Ancient Egypt’s Ibis Mummies Were Probably Not Raised in Giant Sacred Ranches

THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PANTHEON ABOUNDS with animal-headed gods—Sekhmet (lion), Horus (hawk), Thoth (ibis), and others—and accordingly there are lion, hawk, and ibis mummies. These preserved animals have turned up everywhere from pharaoh’s tombs to city necropolises. Ibises in particular have been found by the millions, but archaeologists have not had concrete evidence of how the birds were acquired to be sacrificed by priests, who then mummified and sold them as devotional offerings. Were they domesticated and raised on an industrial scale or captured from the wild? Now, research published in the journal PLOS One suggests the latter was more likely.

“To investigate the possibility of domestication, we used ancient DNA stored in the ancient Egyptian ibis mummies to tell about how the priests ran their business,” says Sally Wasef, a paleogeneticist at Griffith University in Australia and lead author of the study. “We analyzed and compared the mitogenomic diversity among these mummies to that found among modern sacred ibis populations from throughout Africa.” Read more.