How would you like your favorite animal companions to come with you into the afterlife?

For ancient Egyptians, they could!

John Fisher: <i>They have some examples where the cat was important to a pharaoh</i> <i>and pharaoh wanted that cat to accompany him</i> <i>into the afterlife.</i> <i>Animals were treated almost just as well as humans</i> <i>and considered to be the essential other beings, not just pets!</i> Ah...

Ancient Egypt.

What do you think of when you hear the name "Egypt"?

Pyramids?

Pharaohs?

The Sphinx?

What about mummies?

In the 19th century, Europe and the United States experienced a phenomenon called "Egyptomania".

Ancient Egyptian culture was all the rage, and folks sought to collect items for both academic study... As well as bragging rights.

South Carolina was not spared from this craze.

I'm your host, Andrew Davis.

In this episode of <i>Curiosity Trek!,</i> we're traveling down to the Charleston Museum to view an artifact in one of its most popular exhibits.

An impressive assortment of ancient Egyptian artifacts can be found in the Dr. Gabriel Manigault collection.

This feline shaped bronze case is one of many examples that ancient Egyptians loved animals much like we do today.

So much so that animals would accompany the deceased into the spirit realm.

To help us dig up the history on this ancient Egyptian relic, we found the perfect man to talk to!

My name is John Fisher.

I'm the curator of archeology at the Charleston Museum.

Can you tell us who originally found this case and around when and where was it found?

We don't actually know a lot about where it was specifically found.

We do know that it was donated by a Mr. Archer Huntington in 1931.

But this was part of a popular trend from the late 19th century to the 1920s, where people were paying people like Sir Flinders Petrie, who we have a lot of objects in the museum from to add to their museum collections and or personal collections.

This is made out of bronze, which is a copper alloy, and so copper and bronze were extremely significant during this time period.

All sorts of things were made out of it.

Cats and a lot of the mummified creatures basically from about the Ptolemaic era, which is around 300 BCE kind of in the Hellenistic period for Egypt began.

Host: <i>The ancient Egyptians took the afterlife seriously and great pains were taken</i> <i>to prepare the dead for their respective journeys into the spirit world.</i> Fisher: Mummifying a body for the ancient Egyptians was an extremely important ritual.

It's usually reserved for the more wealthy or people who were more significant like the pharaohs, everybody's of course, familiar with.

But it would take up to 70 days.

This would include a process where you would salt the body, which would help to dry out the skin.

You would also remove certain internal organs which were put into certain vases so that your internal organs could accompany you into the afterlife.

And certain areas would be filled with linen or sometimes covered with jewels or other things, and then you would be wrapped in linen.

And so basically starting from individual fingers and toes and wrapping the entire body and coating it in a resin.

Host: <i>The dead did not wish to live in the afterlife alone or empty handed.</i> <i>As evidenced by this bronze cat case,</i> <i>ancient Egyptians believed animal companions traveled</i> <i>into the spirit realm alongside their owners!</i> Fisher: With mummies, it's actually believed that those belongings could accompany you in the afterlife and make your life just as enjoyable as it was during life, and especially with animals because animals were treated almost just as well as humans and considered to be essential other beings, not just pets.

Host: <i>Ancient Egyptians revered animals.</i> <i>They held strong ties with the gods, and in many respects,</i> <i>animals were treated just as well as people!</i> Why were cats so important in ancient Egyptian culture?

So cats have always been important in ancient Egyptian culture.

They go back as far as some pharaohs wanting to be buried with their cat because the cat was significant to them during life.

But later on, during the Ptolemaic period, a lot of cults developed which were worshiping specific gods.

So with the cat: Bastet and Sekhmet.

Everybody is familiar with the Sphinx, and the Sphinx kind of largely ties to Sekhmet.

And putting one's face on top of that might mean that you're more significant because you're tying yourself to the god.

But with animal burials in particular, it's tying it to the cults and the specific gods and gods you worshiped.

Originally, they thought that a lot of these animals meant a lot to the pharaohs; that they had certain powers and the rest.

And they did mean a lot.

They meant a lot in life.

But later during that Ptolemaic period when there were those cults and they were trying to worship and sacrifice to the specific gods like Bastet, the goddess that looked like the domestic cat.

This became a much more common practice.

You get everything from baboons to ibis to shrews to crocodiles, and you see this throughout the time period.

You do see a rise and decline in popularity.

But especially during this Ptolemaic period, you get a wide range of animals that are seen in tombs, especially next to specific temple sites.

Now, one distinguishing feature I noticed on this case is that it has a more human-like nose right here.

Could you tell our viewers a little bit as to why human characteristics were given to animals in ancient Egyptian art and architecture?

That's a very good observation.

Unfortunately, in this case, it just happens to be the way it was constructed and a lot of times it had to be made a certain way to be able to fit the mummy.

And so sometimes you end up with certain features that look a little more human-like, just for the sake of the construction or the artist who made it.

But in ancient Egyptian culture, that was actually really significant for you to be able to have your likeness put onto something like that of a God.

So, for instance, the Sphinx was actually a pharaoh's face put on top of Sekhmet- one of the really, really well-known lion-like gods.

And this happens throughout the iconography in the hieroglyphs as well.

Host: <i>Now, do we know</i> <i>what happened to the cat originally inside this case?</i> Fisher: Unfortunately, we do not.

But it could have originally contained a cat.

And actually, now that they've been doing a lot more CT scanning and X-ray scanning of all of these mummies, they found a lot of times people really wanted a cat to go in to the afterlife with them.

But a lot of times people had what they had so you may not even have a mummy inside of a cat case.

So a lot of times you would get a really nice bronze cat case like this and it might not even contain a mummy, might contain a different creature altogether!

It just depended on the level of control you had and hopefully trusting your priest to put in the right thing.

One of the things that I suggest people to always do is do a lot of research.

There are mummified cats everywhere, but aren't that many cat statues out there.

A lot of the cat statues have piercings, have nose piercings, ear piercings.

And those can tell us a little more when we look at the iconography to see who it might be tied to.

What was the purpose?

What time period is it from?

Because the faces change, the art changes based on the popularity and certain forms of the time.

Host: <i>For the ancient Egyptians, as well as today's animal lovers</i> <i>it can be a comforting thought knowing that we won't be alone</i> when passing over into the great unknown.

<i>If you enjoyed this segment, perhaps we could "purrsuade" you to make the trip</i> <i>down to the Charleston Museum to see this statue for yourself.</i> <i>I'm Andrew Davis.</i> <i>What will we be seeing next?</i>