cat mummy

cat mummy

Priests oversaw the rituals, mummifications, funerals, and burials of sacred temple animals. By the mid-1st millennium BC, people were encouraged to pay for the mummification as a sacred offering to the related deity. A cat mummy would be offered to a feline deity, such as Bastet. This was a lucrative business, and "false" mummies were sometimes created to meet the demand. Actually, this is one of those: X-rays show that there is nothing inside the wrappings.

Walters Art Museum

http://art.thewalters.org