Animal mummies at museums around the world

Prior to the broadcast of Museum Secrets episode 4: Inside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo on Thursday at 10 PM on History Television, take a look at some animal mummy collections from museums around the world. You might be wondering, ‘why animal mummies?’ That’s simply because at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum one of the best collections in the world exists, and we’ve found out some secrets about the collection that you’ll want to learn of on the show this Thursday.

Animal mummies at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum:

If you think there are only Pharaoh’s treasures and ancient human mummies within the walls of Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, think again. Wait until you see what the Egyptians did to lavish attention on their pets.

Millions of animals were mummified in ancient Egypt. Initially the ancient Egyptians started mummifying only their cherished pets, but the practice soon became more common and wild animals were mummified for another sacred purpose. You’d be astounded by the number – the falcon galleries alone contain 6 million.

On Museum Secrets: Inside Cairo’s Egyptian Museum we reveal which animals were mummified and why and we take our viewers into tunnels with burial chambers pilled high with animal mummies.

During production we discovered some amazing animal mummy collections at museums around the world. Take a look at our map and click on the red markers for information about each museum’s collection.

Do you have any recommendations for animal mummy collections at other museums?
Please add a note in the comment section below and I’ll add them to our map!