brooklyn Museum, is "The Scientific Examination of Animal Mummies." This chapter describes procedures actually performed by the Brooklyn Museum's Conservation Laboratory. You can see photographs of their CT scans and X-rays. The material is more technical than the earlier chapters.

Next comes the appendix which examines different types of animal mummies, food offerings, pet mummues, votive offerings, the connection between mummies and pilgrims, and a select bibliography.

In all, Soulful Creatures is suitable for the fan of ancient history, Egypt, or mummies, as well as animal lovers. The publisher's website, which provided me with a complimentary review copy of the book, notes that it: "Accompanies a major travelling exhibition - Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, CA, March 22-June 15, 2014; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN, October 25, 2014-January 18, 2015; Brooklyn Museum , NY, Summer/Fall 2015."