{"id":4437,"date":"2012-07-09T10:41:05","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T16:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4437"},"modified":"2012-07-09T10:41:05","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T16:41:05","slug":"puppy-mills-for-the-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4437","title":{"rendered":"Puppy Mills for the Gods"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I read an article like “Millions of Mummy Puppies Revealed at Egyptian Catacombs<\/a>,” I realize how little we know about what was really<\/em> going on with popular religion there centuries ago.<\/p>\n

It’s one thing to study the tombs of high-ranking individuals. We still put high-ranking individuals in fancy tombs, and we make pilgrimages to them. I have stood teary-eyed just contemplating the tomb of Thomas Jefferson, for example.<\/a><\/p>\n

But puppy mills for the gods?<\/p>\n

They estimate the catacombs contain the remains of 8 million animals. Given the sheer numbers of animals, it is likely they were bred by the thousands in puppy farms around the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, according to the researchers. The Dog Catacombs are located at Saqqara, the burial ground for the ancient capital<\/a> Memphis.<\/p>\n

“Our findings indicate a rather different view of the relationship between people and the animals<\/a> they worshipped than that normally associated with the ancient Egyptians, since many animals were killed and mummified when only a matter of hours or days old,” Nicholson said. “These animals were not strictly ‘sacrificial.’ Rather, the dedication of an animal mummy<\/a> was regarded as a pious act, with the animal acting as intermediary between the donor and the gods.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If that is not sacrifice \u2014 what is? Giving something to get something is part of what sacrifice is about, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

Ancient Egyptian religion has this bureaucratic feeling to it\u2014all of those catacombs and holes like post office boxes full of dead things. They even mummified cuts of meat for tomb offerings (go through the photo sequence<\/a>). I wonder if about 80 percent of the country’s linen production went into wrapping up bodies to be put away.<\/p>\n

(Meanwhile, in ancient Scotland, they were doing funny things with skeletons<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I read an article like “Millions of Mummy Puppies Revealed at Egyptian Catacombs,” I realize how little we know about what was really going on with popular religion there centuries ago. It’s one thing to study the tombs of high-ranking individuals. We still put high-ranking individuals in fancy tombs, and we make pilgrimages to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,116,17],"class_list":["post-4437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-egypt","tag-scotland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-19z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4508,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4508","url_meta":{"origin":4437,"position":0},"title":"Call for Submissions: Preternature","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural Volume 3:2. Old Gods and Ancient Ones Call them pagan or ancient, earth-based or demonic, or by names like Hekate, Isis, Poseidon, Ereshkigal, Loki, and Anath, the Old Gods have\u00a0 been topics of energetic scholarly discussion, literary recreation, and artistic depiction for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5367,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5367","url_meta":{"origin":4437,"position":1},"title":"Akhenaten, Proto-Monotheist, Worked His People to Death","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Things were hard for the people who built an instant capital city for the Dear Leader. Researchers examining skeletons in the commoners' cemetery in Amarna have discovered that many of the city's children were malnourished and stunted. Adults show signs of backbreaking work, including high levels of injuries associated with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Egypt\"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=egypt"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12132,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12132","url_meta":{"origin":4437,"position":2},"title":"Ancient Idol Is Older than They Thought","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 25, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"The Shirgir Idol, a wooden statue that you may see at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore has now been re-dated, pushing its age back to 12,500 years before present.\u00a0 In North American terms, that is about the time of the \"Clovis culture,\" when hunters with big spearpoints pursued\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"Head of the Shirgir idol","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2021\/03\/00SCI-IDOL1-superJumbo-800x1024.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2021\/03\/00SCI-IDOL1-superJumbo-800x1024.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2021\/03\/00SCI-IDOL1-superJumbo-800x1024.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2021\/03\/00SCI-IDOL1-superJumbo-800x1024.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":154,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=154","url_meta":{"origin":4437,"position":3},"title":"Church of the Eternal Source\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Church of the Eternal Source co-founder dies I learned just recently of the passing in January of Don Harrison, one of the founders of the Church of the Eternal Source. Since he was a teenager in the 1940s, Don had been drawn to ancient Pagan religion. In 1967 he started\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":696,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=696","url_meta":{"origin":4437,"position":4},"title":"Megaliths, archaeology, and the ‘stoned age’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"In graduate school, I took a couple of classes on Mesoamerican religion taught by Dav\u00edd Carrasco, an scholar of such edifices as El templo major in Mexico City.One thing I came away with was that such structures served often to demonstrate how King Somebody's reign was in sync with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":482,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=482","url_meta":{"origin":4437,"position":5},"title":"The sacred prostituteIn recent decades,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The sacred prostituteIn recent decades, two groups have attempted to rehabilitate the so-called \"sacred prostitutes\" of the ancient Mediterranean world. 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